What has Andrew Gilligan got against his own borough?

The Evening Standard’s star columnist isn’t happy. As a well-known expert on everything from policing to athletics and from Sinology to HR, Mr Gilligan was obviously quite entitled to expect that once his mate Boris was safely installed at City Hall that the Mayor would be taking his advice on a regular basis, but particularly on transport. He appears to be more than a little miffed that Mr Johnson for some unaccountable reason has chosen to listen to the advice of transport professionals, of all people, instead.

But four months in, marvels one senior TfL figure, “Boris’s arrival has made no difference whatever. It’s all going on exactly as before.” No programmes have (yet) been cancelled. No personnel changes have been made. Indeed, one senior TfL person has just been appointed, of all things, Boris’s environmental adviser.

An environmental adviser, of all things! The evil TfL bureaucrat in question, Isabel Dedring, had her qualifications scrutinised by the, er, Evening Standard, which found that:

Ms Dedring wrote the Climate Change Action Plan for the former mayor Ken Livingstone.

The Fallacy of School Choice

Last week, the English education system arrived at an historic, yet rather under-reported juncture. The Southwark News reported that its borough had become the first local authority in the country which would have no schools, either primary or secondary, under its own control. As of Monday 1st September, when Geoffrey Chaucer Technology College became the Globe Academy, under the control of ARK Schools, each of Southwark’s schools is either an academy, foundation school or voluntary aided school, with at the very least the opportunity to set its own admission code.

Of course, this arises from the government’s mantra of diversifying the provision of education, with a particular focus on the secondary sector. Or in other words – the mantra of ‘choice’ which has been