Boris Johnson has hit the ground running in his first week as mayor, with eye-catching appointments such as Ray Lewis, his new deputy mayor, and his meeting with New York's Michael Bloomberg yesterday, as well as his attedance at last weekend's Sikh festival. As well as his clearout of Livingstone cronies, he has started to appoint some of his own. His new Director of Communications, Guto Harri, is a former BBC journalist. He seems well qualified for the job and there's no doubt Boris needs an effective spin-meister. But his most important qualification appears to have been that he and Boris go back 20 years, to their time at Oxford together.
As if to really enforce the Oxford point, who's this who's just popped up as David Cameron's new appointment as Chief Executive at Conservative Campaign Headquarters? One Andrew Feldman - very able, I'm sure, but principally qualified as a mate of Cameron's from, yes, Oxford. Never mind Eton, the Oxford network's as strong as ever. Good to know that egalitarianism has its limits. I'm looking forward to the first Bristol-based administration!
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5 comments:
Woah woah woah, didn't you yourself spend a little time in Oxford after Brostol as well Giles?!
Ahh, that was merely a teacher training course. Don't let him fool you by pretending he went to Oxford. Like most Bristol graduates it's jealousy disguised as disdain.
I expect he's playing down the Oxford connection out of disappointment that, at a time when Cameron is filling the shadow cabinet with every Oxonian he can find, Giles still hasn't received a phone call.
In any case, I suppose there weren't too many teacher trainees in the Bullingdon.
Thanks for the reverse elitism everyone! I never claim to have gone to Oxford - I'm a proud Bristolian through and through. I don't count teacher training at Oxford either, but it's not my fault if a well known grammar school may have felt the Oxford connection was enough to appoint me all those years ago!! Otherwise, I reserve the right of every red-brick attendee (old sutt and d. carnell please note) to sneer at Oxbridge elitists like, er, consultant!!
I agree with you about these. Well someday Ill create a blog to compete you! lolz.
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