Thursday 24 November 2011

A TALE OF THE CITY : NO TO THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT, YES TO THE REMEMBRANCER.

The OccupyLSX protest has now been given notice of intended eviction by the Corporation of London. In their response to this they have asked for the Corporation to respond to three requests, one of these is that they cease to be exempt from the Freedom of Information Act. I must admit that this was a revelation, having taken some interest in how the City works and being aware that it was effectively a state within a state with arcane voting practices giving private corporations the right to ‘appoint‘ voters, but that they have managed to remove themselves entirely from this important piece of progressive legislation was astonishing. In a recent interview with a representative of OccupyLSX broadcast on Radio 5, at which the City representative failed to turn up, this subject was raised as one of their counter requests, yet was ignored by the interviewer as if the subject was off-limits.

Another small but significant example of the parallel universe that is the City is its library service. Until relatively recently all the libraries including that in the Barbican Arts Centre were only open to residents or those working in the City. So, unlike any other library in the entire country, a new, well stocked and useful resource in the middle of an public cultural centre was, for many years not open to the general public. I cannot possibly imagine that being the case in any other country. It is no longer closed to the majority of the citizens of London, yet it is only because of the ’good will’ of the Corporation, as they were able to limit access for many years. I once asked for Tribune, to which this article was submitted, to be kept, unsurprisingly it is not and that is still the case. I somehow doubt that the subscription cost is an issue.

Enter the extraordinarily named ‘ remembrancer ‘ an unelected representative of the City that sits in the House of Commons to look after the City of London’s interests, whatever they may be, how could one know as they do not have to give any information unless they chose to. The current City Remembrancer is on the left of the photo above, Paul Double. Thus the use they make of their huge funds such as the Bridges Trust and the Cash Fund is obscure to say the least. There are only a few thousand residents in the City and certainly they get a superior level of basic services, rubbish collections and meticulously painted bollards, of which there are a great many, but the amounts of money that flow into the their coffers from the corporations and banks that make up the bulk of their constituents/clients must far outstrip the cost of performing their basic Local Authority duties. They are quite probably the wealthiest borough in England yet it is only they that do not have to reply to requests for information on how that wealth is used. 

As George Monbiot said in a recent article : if you have ever dithered over the need for a written constitution … imagine the clauses that would be necessary to preserve the status of the Corporation : ‘the City of London will remain outside of the authority of parliament. Domestic and foreign banks will be able to vote as if they were human beings, and their votes outnumber those cast by real people. Its elected officials will be chosen from people deemed acceptable by a group of Medieval Guilds ‘… In the City of London’s own utterances it attempts to legitimise its exceptional status and obscure but real powers by continual reference to their historic origins. So the Office of the Remembrancer ‘is charged with maintaining and enhancing the City’s status and ensuring that its existing rights are safeguarded.’ ‘As long ago as 1685 an order was made for the remembrancer to “ continue to attend Parliament …and acquaint the Lord Mayor with the public affairs and other business conducted there, relating to the City.” So that’s all right then, an ‘order’ was made during the reign of Elizabeth I, over 400 years ago. By whom ? Does this justify maintaining these exclusive and unique self-serving ‘rights’ ? 

That this state within a state has continued to operate as if it were in another country in the very centre of the capital with extraordinary power, influence and financial muscle and which cloaks itself in obscurity, claims exclusive ’rights’ entirely without the consent of elected governments or the people it claims to serve, and refuses to allow any light to be shone into its dealings by remaining outside of the Freedom of Information Act is completely unacceptable and is long overdue to be comprehensively reformed. No amount of cod-Medieval ceremony and gestures to the ’underprivileged’ can hide the fact that this Corporation has become an impenetrable and incestuous self-serving and morally corrupt collusion between established elites and the financial corporations.

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