Southern comfort

Published: 12th December, 2010

• IT had seemed like turkeys voting for Christmas (Did the high earners sink merger deal? December 3). The mandarins (male top officials) and satsumas (female executives) are not noted for shrinking their organisation charts.

However, talk of uniting Islington and Camden in a “super-borough”, with a consequent loss of £100,000-plus top jobs, may have set a cat among the pigeons. It could well now be exercising the fertile mind of Eric Pickles, the Local Government Secretary, about a round of amalgamations among the 32 London boroughs. After all, the possibilities of greater municipal efficiencies have been raised by the very people who should know. A lot has changed in the near-half-century since the last municipal mergers in 1965,

One could see south Islington, Hackney and part of south Camden being joined as they have more in common than with the north parts of their present boroughs.

The former Finsbury borough, mostly below City Road, has little in common with much of the old Islington municipality.

Access to the bottom of the political greasy pole would also be restricted, with perhaps a cull of councillors.
LEO CHAPMAN
Dufferin Street EC1