Lord Mayor Of London #695 2023-2024

Posted on Lord Mayor Of London #695 2023-2024, The City of London & Broad Street Ward

Mayor’s Progress – End of Term Report Card

We conclude our bi-monthly series of Mayor’s Progress reports with our final report card. Though any Lord Mayor wishes she or he could claim credit for creating jobs (all those dinners, speeches, promotional activity, videos, overseas visits, etc.), in fact, during this year as Lord Mayor, from November 2023 to November 2024, jobs in the City of London increased from 615,000 to 678,000 – yes, in just one year, an increase of over 10%!

COL_City-Stats-Factsheet_November-2024_v3-1Download

This is teamwork though. My sincere thanks must go to the City of London Livery Community, the Livery Committee, the Mansion House staff, the Corporation staff (especially Chris Hayward and Ian Thomas), fellow Aldermen & Common Councillors, the Lord Mayor’s Appeal team, my Chaplain Alan McCormack, the team at Z/Yen, to our entire City of London community, and HM Government support – and Elisabeth and the family!

So let’s have a look – on other metrics:

Our final Connect To Prosper report card is as follows:

Connect-to-Prosper-Dashboard-November-2024Download

We have an impact report on our 103 online lectures, all of which remain online, Knowledge Miles Lecture Series:

Knowledge-Miles-Impact-Report-2024.11-v1.0Download

We have an impact report on our 25 Coffee Colloquies:

Coffee-Colloquy-Impact-Report-2024-1Download

My sincere thanks to everyone who helped make this fantastic year possible!

P.S. Not a full list, but some changes worth noting:

  • Armed Forces Covenant signatures up from seven livery to 52
  • Badminton at Mansion House 
  • Bank porch Mansion House entrance again used for State occasion exits
  • Bicycle enforcement day
  • Bi-monthly score cards on the Mayoralty
  • Christ’s Hospital Royal Mathematical School Bursaries, over £900k raised
  • City Carbon Credit Cancellation Service – C4S 
  • City Concierge Services, though we also need City Bid Services for bids such as Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank bid
  • Coffee Colloquies (25)
  • Dragon Awards handed over to City AM
  • Einstein’s Two Clock Time Dilation Experiment in 22 Bishopsgate
  • Elisabeth’s Prevent Violence Against Women & Girls along with her refugee Christmas and refugee Easter initiatives
  • Festival of Music, Innovation & Knowledge
  • Finsbury Institute launched
  • Freedom group ceremonies
  • Global Fair Pay Charter by London Tea Exchange signed by the City of London
  • In Recognition Posts – Deputy Gauger, Deputy Deputy Gauger, Water Bailiff, Underwater Bailiff, Honorary Wine & Toll Collector 
  • Knowledge Miles Lectures (103)
  • Letters of friendship (incomplete)
  • Livery Coffee-Connect-Teas when overseas
  • Livery Experience
  • Livery Weekend In London (thanks to you two!)
  • London Green City, of London Corporation 
  • Lord Mayor’s Aldermanic Representative badges
  • Lord Mayor’s Big Curry Lunch gross >£500k, net £402k 
  • Lord Mayor’s Big Curry Masala
  • Lord Mayor’s City St George’s University of London fellow 
  • Measuring Up The Monument
  • Old Jewry reopening and signage
  • Overseas visit one-page agendas
  • Paganini Royal Concert with ‘Il Cannone Guarnerius‘
  • Pepys Day
  • Pollinating London Together and pollinator counts
  • Proud To Be A Freeman Common Halls
  • Stamp duty, MIFID investment research 
  • TFL southeast corner of Bank
  • Thames Day 
  • Thermochromic paint panel experiment 
  • TwinIT Europeana 
  • View of the Thames 
  • Ward Clubs first group meeting of Chairmen and secretaries
  • Work shadowing by Aldermen

If we’d had more time…

  • Dashboard for the City of London, combined with…
    • A COBRA style situation room where we could use active scenario planning to test COLC teams on their projects, e.g. Thames Barrier fails, massive cyber attack/Carrington event, combined with…
    • An iconic television studio to help promote our image
  • Guides and tours of Guildhall
  • Community pub for Simpsons (CIC equivalent) and City membership support network
  • RSSL vs SSL promotion to make high-volume trading less energy intensive, a green campaign for exchanges and the City
  • Open Planning & Transportation Data Lake – requiring as a condition of planning that people ‘donate’ their building management system data to the City anonymously for statistical analysis, e.g. meeting carbon targets
  • A Guildhall Building App for staff and the future
  • “Open for Coffee” Circle for buildings around the City who have access to ground floor coffee at their receptions but they look unavailable, e.g. Creechurch Lane, 8 Bishopsgate
  • Funding experiments with weekend openings on a shared risk/reward basis
  • Working further on recruitment to Ward Clubs and Livery
  • Stamp Duty on Shares abolition
  • Removing VAT on tourist sales (not a personal favourite, but has come up in conversations in Belfast, Derry, Edinburgh, etc. on my travels) for competitive tourism reasons
  • Removing Islamic banking impediments, specifically the issue of capital gains on people who remortgage to an Islamic bank, as well as the bank having to pay ATED – basically it’s hard to be Sharia-friendly in the UK at the moment since HMRC reversed its enforcement laxity on this
  • Classifying stablecoins as certificates of deposit or similar.  Stablecoins, especially those that bear interest, could be classified as securities under US law using the Howey Test. Stablecoins generally are not considered securities because their value is pegged; however, interest-bearing stablecoins could complicate this assessment. Circle, for example, an issuer of USDC asserts that stablecoins function as currency substitutes, lack profit potential from issuers’ efforts, and should not be seen as securities.  Ensuring that stablecoins in the UK are not seen as securities would certainly make the UK fintech space more competitive internationally
  • Competitive High Net Worth Individual Investor programme
  • Upgrade of UK Payments systems to compatibility with ISO20022
  • UK (England) to sign up to next PISA assessment in financial literacy (2029, but need to sign up in 2025/2026)
Posted on Lord Mayor Of London #695 2023-2024, Life As We Live It, Sailing Through Life, The City of London & Broad Street Ward

Tilt Boats & Hatch Boats Of Gravesend & The London River 1555-1865

Wow! David Patient asked me to provide a foreword for his book on a pet topic of mine, commercial Thames boats, and I just received the finished product:

It’s glorious, such high-production quality. My foreword flows thusly, or should I say runs:

Tilt Boats & Hatch Boats of Gravesend & The London River

Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965) described the Thames as “the silver thread which runs through the history of Britain.” This book shows how much tilt boats and hatch boats contributed to that silver thread, and how their legacy lives on along our river today.

I first met David Patient when he guided my wife Elisabeth and me in our two decades restoration of the Lady Daphne, a 1923 wooden Thames sailing barge. We are enthusiasts about traditional craft, but David is an expert.  Now, as the 695th Lord Mayor of London, I assume as well the one-year post of Admiral of the Port of London.  History literally flows through every part of our City.  Thus, it gives me great pleasure to provide a short foreword for David’s excellent book, ‘Tilt Boats & Hatch Boats of Gravesend & The London River’.

As this book sets out, the Lord Mayor of London has a historic association with the ‘Long Ferry’ between Gravesend and Billingsgate, which was run by the Gravesend Corporation. These tilt boats often provided a quicker and safer route than travel by road, which was periodically plagued by highwaymen at Blackheath and Shooter’s Hill. As well as the tilt boats carrying passengers, hatch boats carried fresh fish from Gravesend to Billingsgate Fish Market. 

Since London’s founding as a port city by the Romans, the City’s history has depended on the boats of the River Thames. To this day, the City of London Corporation has a special responsibility as the port health authority for the Thames – stretching well beyond London’s boundaries. Throughout my term as Lord Mayor, the City is celebrating the place of the River Thames in the life of London. In centuries past, the Lord Mayor’s Show installing the Lord Mayor in office took the form of a flotilla along the Thames – which is said to be why we still refer to ‘floats’ in a carnival. The Lord Mayor and the London livery companies used barges for business, for ceremony, and for a combination of both – including receiving visitors at Gravesend and then sailing them into the City.  We have recently revived the water bailiffs, the Lord Mayor’s View of the Thames, and promoted Thames Day to coincide with World Rivers Day.

Mansion House, the home of Lord Mayors for their year in office, is full of reminders of the City’s maritime heritage – including the ‘Nile suite’ of furniture, replete with golden rope and anchor decorations, commemorating Nelson’s victory at the Battle of the Nile. One of the stained-glass windows depicts the procession of Queen Elizabeth I by river from Westminster to the City. We are fortunate to have numerous 17th century Dutch paintings in the Samuel Collection depicting Dutch spritsail rigs, which inspired the design of the Thames barges. As late as 1903 a Joint Select Committee of the Lords and Commons estimated that 75% to 80% of the whole traffic of London was carried by barges.

John Burns (1858-1943) rhapsodised, “I have seen the Mississippi. That is muddy water. I have seen the Saint Lawrence. That is clear water. But the Thames is liquid history.”  David’s book adds fresh water to that history.

Alderman Professor Michael Mainelli

The Rt Hon The Lord Mayor of London, 2023-2024

Posted on Lord Mayor Of London #695 2023-2024, The City of London & Broad Street Ward

Thermochromic Paint At Mansion House

As part of this year’s experiments, here’s one we did at Mansion Home.

A long-term concern of mine has been the old building infrastructure of northern Europe. Our buildings are not made for cooling in summer. I’ve had a few ideas over the years, but had a chance this year to try one out, thermochromic paint. We could paint rooftops white, but that then leads to loss of heat when needed in winter. Why not have paint with a high albedo when hot and a low albedo when cool?

Continue reading →
Posted on Lord Mayor Of London #695 2023-2024, Life As We Live It

Loopy About Ties

As is well-known, official City roles such as Lord Mayor and Sheriff involve a lot of dressing up, and down. Over the years, friends have realised about the only dressing up I don’t mind is putting on a Jerry Garcia tie. Yes, I am a fan of the Grateful Dead, but also feel if I’m going to wear a tie I might as well like it so I have a small collection of eight or so. Requisite attire embraces a variety of official functions, largely in the following order of increasing formality:

Continue reading →