What a fantastic evening at the Guildhall! Tonight, in our special gala for LSO Discovery, the legendary Il Cannone – Niccolò Paganini’s 18th-century Guarneri del Gesù violin – was brought to life by violinist Simon Zhu, with Sir Antonio Pappano conducting. 🎻✨
We were also honoured to welcome His Majesty The King, Patron of the LSO, to share in this extraordinary moment. My opening remarks:
Remarks to: the United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS) annual lunch, Tuesday, 15 October 2024, at the Royal Institute of British Architects, by
The Rt Hon The Lord Mayor of London, Alderman Professor Michael Mainelli
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The HAC Light Cavalry are the bodyguards for the Lady Mayoress, while I am solidly defended by the HAC Company of Pikemen & Musketeers. The HAC Light Cavalry was originally formed in 1861, then later absorbed into the Horse Artillery element of the Honourable Artillery Company (HAC) in 1891. Today the Light Cavalry operate as a non-profit organisation offering hacks and lessons on our forward going military parade horses. You can join and support too, going riding with them or undertaking dismounted duties.
In 2021 I had the fortune of riding with the Light Cavalry round the City. But that was as Sheriff. Elisabeth has been inordinately kind to let me ride with her mounted defenders twice this year. Once with my Sheriff Bronek Masojada in May to raise money for charity, but also to inspect the unit today down at their Windsor HQ at Flemish Farm. Elisabeth and I attended the inspection in October 2021, but today I was inspecting on horseback. Small aside, Her Majesty had also done so on horseback two decades ago. And on a tearful note, perhaps my last opportunity to be astride my trusty steed, Leo.
For me it was hacking, but our City’s riding elite cut an enormously fine sight at the annual inspection. They are the only mounted unit in the world to conduct their inspection in full battle dress at a canter. True horsemen and soldiers. And excellent hosts as we dined afterwards in the marquis and swapped tales.
I was delighted with this month’s Centre for Management Consulting Excellence’s publication of “Fundamental Questions for Consulting Excellence: A framework for research and progress to date” in association with the British Academy of Management. I was pleased that we took an approach back in 2021 that riffed off of Hilbert’s Problems. In short, the important thing is to pose the questions.
In turn, this approach riffed off Long Finance’s Meta Commerce programme in 2007. Meta-Commerce too aims to identify and structure the critical questions underlying the long-term viability of the financial system.
Inspired by David Hilbert’s 23 questions project of 1900, the Meta-Commerce programme brings together financial experts across a range of disciplines with a view to producing a framework of questions in order to prioritise future research and direct action. Ideally this framework should take the form of a network of related questions, an ontology if you will.
By helping to identify a set of core questions that link economics, finance and society, and that need solving in order to have a working financial system, Meta-Commerce maps the road to Long Finance and contributes to its overarching goals – to expand frontiers, change systems, deliver services and build communities. Long may Hilbert’s formulation of an approach inspire as much questioning as his mathematical questions ultimately did.
Just what is a management consultant? According to the well-worn cliché, it’s someone who borrows your watch to tell you the time – and then charges you a premium for the service. Yet despite this apparent cynicism, there has been no shortage of people wanting to buy the services that management consultancies provide. According to figures from the Management Consultancies Association, the market in the UK alone is worth some £20 billion.
Alderman Professor Michael Mainelli, The Rt Hon The Lord Mayor
Yet this growth has come at a cost. Not only does management consultancy remain a mystery to many but there is a growing body of work out to burst the consulting bubble – with books such as The Big Con by Mariana Mazzucato and Rosie Collington accusing it of weakening businesses, governments and even whole economies. Add to this the disruptive impact of the latest AI-powered tools making much advice available for free, you don’t need to be a consultant to think that maybe consulting has a problem?
In 2021 I was asked to join the strategy development panel of the Centre for Management Consulting Excellence to help steer it through its next phase of growth. I felt that some of the questions the panel was asking were perennial ones around topics such as client relationships and ethics that the industry hadn’t really tackled. I suggested that these difficult questions were analogous to the 23 problems that David Hilbert convened leading mathematicians to address back in the early 1900s. Could we pose these questions and assemble some bright minds to address them?
I’m glad to say that CMCE has taken this idea and run with it, editing down the many questions
the panel and other experts came up with into five broad categories and then using these to inform their events and research reports. The result has been the Fundamental Questions for Consulting Excellence that form the basis for this update report.
Nine of Hilbert’s problems remain unsolved and I don’t anticipate these fundamental questions to be answered any time soon. In continuing to address them, and in laying out a framework for further investigation, CMCE has performed a valuable service to management consultants everywhere.
I commend this report you and urge you to debate, engage with, and generally help to progress them.
October 2024
William Harvey (1 April 1578 – 3 June 1657) was an English physician who made influential contributions in anatomy and physiology. The William Harvey Annual Review is a one-day internal conference that celebrates the most outstanding research activities within the Institute.
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“Paganini never repeats”, is a tribute to the maestro’s improvisation virtuosity, but also a good reminder that live performances are once in a lifetime. An enormous range of events from this year’s biggest City of London Festival are now available to book online – https://www.musicinoffices.com/cityfestival!
Elisabeth and I like the artist William Alister Macdonald a lot, having chosen his work to grace our invitation cards celebrating our connections with the Thames and Thames sailing barges. But there is a frisson of imposter syndrome when you’re asked to write a foreword to a book for an artist you like a lot, but on whom you are no expert. Such was the case when Ian Macdonald asked me to provide a foreword for his book about his great-great-uncle William Alister Macdonald.
Continue readingYou might like to start with some BBC background, “The secret lab hidden inside a famous monument“, and some press “Could the Monument really be used to show the Earth revolves around the Sun?“.
This 2025 academic paper was the definitive result – Matthias Fabian, Joanna M Coote, Philip J Thomas, Michael Mainelli, Tong Sun, Kenneth T V Grattan, Measuring The Monument: Fibre Optic Sensor Systems Show Why Hooke’s And Wren’s Plans For A Giant Telescope Within The Monument In London Failed, Proc. SPIE 13639, 29th International Conference on Optical Fiber Sensors, 136397F (22 May 2025); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.3062881, 4 pages.
While the paper is behind a firewall, we also had a fantastic event at Guildhall Art Gallery on 1Octoberr 2024 sharing the results. Here’s the presentation:
The Magazine of the Institute of Measurement and Control also wrote a short piece on the work of Professor Philip Thomas and the team.
Remarks to: “Measuring the Monument”, Guildhall Art Gallery, Thursday, 31 October 2024 by The Rt Hon The Lord Mayor of London Alderman Professor Michael Mainelli
“Fellow Alderman, ladies and gentlemen…
A very warm welcome to Guildhall, as we reveal the results of our Measuring the Monument experiment series. As the 695th Lord Mayor of the City of London – or, as I like to put it, the elected head of the world’s oldest democratic worker’s and residents’ cooperative. I am delighted to be joined by this team of scientists this evening, here in the City of London Corporation’s historic headquarters.
The theme of this mayoralty is Connect To Prosper, celebrating the many knowledge miles which flow through our Square Mile – the world’s coffee house. Over 40 learned societies, 70 higher education institutions, and 130 research institutes exist in and around the City of London, making this the world’s most successful concentration of interconnected knowledge networks – where science and finance meet to find and to fund the solutions to global challenges.
Do you know what Sir Isaac Newton – who spent many years in London as Warden of the Royal Mint – said when he was asked what was the greatest of his achievements? The discovery of gravity – he said it helped him keep his feet on the ground.
For Connect To Prosper, we have launched six initiatives:
1. The Ethical AI Initiative, using ISO standards – through the ethical AI course, the Walbrook AI Accord, and the Coffee House Consensus.
2. The Smart Economy Networks Initiative, using international X-Road standards for smart data.
3. The Constructing Science Initiative, for building life science laboratories.
4. The Sustainable Finance Initiative, reinforcing carbon markets.
5. GALENOS, accelerating global mental health research.
6. And the Space Protection Initiative, using space debris retrieval insurance bonds to deal with space junk and keep space clutter-free.
Which reminds me… scientists in space got so bored of watching the Earth rotate, that after 24 hours, they called it a day.
Science is a common thread running through our initiatives, and it is central to our success as a problem-solving centre, which is why we have run a series of scientific experiments this year, including the time dilation experiment at 22 Bishopsgate, a microplastics survey, a seagrass carbon sequestration study, a pollinator count … and – of course – Measuring The Monument.
The Monument is well known as a commemoration of the Great Fire. What is not always known by many of those who walk by on their way to work, or who climb its steps to enjoy the views over London, is that it was also designed as a scientific instrument.
The view at the top of the Monument is famous, but the view from the bottom, less so. Christopher Wren and Rober Hooke, both Fellows of the Royal Society, successfully persuaded the Court of Aldermen to pay to build a tower to commemorate the fire – rather than a simple plaque.
You could say the City Aldermen fell for it Hooke, line and sinker.
They designed the Monument as a giant zenith telescope, so that when the doors at the top were opened, an observer in the underground observation chamber at the base could measure the changes in position of the stars overhead throughout the year. For us on earth, it appears that the stars have moved – though of course, it is the earth that has moved around the sun – which is what Hooke and Wren were hoping to demonstrate.
Do you know how astronomers organise an experiment on that scale? They plan-et.
Unfortunately, their expensive giant telescope – provided courtesy of the City – didn’t seem to work, as Hooke was unable to measure a change in position in the star he chose – Gamma Draconis. Christopher Wren’s nephew, James Hodgson, blamed the bad vibrations from the traffic on Fleet Street.
We decided to deploy a team of experts, using modern technology, to investigate this 350-year-old mystery, asking:
On this Halloween evening, what would we be able to tell the ghosts of Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke if they were with us now? Tonight’s speakers will reveal the answers.
I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to the Measuring the Monument Working Group – from City St George’s, City Optotrech, Imetrum, and the University of Portsmouth – for making this experiment possible; and to the Worshipful Company of Scientific Instrument Makers for very generously supporting tonight’s event.
Now, it gives me great pleasure to hand over to Professor Philip Thomas, Immediate Past Master of the Scientific Instrument Makers.
To paraphrase Mr Spock, “may you Connect & Prosper”. Thank you.”
In proper City tradition, as part of ringing the long change, we now begin easing out of office with the election of the 696th Lord Mayor, Alastair King, taking office on 7 November. Here’s my reply to the vote of thanks given to me for the year so far at Common Hall by Master World Trader, Michael Larsen.
“Fellow Aldermen, Mr Recorder, Sheriffs, Chief Commoner, Master World Trader, Masters, officers, Fellow Liverymen,
It has been an incredible honour to serve as the 695th Lord Mayor of the City of London…a place we now all term “the world’s oldest democratic worker’s and resident’s cooperative”. Thank you, Master World Trader, for your kind words. I am eternally grateful for the support of my mother livery.
I am especially pleased to be the first American and Italian citizen as Lord Mayor and, though I am immensely proud of my wider Irish and German heritage, as a Highland Bagpiper, I have been somewhat embarrassed by my lack of Scottishness.
So, I’m glad to be handing over the keys to Mansion House to a man of fine Aberdonian stock. Alastair and Florence, I know you will do an excellent job for our City. I am sure you will be as iconic a Lord Mayor as Dick Whittington. Whittington had his feline friend. You have your canine companion.
When I first took office as Lord Mayor, the Common Cryer and Serjeant at Arms, Major Peter Oweh, turned to me as I sat in the Rolls Royce and said, “Lord Mayor, this year is all about the ‘ols”. He didn’t mean ‘olidays. He meant protocol, alcohol, and cholesterol.
Indeed, some of you may recall that this time last year I joked that my tailor had offered to put a little extra “banqueting room” in my ceremonial robes. Though I am sad that my mayoralty is coming to an end, it is perhaps a good thing as no banqueting room remains.
As the Master World Trader noted, we – the City, the livery, the economy – have Connected AND Prospered so well this year. We have leveraged our City’s many connections; the many ‘Knowledge Miles’ of our Square Mile, the ‘world’s coffee house’, to create positive discussions about tackling global challenges.
From the success of the Ethical AI Initiative, which has seen more than 6,000 participants in 60 countries take our 12 hour course, the signing of the ‘Walbrook AI Accord’ by representatives of 38 countries, and the development of the ‘Coffee House Consensus’, drafted with the input of firms representing more than $26 trillion in assets under management, to our other initiatives with the 56 nations of the Commonwealth issuing their Common Space report supporting our Space Debris Removal Insurance Bonds proposal, Smart Economy Networks, Constructing Science, Sustainable Finance, and GALENOS for mental health research…our 100 ‘Knowledge Mile’ lectures, 25 ‘Coffee Colloquies’, science experiments, and the City Carbon Credit Cancellation Service – there is much to celebrate.
Highlights are many: the Bavarian Ball for the Lord Mayor’s Appeal…state banquets for the President of South Korea and the Emperor of Japan…the launch of the livery Linkedin Community, ‘Livery Experience’, international Livery-Coffee-Connect-Teas, Thames Day…Pepys Day…the Lord Mayor’s view of the boundary stones… and Proud to be a Freeman Days… Common Hall today is one! I hope some of these celebrations may well become annual fixtures.
The City of London is the world’s unofficial capital…and none of this would have been possible without the support of what is a global community. So, some thank you’s:
Firstly, to the late sheriffs, Sue and Bronek, and their consorts, Gary and Jane, for their unwavering dedication. To our new Sheriffs, Greg and David: I know you will have an equally fantastic year. Thank you, also, to my fellow Aldermen and the Court of Common Council for your steadfast support.
To all the excellent officers across the City Corporation who’ve pushed themselves to the limit to deliver a jam-packed programme. To our government officials, particularly our overseas ones. And to my fellow liverymen, who continue to display incredible hospitality, philanthropy, and – most importantly – forbearance when I list my ‘Connect To Prosper’ initiatives for the umpteenth time.
There are 40 days left for this mayoralty, and we intend to make full use of them…with trips to Latvia, Estonia, and Germany on the horizon, as well as the City Festival of Music, Invention & Knowledge, the International Investment Summit, the Defence & Security Lecture, and more.
All good things come to an end. In an ancient Roman triumph, the words “memento mori”…“remember you must die”…were whispered into the ear of victorious generals to ensure they remained grounded. One of the more poignant moments of my mayoralty was similar. Examining my vaccination card ahead of all my trips last year, the nurse checked off:
“Yellow Fever”, she said: “good for life.”
“Measles: good for life.”
“Hepatitus B: good for life.”
“Hepatitis A: expired,” she tutted. “This new dose will cover you for 20 years … so, good for life.”
A proper reminder of mortality! To quote Scotland’s national poet, Robert Burns, “nae man can tether time or tide,” though I am sad to be departing.
Finally, I would like to thank my family for their love and support over the last year, here and abroad. In particular, I would like to thank my wonderful wife, Elisabeth, who has made the role of Lady Mayoress her own…acting as an ambassador for the vital Prevent Violence Against Women & Girls initiative.
I’m sure many in this room have wondered how she does “it”…
I thought “it” was the abseiling, but apparently “it” means being married to me. All I can say is that Elisabeth is ‘sehr geduldig’: extremely patient.
All year, when asked about being Lord Mayor I’ve said, “Everyone should be Lord Mayor for a year”. To paraphrase A A Milne, “How lucky we are to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard” – Our City of London. My parents used to say proudly, together, “It’s been a great ride!”. Elisabeth and I would agree. And thus, we thank you, for having given us that privilege.”