Very Slight Counterfactuals: Dick Whittington Has Children

the mayor of london is for greater london, the lord mayor is for the city of london, which is the square mile enclave feudal thing where all the finance stuff lives

I usually read the comments first on articles like this, to figure out wtf the words in the title mean, and if it's worth the click. Thanks for saving me from whatever UX hellscape lies beneath.

The article kind of explains it, but Dick Whittington is mainly a folklore/pantomime[1] character who journeys to London with his cat, and together they solve a big rat problem there and become heroes of the town. A fairy usually turns up at some point. It's mostly fictional (hence the fairy), but it's based on the real-life character of Dick Whittington, who was a successful businessman who eventually became Lord Mayor, and then died without children, bequeathing his wealth to a whole litany of causes, mainly to do with infrastructure.

The Lord Mayor of the City of London requires some knowledge of the City of London, which is a distinct municipality within London itself, like a little enclave entirely within another city. It's historically where most of the financial wealth of the city has been generated, and is run by the Corporation of the City of London, plus a Lord Mayor, which is an elected position with a one-year term length. Today, this role is pretty much entirely ceremonial, I think historically it was less so. If you get elected, you get to do parades and opening ceremonies, and you get to wear a lot of gold chains.

More recently, a Mayor of London position was also introduced to govern London as a whole. This position is a more conventional democratic role, where the Mayor makes a lot of decisions about local issues such as transport or policing. If you get elected to this position, you do fewer parades and typically wear a suit.

There are Lord Mayors of other cities in the UK as well, these are pretty much all ceremonial roles at this point, and pretty much all have a lot of gold chain on them. However, recently Mayors (the conventional, suit-wearing kind) have been introduced in a number of countries as a kind of intermediate locally democratic level of government, above city councils and the like, but below national governments[2].

So:

* Dick Whittington: successful businessman-turned-philanthropist who became a folkloric legend after death.

* Lord Mayor: typically ceremonial role found in a few cities in the UK, including the City of London.

* Mayor: elected administrative role found in a number of regions in the UK, including London.

[1] Pantomime is a British theatre style that is the opposite of mime - it is very loud, there is lots of audience participation, and there's only a small selection of stories that get recycled every year. It's very popular around Christmas, and usually stars some local names and a television soap star or two.

[2] Yes, plural, there are four national governments, because the UK is made up of four nations.

Until today, life's only exposure to the name of Dick Whittington was a one sentence mention in the musical Cats. Today I learned who he was. I was gratified to learn that he did indeed have a cat.

There's London, and then there's the City of London. [1]

London has a mayor, while the City of London has a Lord Mayor. [2]

1: https://www.cgpgrey.com/blog/the-secret-city-of-london.html

2: https://www.cgpgrey.com/blog/the-secret-city-of-london-part-...

What does it entail, exactly?