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Why is Boris paying his disgraced former deputy £20,000 for a one day a week job that was a voluntary position?

January 8, 2013 1:40 pm

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Anyone remember Ray Lewis? Until recently Mr Lewis volunteered for Boris Johnson as Ambassador for Mentoring. Yet now Boris has given Lewis a salary of £20,000 a year for the one day a week role as “Senior Adviser for Mentoring”. The difference between the roles is unclear.

Such a promotion might be understandable if the mentoring scheme had been a roaring success, but it hasn’t been – there have only been 100 mentoring partnerships to date, but there should have been 1,000 by March 2012. So it appears Ray Lewis has been rewarded by Boris Johnson, for failure.

Labour’s London Assembly Police & Crime Spokesperson Joanne McCartney AM responded to the news of Lewis’s appointment/promotion, by suggesting that he “simply isn’t up to the job”:

“Mr Lewis has admitted that he didn’t know what he was supposed to be doing in his previous role. I believe this was partly due to a lack of direction and commitment from the Mayor. How do we know that Boris will take this any more seriously now? It’s time Boris got serious about mentoring, it is simply not good enough that he is using public money to pay someone who simply isn’t up to the job. This is yet another example of Boris getting a poor deal for Londoners.”

And if you thought that the name Ray Lewis sounded familiar, that’s probably because he was forced to quit as Boris Johnson’s Deputy Mayor in 2008, only two months after Boris became Mayor – after it emerged that he’d lied about being a magistrate.

What a sound appointment this is…

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  • Dave Postles

    Is there no proper recruitment and selection procedure? Where are the standing orders for this authority? As presumed, these mayors just establish kitchen-sink cabinets which are open to extensive abuse.

  • Pingback: Twitter Media Bitch Fight: Continuity-Ken Get One in the Eye - Guy Fawkes' blog

  • AlanGiles

    I am afraid the case of Mr Lewis is yet another example of why people in public life are regarded with such contempt. Here you have a man (a bit like Duncan-Smith) who is rewarded for being a liar, a chancer and a fraud (lying about his experience and capabilities on his CV).

    I sometimes feel that a severe example ought to be made out of anyone regardless of sex, party or status when they are caught in this sort of situation and after any appropriate legal action is taken against them, they ought to be debarred in perpetuity from holding public office of any sort.

    As an aside, I wonder how Messrs Hutwal and Hodges and all those others who had a go at Ken Livingstone for Lee Jaspar, react when they hear that Johnson has his own ratbags – and Johnson, unlike Livingstone, also has things like Brian Coleman….

  • Winston_from_the_Ministry

    Well and truly busted.

  • BAKone

    And he recently appointed David Ross again , this time to the London Legacy board , beggars belief. Take a look at Mr Ross’ tricks at Cosalt plc.

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