Co-conspirators may remember Sadiq Khan’s vanity jolly last month to New York with the C40 Cities “Climate Leadership Group.” Khan claims he went to promote “London as a leading destination for business, tourism and sport.” He actually went on a boat ride to talk about voles…

Guido fired a few FOIs City Hall’s way to see how much the taxpayer was paying this time round. The GLA spent £3,683 on flights to New York for some of Khan’s retinue of a whopping eight people. Once they landed they managed to rack up a £9,060 bill on hotel rooms, which the GLA claims “is reflective of the very high demand for hotel rooms in New York when the UN General Assembly is in session.” You can feel the British public’s sympathy pouring out as we speak…

Khan and his crew were spread across three different hotels. Guido leaves it to co-conspirators to guess which the Mayor stayed in…

Above is the NH Collection on Madison Avenue. Prices range from $400 to $1,800 a night..

The Hilton Garden Inn by Central Park. Prices from $500 per night upwards…

The Aura Hotel on Times Square. From about $335 per night…

Khan’s hotel rooms, as well as his business class flight tickets, were paid for by the C40 Cities group, of which Khan is a co-chairman. That’s the same organisation of whose main proposal is to limit the public’s air travel to “one short-haul return flight (less than 1500 km) every 2 years per person.” Khan’s already exceeded his two-year quota by 3.7 times with his free 5,570km flight to the Big Apple. Poor Sadiq will have to sit in London until 2032 to compensate…

Ministers are settling into their ministerial offices. The TaxPayer’s Alliance have uncovered that Rayner’s ministerial team at MHCLG has had quite the number of upgrades to their offices. Seven fridges, nine wall clocks, and a deep clean later it’s a bill of nearly £5,000…

The department makes clear that “none of the attached expenditure was requested by Ministers.” It was signed off though – is Rayner not expecting to get that new Deputy Prime Minister’s office after all?

The Ministry of Housing’s three-year stint as the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities was put to an end by Rayner last month. She declared there’d be “no more gimmicks and slogans” before reverting to the previous name. A Freedom of Information request dispatched from Guido now reveals scrapping levelling up cost a grand total of £8,690, split between branding, signage, and legal seals. Goodnight, sweet prince…

Having been denied a planned-for Deputy Prime Minister’s Office Rayner’s only power base is now MHCLG, inside which sits a conciliatory “Deputy Prime Minister’s Policy and Strategy Unit“. Thanks to the fact it’s a relatively new department with little physical infrastructure the cost won’t reach the dizzying heights of the Foreign Office’s £160,000 rebrand…

In another sign that the Freedom of Information Act has been furloughed, Parliament has refused to publish data revealing how often porn websites were visited on the parliamentary estate. They claim this refusal is on “national security” grounds, despite having previously published said data in 2013, 2015, and 2018. The Independent, who submitted the freedom of information request following the Neil Parish scandal, were told by Parliamentary authorities that not only would the request not be answered, they’ve retroactively deleted the previous disclosures from its website. Even No. 10, hardly keen answerers of FoI requests, was happy to publish their figures in 2021, with no such ‘national security’ concerns…

According to the full response, there is “a legitimate public interest in the House of Commons being open and transparent”, however:

“disclosure of this information would cause substantial risks to the parliamentary network as it would aid malicious groups in their efforts to target the network” as “both the disclosure of either specific web addresses, categories that are blocked, or totals relating to attempts or access, could provide valuable information to those wishing to bypass our security systems”.

They claim this is because publishing the information “would make the extent of the Parliamentary Network’s blocking and filtering policies public knowledge”. Absolutely laughable…

A Freedom of Information (FoI) request by Guido has uncovered the total cost of last month’s Bank of England “inclusive” logo and font rebrand was – and brace yourself for this – £51,694.49. The public sector Bank of England must be made of money…

The rebrand, which included a new Britannia logo, font, “photography for the visual identity” and a film about the new rebrand, broke down as follows:

• Design of Britannia symbol: £6,720.00 – Epic Icons
• Photography for the visual identity: £14,809.27 – Lee Funnell
• Font design and licence of usage: £22,337.22 – Monotype Limited
• Animation guidelines and film: £7,728 – RedSofa

As part of the FoI, Guido also asked for the Bank to specify exactly what about their new Britannia they claim to be more inclusive – beyond it now bearing a striking resemblance to Nicola Sturgeon.

Their answer is as follows:

Guido must congratulate the Houses of Parliament for being one of the few examples of public sector frugality in fighting Covid. After reporting on Lindsay Hoyle’s new Covid testing centre that had been set up for Peers, MPs and staffers, an FoI was promptly lodged asking about its total cost, which has now been revealed to have come to just £1,691 of Commons cash. Further, no extra staff have were hired to administer the tests, with nine existing staff being redeployed. If Rishi wants to start saving money after the government’s Covid battle, he should consider putting Sir Lindsay in charge of test and trace…