While Red Ken was in charge we know that City Hall was stuffed with copies of The Londoner, Morning Star and correspondence with global dictators but Boris Johnson has discovered a striking absence.
City Hall doesn't have a portrait of Her Majesty.
ConservativeHome has learnt that Boris is determined to put that right.
Quite extraordinary that our head of state wasn't honoured in the City Hall of our capital city.
Off with Ken's head. Put it on a spike, displayed at London Bridge.
Posted by: John W | May 17, 2008 at 12:12
Ah yes, HM Elizabeth II, by the Grace of God Queen of Canada.
Lovely photo - I have one on my wall. Shame there is no decent photo of Elizabeth II, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (and Her other Realms and Territories), provided by this government for its loyal subjects!
Posted by: Stefan | May 17, 2008 at 12:26
No surprises there then.
Red Ken has made no secret of his dislike of the monarchy and preference for a Revolutionary Socialist Republic of the Workers.
Have the piccies and busts of Chavez, Fidel, Trotsky et al been removed?
Posted by: George Hinton | May 17, 2008 at 12:26
While I fully agree that City Hall should have a portrait of Her Majesty, I would have thought that someone at "ConservativeHome" would have recognised from the honours that she is wearing that your picture is of Her Majesty the Queen of Canada wearing the Order of Canada and the Canadian Order of Military Merit and not a picture of our Head of State
Posted by: Bob | May 17, 2008 at 12:34
Sorry Bob! I didn't know/ recognise that. Boris clearly won't be asking me to choose the portrait. I'll ask him to contact you (and Stefan) for advice!
Posted by: Editor | May 17, 2008 at 12:37
I am not a subject, I am a free man!
Boris should focusing on his job, e.g. ensuring that he and Nick Boles don't make any more illegal appointments or employ any more Marxists.
Posted by: Libertarian | May 17, 2008 at 12:40
Good to see that Boris is focusing on the big issues and the things that really matter to Londoners. Spin free as well.
Posted by: Boris helps Labour | May 17, 2008 at 13:17
Boris is doing plenty of substantial things, Libertarian - not least via his financial audit.
Honouring The Queen matters too.
Posted by: Editor | May 17, 2008 at 13:38
All town halls, city and county council chambers, etc, should show a portrait of Her Majesty. It is only typical of Red Ken that City Hall - the administrative and political centre of the capital - doesn't have one. I hope it is displayed in the main chamber.
Posted by: David Jones | May 17, 2008 at 14:03
The Editor was no doubt thinking that we should have different portraits of The Queen for different occasions. The Queen in Canada, India, Australia etc etc. Each photo to demonstrate that she has an affinity with London's diverse Commonwealth of communities.
Posted by: Jennifer Wells | May 17, 2008 at 14:11
Message from The Silent Majority
Surprised he noticed considering all the time he spends on important things like writing a column for the telegraph and trousering £250k.
Oh and also trousering an MPs salary and no doubt expenses whilst he also manages to represent the good people of Henley.
Now that he has turned the Mayoralty into a part time job I presume he won't be taking the full £173k salary.
He could always buy the portrait on expenses.
With the Queen looking down on City Hall we can assume transport/crime and policing issues have now all been solved!
The Silent Majority is voting for none of the above. They are all the same.
Yours
The Silent Majority
Posted by: The Silent Majority | May 17, 2008 at 15:12
Well done Boris!
Posted by: woodentop | May 17, 2008 at 15:38
The Silent Majority: You don't have to continously sign yourself off as though you're some kind of special counter revolutionary or something. It's annoying and little more than a waste of space and time for you to post stuff as though it carries weight.
I'll note and add that Ken regularly wrote comments to the newspaper he created and funded, the £2.5m "Londoner" which I had a copy of when I was down in London. It was complete drivel and all funded out of the London Tax payer's pocket. Now, Boris instead has a column in a national newspaper and the newspapers [and it's customers] are paying for it voluntarily.
Posted by: James, Swadlincote | May 17, 2008 at 16:21
Excellent idea!
Posted by: Richard | May 17, 2008 at 17:43
Boris should resign from Parliament (or rather take an office of profit under the crown so he is disqualified) so he can do the job he was elected to do. The Tories will win his seat with ease so why worry!
Posted by: Chips of Brookfield | May 17, 2008 at 17:57
It is outrageous that there was no portrait of The Queen in City Hall during Ken's 'reign' and I'm glad that Boris will rectify. In my opinion one of the best potraits, a little dated now because it shows Her as a young woman, was the 1955 portrait by Pietro Annigoni and this was the one used in most of the offices of the organisation I worked in. Many others seem to agree it is a fine portrait:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4872232.stm
- just so long as the awful, more recent, portrait by Lucien Freud isn't the one Boris picks.
Posted by: Bill (Scotland) | May 17, 2008 at 18:20
I am glad that there wasn't a picture of HM in City Hall .. wouldn't want her (even if in image only) to be sullied by Ken and his acolytes ...
Posted by: Pyers Symon | May 17, 2008 at 18:35
The Silent Majority:
Shut up about Johnson's Telegraph column. He's a formidably intelligent man, and so probably spends less than an hour a week dashing it off. Hardly a full-time job; lucky him to be paid for what's probably something done over breakfast!
Posted by: Stefan | May 17, 2008 at 19:30
To the Silent Majority
If other people's pay packets cause you pain, its time you learnt to get over it. It's gonna happen. When I first went into the City as a very very junior person, the boss said to me "you are going to see the paychecks of the senior people. If the knowledge that someone is being paid 20 or 50 times your salary upsets you, better quit right now." I took that as a spur to try and work my way up to earn that kind of cash, not fester with envy. Not that I ever made it by the way.....
Posted by: roy s | May 17, 2008 at 21:18
Charles Moore, Simon Heffer, Peregrine Worthstone et al have already referenced Boris' chaotic "work" habits, so an hour a week is wrong.
And every Tory leader has had him stretch himself too thin, and sail so close to the wind that his boat capsized thanks to his editorship of the Spectator.
But more than that, it's wrong that being Mayor is a supplement to the larger amount of money he will be earning being a journalist. And it says precisely the wrong signal to the voters about this party.
Posted by: Andrew Hardcastle | May 18, 2008 at 15:35
I'll wager 80% of London residents feel no alligience to the queen at all..........
Posted by: comstock | May 18, 2008 at 17:47
Why didn't Boris mention that he was planning to continue as a highly-paid journalist while also being Mayor if elected?
Oh, because he wanted the votes of people who would not have provided them if they had known what he and his family already knew.
What a disgrace.
Posted by: James Wright | May 18, 2008 at 18:19
I'll wager 80% of London residents feel no alligience to the queen at all
I don't approve of gambling and don't do it, but I would rather suspect that probably in some way or other more than that do and if you take all those who while feeling no allegiance to her, certainly to the Crown (which is a legal entity seperate from the monarchy and could be retained even if the UK changed the way the Head of State is selected) I would have thought that probably 3/4 would feel allegiance to the Crown overall, the monarch represents the Crown.
Although I doubt that many people really care one way or the other whether there is a picture of the monarch hanging up in London's City Hall whether they favour the monarchy or not.
Posted by: Yet Another Anon | May 18, 2008 at 18:46
'i'll wager' was just a figure of speech, YAA.
The point is there is a difference between accepting the monarchy based system as the least worst alternative and open fawning/adulation towards the royal family themselves.
Posted by: comstock | May 18, 2008 at 20:07
London is a republican city. Grow up from the Telegraph, Boris. You don't get it.
Posted by: london man | May 18, 2008 at 20:58
London man - What tosh.
Posted by: Deborah | May 18, 2008 at 21:36
London man, put up or shut up: let's see the poll numbers that say that.
Posted by: Dave J | May 18, 2008 at 21:51
What a sleaze taking 250k on top of the full-time public service of being Mayor.
Same old Tories, same old lies.
Posted by: James Furnish | May 18, 2008 at 21:54
Today (Monday 19 May) Is Queen Victoria's birthday, celebrated still in parts of the Commonwealth (including parts of Canada and the Caribbean) as "Victoria Day".
Wouldn't a good way to start acknowledging the Monarchy at City Hall therefore be for it to fly the Union Flag today? This would also be a symbol of London's diversity by honouring those Londoners from the islands concerned whose countries of origin mark this as a special day.
And as, so far as I know, the BNP has not suggested this (after all following a Caribbean precedent would not be to their taste anyway), it would be a way of getting used to flying the Union Flag without it having been their suggestion and with a multi-cultural and unifying theme.
Posted by: Londoner | May 19, 2008 at 01:08
James,
The Mayor's job, like any job, gives the holder days off. Boris has said he will only do writing on those days. Not that people like you care about things like facts, but I thought I should bring it to your attention.
Same old trolls, same old bollocks.
Posted by: David | May 19, 2008 at 01:39
Disgusting. What a liar for not mentioning this before the election when, very obviously, he planned to do this all along.
Posted by: Helen Thomas | May 19, 2008 at 05:11
My, the trolls are out in force.
Posted by: archie wedderspoon | May 19, 2008 at 10:14
Libertarian, if you are British you are a subject of The Crown. That's a good thing because it's The Crown which used to be the guarantor of hard-won historic freedoms which were the envy of the world.
Today alas you're also a Citizen of Europe, which apparently makes you freer in some strange Brazilesque NewSpeak sense of the term where every damn incompetent know-it-all state-employed busy-body who wants to stick their nose into your business can do so without a by-your-leave.
And now I'll be stuck in the Euro-realist doldrums for the rest of the day...
Posted by: Eleanor McHugh | May 19, 2008 at 11:55
I would wager that the whinging, chip-on-the-shoulder, envious hypocrites who have posted comments criticising the way Boris manages his time are people who supported Red Ken anyway. Is it possible they are just desperately jealous of his talent --- and even more, of the money?
Boris is an immensely talented individual - truly a "one-off" - and can cope with far more than any of them could. Having said that, I hope he will have the good sense to resign his Parliamentary seat (easily winnable by another Conservative) so as to give his all to one of the most prominent jobs in the world.
I am glad that Boris is giving attention to very important symbols. Not only should there be a life-size portrait of Her Majesty in City Hall, but also the Union Flag should be flown all day, every day. These symbols set the tone for everything else and they send a clear message to the outside world.
Posted by: Joshua | May 19, 2008 at 12:21
I voted for Boris but I didn't vote for a part time Mayor so he can subsidise his journalism career with the Mayoral salary.
Also, it was extremely dishonest of him not to mention that he planned to do this during the election campaign. I wouldn't have voted for Ken, not sure what I would have done, but I would certainly have seen Boris in a different light.
Posted by: Camden Man | May 19, 2008 at 12:51
"part time Mayor..."
An innacuracy that implies he will somehow be writing articles instead of running London. It's exactly the same as someone having a 9-5 and doing an 8-10 as well. Neither job suffers, they are just doing two of them.
Posted by: David (One of many) | May 19, 2008 at 14:09
'Part-time mayor'?!
What a load of crap. How long do you think it takes for someone like Boris - highly intelligent and well-informed - to knock out a 1,000 word column on current affairs?
Exactly, not long at all. He has said he'll do this on Sunday evenings at home. Unless you expect him to spend every waking second at his desk in City Hall? That's reasonable isn't it. Not.
Bloody whiny jealous Trots. Frankly I think it's good that we have a multi-talented Mayor. All Ken was good at was newt-keeping.
Posted by: Nicholas J. rogers | May 19, 2008 at 14:36
I am delighted at Boris's victory. As to "multi-tasking, isn't that what lots of senior folk do with their various directorships?
However, as to the dearth of majestic portraits, regrettable though this was in the past perhaps he could save unwarranted interim expenditure by proceeding directly to purchase of portraits of our EU President. Whilst the identity is not yet known, this doesn't matter; we won't have elected him/her anyway, so a vaguely defined silhouette will suffice. Will Her Majesty be required to curtsey to her new superior?
Posted by: Ken Stevens | May 19, 2008 at 14:49
Thank heavens for Boris and his common sense approach. Good he's putting the portrait of our Queen up again. These 'modernisers' should leave this country if they don't like the true meaning of Britain. After all, what have they done compared to all the hard work and dedication of our Queen?
Posted by: Ursula Thom[pson | May 19, 2008 at 18:49
"Libertarian, if you are British you are a subject of The Crown. That's a good thing because it's The Crown which used to be the guarantor of hard-won historic freedoms which were the envy of the world."
I do not wish to be a subject of The Crown nor a citizen of a fascist EU. The Crown does not guarantee our freedoms any more. They have been handed over to the Brussels Blackshirts.
Posted by: Libertarian | May 19, 2008 at 19:13
Now it says in The Independent that Boris may take other paid jobs. This has not been denied by his spokesman (who presumably is expected to stick to just the one job).
Posted by: Karen Marsden | May 19, 2008 at 22:32
Will the people he has appointed be allowed to take other jobs in journalism and elsewhere, including those that pay more than their actual salaries? Presumably, yes.
Posted by: Alex Carter | May 22, 2008 at 13:04
There's a movement to radically change California government, by getting rid of career politicians and chopping their salaries in half. A group known as Citizens for California Reform wants to make the California legislature a part time time job, just like it was until 1966.
PART TIME MONEY
Posted by: david baer | December 28, 2009 at 08:36