It is important that apprenticeship schemes are recognised as a serious first step on the career ladder. Securing an apprenticeship can be the perfect way to earn while you learn, improving a young person’s career prospects and the skills needed to suceed in the world of work. As well as improving long term employment prospects, [...]

I was recently invited to BBC London to discuss with Paul Ross our new campaign to encourage people to claim their benefits. In the interview I explained that at present nationwide £1bn pounds are being unclaimed and in London it stands at around a fifth of that, around £200m pounds.

Happy Chinese New Year 2011: The Year of the Rabbit I would like to wish you all a Happy and Prosperous Chinese New Year and hope that you will join me in celebrating the first day in the Chinese calendar. On Sunday 6th February, Londoners will be celebrating with the first major outdoor festival of [...]

Having been denied a referendum on the European charter, we are now being given a referendum on the most marginal of democratic issues, the Alternative Vote system, an electoral system that ensures that the individuals and parties that are least wanted manage to creep into power.

During the hours leading up to 12 midnight, I conducted a number of radio and TV interviews, most of them asked me, “Were we going to be better than Sydney?”. My answer was that we won the Ashes, so we were bound to win the battle of the fireworks. In the event, the fireworks taking [...]

The UK now has its highest number of cases of HIV and AIDS ever, at over 85,000. Thanks to medical advances that have occurred over the past 10 years, those affected now live longer and 1 in 5 of those living with the disease are now over the age of 50.

On 1st December 2010, I was appointed Chairman of the London Region Resilience Forum- the equivalent of New York’s Office of Emergency Management. My Responsibilities include: business continuity and recovery from a catastrophic event. This covers fire, pestilence, flooding, terrorist attacks, collapses in national infrastructure (e.g. gas, electricity, water and food supplies). This is a [...]

It has become the fashion in recent times to talk in almost reverent terms of the importance of the volunteer in our society, the unheralded army of committed people who give freely of themselves to make their local streets and neighbourhoods better places to live and work. In City Hall, we feel we have been [...]

This week at the Shanghai Expo was London Week, and so I was there in person to promote London as the best city in the world to visit, invest, study and do business. The message that I have been trying to get across is that London is emerging from the economic downturn of the past [...]

YouGov have done a pretty comprehensive poll on London Mayoral voting intentions, etc. It’s very interesting. Here are some facts from it: 9% of Tory voters intend to vote for Ken 12% of Labour voters intend to vote for Boris BNP voters want Ken and not Boris More women than men intend to vote for [...]