Profile - Anthony Mayer
Published in The Sunday Times June 29th 2008
A manifesto pledge by London’s new Mayor Boris Johnson to downsize staffing at the Greater London Authority is being fulfilled. Five senior posts held by women are being axed in the Mayor’s office including the job held by the former Mayor Ken Livingstone’s long term partner Emma Beal who is mother of two of his children.
Another departure will have a different impact. Anthony Mayer, GLA Chief Executive since late 2000, leaves this autumn to become chairman of the Government’s new Social Housing Regulator, the Office for Tenants and Social Landlords.
“Did I jump or was I pushed? Neither,“ he says. “I’ve known about this since March,” before he presided over the Mayoral elections in his role as London’s chief electoral returning officer.
Mayer, who earns £183,000 a year, was CEO throughout the Ken Livingstone era. “It will be a wrench to leave. I’ve loved it and had good and cordial relationships with assembly members and both mayors. But I’m 62 and it is time to go if I want a post fulltime employment role. “
He oversees an Authority staff of 650 and an £11 billion budget for the wider GLA group which includes the police, Transport for London and the London Development Agency. He says his job is more like being a Permanent Secretary, but adds:” I’ve been a bit of a maitre’ d/bouncer in a rather rowdy nightclub. Whenever there’s been any conflict that needed resolving. I nearly always got involved.”
“Call me old fashioned, but I see myself and my successor as bureaucrats who facilitate. My successor’s biggest challenge will be getting things up and running and then facilitating the Mayor’s agendas – addressing transport problems, the Olympics and making the organisation more cost effective.”
Mayer’s mondays have been reserved for catch up meetings with directors. his management team and then with the Mayor. The rest of the week? “Anything and everything as it comes up.”
One of the GLA’s highest profile weeks was in July 2005 when winning the 2012 Olympics was followed by the 7/7 bombings.
“On the Thursday I had the massive adrenalin rush of the win, hearing about it on my way to fly to Shanghai for a conference. I heard of the bombings at 9.00 in the morning in Shanghai. I had this sense of horrible shock and then this huge difficulty of using the mobile phone system to enact all the trusted and well-tried systems of response. I was very proud of all those colleagues who did so well to get the recovery system going so quickly.”
How Boris Johnson differ from his predecessor?
“There is more than one style of Mayoralty. One of the things about Mr Livingstone was he was a great managerial politician. He knew how to operate all the levers. What Mr Johnson has made clear is that he is going to want to be absolutely at the forefront of leading London, but wants to have a have a first deputy mayor to implement his policies. So it’s much more a Whitehall model with a Secretary of State and ministers working for you. It would be presumptuous of me to say how that is going to shake down.“
Monday, June 30, 2008
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Profile Dame Fiona Reynolds
A WEEK IN THE LIFE
DAME FIONA REYNOLDS
sunday times June 22
When Dame Fiona Reynolds, Director General of the National Trust, appeared on Desert Island Discs her luxury was a set of Ordnance Survey maps of Britain and her book The Making Of The English Landscape.
Dame Fiona, 50, says she has always had a passionate love of the countryside. “It is in my blood.”
So in 2001, when she learned the Trust’s top job was being advertised, she turned her back on two and a half years heading up the Cabinet Office Women’s Unit.
“It was fascinating and I had learned a lot, but this was my dream job. I never expected to get it,” she says, “and I just love it in so many ways.”
Dame Fiona, the Trust’s first female head since its foundation in 1895 by the Victorian social reformer Octavia Hill, earns more than £130,000. She studied geography and land management at Cambridge and has worked on green issues throughout her career apart from the interlude in Whitehall.
She now runs one of the world’s largest non-governmental organisations. With 3.5 million members, the charity looks after more than 620,000 acres of land of outstanding natural beauty across England, Wales and Northern Ireland, 705 miles of coastline and hundreds of historic sites including houses, castles, villages and lighthouses.
A permanent staff of around 500 is helped by some 50,000 volunteers.
“There’s no such thing as an average week. I love the variety and am out as much as I can be. One or two days a week are spent at properties. Last week I was in the South East. Tomorrow I am in Wessex and next week in Devon and Cornwall.
She is based at the new Trust HQ in Swindon and attends board meetings and looks after management tasks there, but visits London most weeks.
“My role as leader is to set a strategic direction and champion it. It is definitely not about telling individual properties or people what do.”
Her travels enable her to gather ideas from the experiences of staff and volunteers that can feed into the Trust’s new strategy.
“It is a move from encouraging people to join the Trust, to encouraging them to join in. It’s a simple proposition – for people to not just visit but to get involved.”
She cites a successful venture at Cothele in Cornwall where families now help to create the annual Christmas garlands that decorate the house.
But though the Trust remains the custodian of places of beauty and historical importance – “we need them for our spiritual and emotional and physical refreshment” - it is also confronting the challenge of climate change.
“I often call us the nation’s canary. Because of the scale of our property ownership we can see the bigger picture and spot trends that individuals might not always see. We’ve done a lot of work on the impact of climate change on gardens and on its likely impacts on coastline – more than government departments have done.”
DAME FIONA REYNOLDS
sunday times June 22
When Dame Fiona Reynolds, Director General of the National Trust, appeared on Desert Island Discs her luxury was a set of Ordnance Survey maps of Britain and her book The Making Of The English Landscape.
Dame Fiona, 50, says she has always had a passionate love of the countryside. “It is in my blood.”
So in 2001, when she learned the Trust’s top job was being advertised, she turned her back on two and a half years heading up the Cabinet Office Women’s Unit.
“It was fascinating and I had learned a lot, but this was my dream job. I never expected to get it,” she says, “and I just love it in so many ways.”
Dame Fiona, the Trust’s first female head since its foundation in 1895 by the Victorian social reformer Octavia Hill, earns more than £130,000. She studied geography and land management at Cambridge and has worked on green issues throughout her career apart from the interlude in Whitehall.
She now runs one of the world’s largest non-governmental organisations. With 3.5 million members, the charity looks after more than 620,000 acres of land of outstanding natural beauty across England, Wales and Northern Ireland, 705 miles of coastline and hundreds of historic sites including houses, castles, villages and lighthouses.
A permanent staff of around 500 is helped by some 50,000 volunteers.
“There’s no such thing as an average week. I love the variety and am out as much as I can be. One or two days a week are spent at properties. Last week I was in the South East. Tomorrow I am in Wessex and next week in Devon and Cornwall.
She is based at the new Trust HQ in Swindon and attends board meetings and looks after management tasks there, but visits London most weeks.
“My role as leader is to set a strategic direction and champion it. It is definitely not about telling individual properties or people what do.”
Her travels enable her to gather ideas from the experiences of staff and volunteers that can feed into the Trust’s new strategy.
“It is a move from encouraging people to join the Trust, to encouraging them to join in. It’s a simple proposition – for people to not just visit but to get involved.”
She cites a successful venture at Cothele in Cornwall where families now help to create the annual Christmas garlands that decorate the house.
But though the Trust remains the custodian of places of beauty and historical importance – “we need them for our spiritual and emotional and physical refreshment” - it is also confronting the challenge of climate change.
“I often call us the nation’s canary. Because of the scale of our property ownership we can see the bigger picture and spot trends that individuals might not always see. We’ve done a lot of work on the impact of climate change on gardens and on its likely impacts on coastline – more than government departments have done.”
Sunday, June 08, 2008
Profile - Director of RUSI
Profile of the Director of the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies
Published in The Sunday Times June 8th 2008
Professor Michael Clarke is the first non-military man to be director of Britain’s top defence think tank - the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies - since its creation by the Duke of Wellington in 1831.
“In the UK we’ve long since got over the military/civil distinction, but in many countries, particularly in Asia and the Middle East, if you’re not a military officer they wonder why you’re doing this job. I have to prove I know about defence.”
“RUSI’s Council was interested in me because they want it to become a more internationally recognised think tank. So as well as CEO I’m also a research entrepreneur.”
Clarke, 57, has impeccable credentials. He founded The Centre For Defence Studies at Kings College, London and ran it for 17 years.
“RUSI occupies a unique space in British defence and security, but the whole field is getting wider with terrorism, international crime, civil disruption and more. Our challenge is to fill this space.”
This means finding new funding sources. RUSI, a charity based on Whitehall near Downing Street and the MoD, works intimately with them, but gets no state funding – even though its patron is The Queen.
“I always tell people in Government that we’re of most use when the outside world sees how independent we are. If we are seen as an adjunct of Government people won’t take us seriously.”
The core of RUSI’s work is researching current trends in defence and security and their implications for Britain.
But RUSI’s independence means it can offer controversial views – a recent report argued the world should spend 10 times more on fighting climate change than on defence - and trenchant criticism. For example, Clarke says: “The invasion of Iraq remains a blunder from which Iran has gained most” and Britain and the West have a worse understanding of Middle Eastern politics than for generations.
But he also offers praise. “In terms of dealing with terrorism in the UK, the security forces have done really well. It was hopeless a few years ago, but they’ve made really good progress.”
After returning from a conference in Johannesburg on conflict resolution Clarke’s working week combined his duties as CEO with a whirlwind of sessions meeting politicians, senior defence figures, business leaders and visiting academics.
All feed back into RUSI’s work. Its fastest growing research area is homeland security with continuing studies on UK terrorism, radicalisation and protection of critical national infrastructure. So this week he also attended a Whitehall forum on policing London, spent a day at a terrorism trial as an expert witness, attended a reception for the departing Pakistan High Commissioner and recorded his fortnightly Forces Radio show.
Clarke’s personal academic focus is British defence policy making and nuclear issues – he is an advisor to the UN Secretary General on Disarmament - and this sprawls into his personal time. ”I have to keep up my professorial profile. In an institute like this it is important that we are all seen as big hitters.”
Published in The Sunday Times June 8th 2008
Professor Michael Clarke is the first non-military man to be director of Britain’s top defence think tank - the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies - since its creation by the Duke of Wellington in 1831.
“In the UK we’ve long since got over the military/civil distinction, but in many countries, particularly in Asia and the Middle East, if you’re not a military officer they wonder why you’re doing this job. I have to prove I know about defence.”
“RUSI’s Council was interested in me because they want it to become a more internationally recognised think tank. So as well as CEO I’m also a research entrepreneur.”
Clarke, 57, has impeccable credentials. He founded The Centre For Defence Studies at Kings College, London and ran it for 17 years.
“RUSI occupies a unique space in British defence and security, but the whole field is getting wider with terrorism, international crime, civil disruption and more. Our challenge is to fill this space.”
This means finding new funding sources. RUSI, a charity based on Whitehall near Downing Street and the MoD, works intimately with them, but gets no state funding – even though its patron is The Queen.
“I always tell people in Government that we’re of most use when the outside world sees how independent we are. If we are seen as an adjunct of Government people won’t take us seriously.”
The core of RUSI’s work is researching current trends in defence and security and their implications for Britain.
But RUSI’s independence means it can offer controversial views – a recent report argued the world should spend 10 times more on fighting climate change than on defence - and trenchant criticism. For example, Clarke says: “The invasion of Iraq remains a blunder from which Iran has gained most” and Britain and the West have a worse understanding of Middle Eastern politics than for generations.
But he also offers praise. “In terms of dealing with terrorism in the UK, the security forces have done really well. It was hopeless a few years ago, but they’ve made really good progress.”
After returning from a conference in Johannesburg on conflict resolution Clarke’s working week combined his duties as CEO with a whirlwind of sessions meeting politicians, senior defence figures, business leaders and visiting academics.
All feed back into RUSI’s work. Its fastest growing research area is homeland security with continuing studies on UK terrorism, radicalisation and protection of critical national infrastructure. So this week he also attended a Whitehall forum on policing London, spent a day at a terrorism trial as an expert witness, attended a reception for the departing Pakistan High Commissioner and recorded his fortnightly Forces Radio show.
Clarke’s personal academic focus is British defence policy making and nuclear issues – he is an advisor to the UN Secretary General on Disarmament - and this sprawls into his personal time. ”I have to keep up my professorial profile. In an institute like this it is important that we are all seen as big hitters.”
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