Mayor Johnson's busy day concludes this evening with a speech at the Visit London awards at the Royal Albert Hall. Ken Livingstone's economics adviser John Ross thinks he should use the occasion to reverse what Ross claims are £6.5 million of cuts, "almost one third, in budgets to promote London abroad." I've a feeling that won't happen, but Ross's argument is worth reading:
The fall in the exchange rate of the pound means London has just become a cheaper, and therefore more attractive, destination for tourists and inward investors into London - this message should be being hammered out through increased spending on promoting London abroad not through cuts in such expenditure. Instead one of the world's most admired and effective city marketing machines, which brought many many millions of pounds of benefit to London's economy in increased tourist numbers, has either been abolished or seriously weakened by Boris Johnson's administration.
The rest of it's here. Discuss.
