Another day, another City Hall scandal. Mr S can today reveal that Labour’s London mayor Sadiq Khan has splurged a whopping £2.1 million on a statues commission. So much for sensible public spending, eh?
In a Freedom of Information response returned to Mr S, the Greater London Authority admitted that, so far, £2,138,888 had been funnelled towards the Mayor of London’s ‘Commission for Diversity in the Public Realm’. The initiative aims to ‘lead a London-wide conversation on how to achieve greater diversity of representation across the public realm and heritage sites’ and focus on ‘increasing the presence and visibility of underrepresented groups’. Er, money well spent then?
The work the Commission has undertaken also involves delivering the Mayor’s ‘Untold Stories’ grant fund, on which £1,156,417 has been spent to date. This will, the GLA insists, ‘support community led-projects that increase the visual representation of diversity in London’s public realm’ and ‘develop projects that help tell the stories of London’s diverse communities’. In fact, Khan’s pet project has even gifted lucky Londoners a new memorial honouring the anti-slavery campaigner Olaudah Equiano and, um, five ‘Rainbow Plaques’ to mark significant moments in the city’s ‘LGBTQIA+ histories’. Exactly what city dwellers have been crying out for…
The extortionate cost of his statues commission is not the only money problem Khan has at present. The Londoner revealed the mayor is facing an official probe into his decision to accept Taylor Swift freebies last year – after it emerged that the firm that had given him the tickets received £45 million of City Hall contracts. For its part, the GLA has said the London mayor had no role in awarding the contract and insisted there was ‘no conflict of interest’. How curious.
It would appear Khan has more than a few tricky questions to answer on his recent spending habits. Stay tuned…
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