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Goodbye Eddie - Lister exits Downing Street

From today’s Independent:One of Boris Johnson’s closest aides is leaving his post as special envoy to the gulf after growing scrutiny around his private sector work.Lord Udny-Lister had served as Mr Johnson’s chief of staff when he was London Mayor, and was brought into No.10 as chief strategy adviser in 2019 when he moved in to Downing Street.More recently he took up the post of special envoy to the gulf - and was reportedly asked to investigate after Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman complained the Premier League was blocking a Saudi takeover bid for Newcastle Unit.Downing Street’s involvement in the bid to take on the club’s ownership, following a text from the crown prince sent directly to Mr Johnson, is one of a number of exchanges being scrutinised as concerns are raised around the access afforded to special interests to the upper echelons of the British government.Meanwhile reports in The Sunday Times in February suggested the Lord had been on the payroll of two property firms while he was also working in Downing Street.Lord Lister was paid between £140,000 and £149,000 annually in his Downing Street role while also serving as a non-executive director of Stanhope.He was also linked to both the property developer selling the site and the firm representing Beijing when he helped broker a deal for China’s new embassy in the UK in 2017 and 2018, the paper reported. At the time he had been serving as a non-executive director at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.It comes after the departure of several high profile advisers from Downing Street, including comms chief Lee Cain, which was followed shortly after by Dominic Cummings.A Downing Street spokesman said: “The Prime Minister is hugely grateful for Lord Lister’s dedicated service over many years.“He has been an outstanding servant to the country, to the Government and to the Prime Minister when he was mayor of London.”Additional reporting by PA

Nicholas Evans ● 2025d12 Comments ● 2024d

Latest 'Air Pollution' myth - by Imperial, etc

This is utter nonsense - and transparently so. Imperial, and Kings College London, both very amateurish institutions desperate for publicity - and yet more grant funding, have pedalled this utterly ridiculous myth for 10 years now. The National Physical Lab in Teddington, the real experts, have stated (till they are blue in the face) London's particulate levels have collapsed 90% in the past 20 years to levels "that are now barely measurable."If they are wrong - where are the bodies, which hospital is overflowing the same number of patients now suffering from Covd??Truth: there aren't any.London' air is incredibly fresh and clean: virtually no industry, plus the introduction of green diesel in 1987, ultra-fine diesel engine filters, cat converters, stop-start, electric engined vehicles. Go to Cairo if you want to breathe really filthy air..Back in the 1980s the same Universities tried to claim 'contaminated land' was killing 35,000 people a year in the UK - bogus then, bogus now, different generation of academic - same old scam..I have studied the UK's REAL environmental problems for 40 years - unlike these truly worthless 'academics'. Real problems include huge volumes of human sewage in our rivers, and over-fishing by foreign trawlers. The biggest is, of course, mass immigration, which has led to a greater % of English countryside disappearing under rabbit hutch housing than the % of Amazon rainforest lost to agriculture. Yes, really. And who is protesting against this tragic loss of countryside? No one - certainly not the rogues at Imperial College..

Marcus Gibson ● 2047d25 Comments ● 2027d