Image: George Osborne arriving at the Evening Standard offices. Credit: Victoria Jones/PA Images, all rights reserved
The sleight-of-hand is not that subtle. In his panic-driven revamp of the discredited London 2020 campaign exposed by openDemocracy, George Osborne has tried to turn a £3 million commercial deal – because that’s what it remains – into a saint-like, wholesome charity event whose only aim is apparently to save London’s future. On Tuesday, Osborne’s Evening Standard newspaper launched a project, now named ‘Future London’, sponsored by six major commercial partners including Uber, Google and private healthcare firm Babylon, to “make sure [London] remains the best place in the world”.
Someone should perhaps tell Mr Osborne and the advertising bosses inside the Standard who are running ‘Future London’ that plenty of readers actually do pay attention to what’s in front of them, and are no mugs when it comes to swallowing contrived advertising messages, however well cloaked or branded.
