Mayor Describes Upper House Life as City Hall Puts New Letterhead Out to Tender
LONDON, ENGLAND | Lord Khan, the Labour mayor of London, spoke about life in the House of Lords at the party conference in Liverpool on Tuesday 29 September, according to ITV News. Attendees described his tone as warm. The Lords did not comment, being a house.
Parliamentary sources said the chamber is comfortable, well heated and largely free of cyclists. The House of Lords publishes its sitting times online. Londoners hoping to find equivalent information about the 73 have been advised to wait.
One Man, Two Jobs, Several Hats
The mayor now holds one position with a budget and one with ermine. City Hall staff said they were keen that the two not be confused. A briefing note circulated to the fourth floor reminds officials that the budget is for spending and the ermine is for wearing.
A second page of the note deals with forms of address. Staff are advised that "my lord" is correct in the chamber, "Mr Mayor" is correct in the lift, and "excuse me, is the 73 coming?" is acceptable at any time and in any building.
An appendix on hats confirms that no hat is required for City Hall business. Any official who arrives at a budget meeting in ermine will be quietly asked whether they have come to the right building.
The same note advises staff that the mayor is not the Lord Mayor. The Lord Mayor of London is a separate, ceremonial post held in the City of London, with a gold coach and a long tradition of not being asked about bus lanes. The City of London Corporation said it had no plans to compete for the title or the coach.
The Lord Mayor's office was asked whether it was concerned about the similarity. A spokeswoman said the two roles had coexisted for centuries and that she was unaware of anybody having lost a gold coach to the wrong man.
The Letterhead Question
City Hall has put new stationery out to tender to reflect the mayor's change of style. The tender document runs to 41 pages. The letterhead runs to one.
Section 9 of the tender asks bidders to explain how their letterhead will "embed the values of the organisation". Section 10 asks how it will do so on A4. Section 11, which nobody has yet reached, is understood to concern envelopes.
Bidders must demonstrate "meaningful stakeholder engagement" on the placement of the word "Lord". A consultation on the typeface closes in November. Early responses show strong support for a font that "looks like it has been here for ever" and strong opposition to the one that looks like it started on Tuesday.
Gareth Pugh, 52, a printer from Barking who submitted a quote, said the process had been educational. "I offered to print a thousand sheets for the price of lunch," he said. "They asked for my social value statement. I told them I'm a printer. It's all value. It's all social. You come in, you give me money, I give you paper."
Mr Pugh said he had since received a 12-page follow-up questionnaire on sustainability. He said he would be returning to the pub.
Before leaving, Mr Pugh answered the questionnaire's opening question, which asked how his paper would support net zero. "I put down that it's paper," he said. "If they want it greener, they can stop posting me twelve pages about it."
The Font Shortlist
Officials have narrowed the field to three typefaces. One is described as "established". One is described as "heritage". The third is the existing font with the word "Lord" in front of it, which is the cheapest option and is therefore not expected to progress.
A late entry proposed a font so traditional it could only be read by candlelight. Officials praised its sense of history but rejected it because it would not display on a bus countdown screen, which they described as "a secondary use case".
What Londoners Want From the Title
Commuters at Stratford were asked whether the mayor's elevation made any difference to their journeys. Alice Moran, 29, a paralegal, said she had checked the departure board and it was still wrong.
Ms Moran said she had nothing against ermine. "It looks warm," she said. "Warmer than the platform. If they could fit some on the benches at Stratford, I'd vote for the lot of them."
Desmond Achebe, 63, a retired signalman from Ilford, said titles had never moved a train. "I knew a man at Liverpool Street who was a knight of the realm," he said. "He couldn't get the 6.14 either."
The Institute of Economic Affairs has published research for decades on how government spending behaves when nobody is looking. Staff at City Hall said they would read it once the stationery arrives.
A spokesman confirmed that the title would appear on official letters as a courtesy and that Londoners should feel free to continue calling the mayor "the mayor". He said the mayor would answer to either, depending on which was more likely to get a bus moving.
Five Humorous Observations
- He's got a job with a budget and a job with ermine. That's not a career, that's a Christmas dinner.
- Forty-one pages to tender for a letterhead. I've seen shorter divorce settlements, and those had a dog in them.
- A consultation on the font. Somewhere a man in Croydon is saying "I don't care for serifs" and being taken seriously. That man needs a hobby.
- The Lord Mayor has a gold coach. The mayor has a bus pass. One of those gets you to work on time. Guess which. It's not the coach.
- "Social value statement." I'm a printer, he said. It's all social, it's all value. That man should be running the Treasury.
Disclaimer: The mayor's reported comments provide the news premise. Other conversations and scenarios are satirical commentary. This article is entirely a human collaboration between two sentient beings: the world's oldest tenured professor and a philosophy major turned dairy farmer. Neither holds a peerage, and the dairy farmer's request for ermine has been referred to the cows. More political satire and British satire are available on plain letterhead. https://prat.uk/?p=51999
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