London Mayor hires former PR man as Chief Digi Officer

London Mayor Sadiq Khan has slotted former PR man and public sector tech policy specialist Theo Blackwell into the chief digital officer slot that opened up months ago. Back in May, El Reg reported the role was advertised with a tidy salary of £107,000 a year - enough to keep ten of our journalists in booze and ciggies for a …

[Mr Anonymous]

We at least they're only wasting £107K

And not £107M

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: We at least they're only wasting £107K

Don't worry, he's made a start, with a reported pay off by Camden council of £2.5m to silence a company "overlooked" in a contract award process that he was involved in. That was last months role, of course,but should we add it to the next year's £107k to give us £2.6m of waste so far?

[Tony W]

Re: We at least they're only wasting £107K

Can you cite how he was involved in the Camden pay-off? It was reported as being to do with a "public realm, maintenance and improvement works” contract, which includes tasks such as resurfacing roads and street lights inspections. Not obviously digital.

[Anonymous Coward]

You didn't publish a piccy

But a quick web search suggests he'll fit right in amongst the hipster twats of Shoreditch. It would of course be mean, ungracious, unpleasant, curmudgeonly to say that I hope he fails.

I hope he fails. Oops.

[Warm Braw]

Re: You didn't publish a piccy

I hope he fails

I don't think we'll notice, either way.

[smudge]

... before going on to advise Martha Lane-Fox

He then moved into a couple of roles within PR, before going on to advise Martha Lane-Fox in her role as Digital Champion.

She was getting advice ????

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Give the man a peeragem now

why wait until he makes a complete mess of things, wastes millions - just give him a peerage now.

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Re: Give the man a peeragem now

or even a "peerage" - typo.

[Anonymous Coward]

Seen this all before

Hiring someone in a "Digital" role who has not got a clue what they are doing. Next they will be hiring "consultants" to bring in bullshit digital low code software that no one has ever heard of. Piss away thousands on it because it "needs to work". Spouting out crap like "Infrastructure Free" and all manor of buzz words exposing how little they know. Unfortunately they only answer to people above them who have even less of a clue so they get away with their shit.

Several years later someone will expose the lies and how much money they pissed away on their ideology. But, because it's tax payers money, they'll try to brush the loses under the carpet. And to claw the money back they'll hire more "consultants" to make people redundant, force the other workers to do more work for less pay and then start hiring "interns" as cheap labour (which is also technically illegal).

Eventually the Digital Officer will leg it before being exposed for the hipster bullshitter with no clue, that they are. To only join another local authority to do it all over again.

[Trollslayer]

El Reg units

"enough to keep ten of our journalists in booze and ciggies for a whole week"

[AdrianMontagu]

What experience if the technicalities does a PR man have?

Why not employ a Professional Boxer to do your PR?