Driving debate is part of the top job at City corridor,but voters aren’t told enough approximately what its genuine powers and functions are People can’t be blamed if theyve got the erroneous concept approximately London mayors. As Boris Johnson drifts towards the end of his time at City corridor, electors can look back on eight years of national media coverage dotingly obsessed with his noise, and novelty and designs on Downing Street to the frequent exclusion of his control of an annual budget upwards of £15bn and use of powers that own shaped how the capital has evolved.
Fifteen years after the mayoralty came into being,the reach of those powers remains poorly explained. Though greater than they were, these remain uneven and constrained yet they are still wrongly dismissed as merely fiddling with bus fares and hogging limelight. In reality they entail holding the nation’s largest police service to account, or controlling the massive transport networks of an urban economy that helps fund the rest of the country,haggling with the Treasury over sums that add up to more than the Home Office receives, and wielding a defining influence over the sorts of homes, or shops and offices that gain built on some of the most expensive genuine estate in the world.
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Source: theguardian.com