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The Medieval Unaccountable Corporation of London.

Michael-Bear--007.jpg

Here he is. The lord Mayor, Michael Bear. elected by corporations

To become Lord Mayor you must first have served as an alderman and sheriff, and you "must command the support of, and have the endorsement of, the Court of Aldermen and the Livery". You should also be stinking rich, as the Lord Mayor is expected to make a "contribution from his/her private resources towards the costs of the mayoral year." This is, in other words, an official old boys' network. Think of all that Tory huffing and puffing about democratic failings within the trade unions. Then think of their resounding silence about democracy within the City of London.
The current Lord Mayor, Michael Bear, came to prominence within the City as chief executive of the Spitalfields development group, which oversaw a controversial business venture in which the Corporation had a major stake, even though the project lies outside the boundaries of its authority. This illustrates another of the Corporation's unique features. It possesses a vast pool of cash, which it can spend as it wishes, without democratic oversight. As well as expanding its enormous property portfolio, it uses this money to lobby on behalf of the banks.
The Lord Mayor's role, the Corporation's website tells us, is to "open doors at the highest levels" for business, in the course of which he "expounds the values of liberalisation". Liberalisation is what bankers call deregulation: the process that caused the financial crash.
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One of the things I found out in the past few days was about the role of the "Remembrancer" who's job basically it is to make sure the Government/Parliament does what the COLC wants. I would expect the Remembrancer and/or people from the Remembrancer's office are in regular contact with Ministers and senior officials, particularly in Departments like the Treasury and HMRC. Time to get going on some FOIs me thinks....
 
Not voting, not speaking but almost certainly hob-nobbing and pulling strings where s/he can (and let's face it, it's "he" - would be nice to see a gender / ethnicity breakdown of all these councilmen / aldermen etc.) It stinks.
 
taffboy gwyrdd said:
Not voting, not speaking but almost certainly hob-nobbing and pulling strings where s/he can (and let's face it, it's "he" - would be nice to see a gender / ethnicity breakdown of all these councilmen / aldermen etc.) It stinks.
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They are just playing their small part in constructing and maintaining the global economic consensus mentioned on another thread; get over it you 'class warrior'. The way forward is learning to live in the straight jacket; once you've taken that step, then you can go on to love and even celebrate your confinement.

Cheers - Louis MacNeice
 
good work, cheers killer b. Apparently one of his pet hates is people pissing in the City streets after a night out drinking (which he blames on labour's '24 hr' drinking laws). Now if only we could find out where his office is..... :D
 
That NewStatesman article link posted by butchersapron (thanks) dates back to February of this year and was written by Nicholas Shaxson who wrote the book Treasure Islands mentioned in the Guardian article linked in the OP. In reading the Shaxson article, I got to the bit about the City of London being a control centre for offshore tax havens which it listed and I noticed that the Isle of Man was mentioned.

Then I remembered a strange low-in-content item on last night's Channel 4 news. It was about the future of the Isle of Man as a Space Exploration centre. It seems that in some hangars there are some secondhand Russian spacecraft items. Also there is a company starting up to develop space launches of satellites for GPS and broadcasting. The launch of a rocket somewhere in Eastern Europe was seen on a TV monitor. The company behind this it seems was attracted to the Isle of Man by the generous 1% tax regime. This stuck in my mind. What a pity the Channel 4 journalist went all wide-eyed and Tomorrows World on us burbling on about this marvellous enterprise on an island of a few thousand people instead of asking about the tax haven aspect of the story.
 
There's a guy at work that wants one day the be lord mayor. He's currently trying to get an aldermanship. He was telling me all about it -- sounds pretty ridiculous all right.
 
Oh, and he reckons being lord mayor costs you a quarter-million but that you more than make it up afterwards, "like Tony Blair" (his words).
 
TruXta said:
Sounds like a lovely chap.
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Do you know, he really is lovely. But lovely in that personal one-on-one way in which so long as you fit into his world, he'll do anything for you.

There's a lot like that. The world is divided up for them into their own establishment and everyone else. They'll be charming and generous and wonderful to their own. And they'll vote Tory and want to drive into poverty and string up everyone else.
 
kabbes said:
Do you know, he really is lovely. But lovely in that personal one-on-one way in which so long as you fit into his world, he'll do anything for you.

There's a lot like that. The world is divided up for them into their own establishment and everyone else. They'll be charming and generous and wonderful to their own. And they'll vote Tory and want to drive into poverty and string up everyone else.
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I work for people like that.
 
On conspiracy threads or ones that import US drooling about the federal reserve and the gold standard, I moan about what a waste it is that people direct their energies into that sort of thing. Well, this Corporation of London stuff is a brilliant example of where I think energies would be better directed.
 
elbows said:
On conspiracy threads or ones that import US drooling about the federal reserve and the gold standard, I moan about what a waste it is that people direct their energies into that sort of thing. Well, this Corporation of London stuff is a brilliant example of where I think energies would be better directed.
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It's the best recent example of crossover I've come across recently
 
It could have crossover appeal in the sense that the chronic oversimplifiers may just cherry-pick a few details, weave them into their dismal narrative, and make some shit videos.
 
That's true of all loon activity though, even the esteemed Urban Loon Jazzz has posted occasional semi-'credible' BBC/Graun/etc links -- convenient selections of content that's highly selectively quoted by loon-minded types, obvs.
 
My dad was Master of a city livery company ("Worshipful Company of ... etc) so I had an inside view on all that stuff - all a bit masonic tbh, silly costumes and formal dinners. Decent food and excellent wines though :)
 
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