Is this the worst job in local government? Boris Johnson's office is advertising for a new chief executive for the London Development Agency (LDA). Indeed, I learn that the agency is seeking an entire new board when the members' four-year term expires at the end of this month, including a chairman who must be from the world of business. Interesting to see how many of Ken's men make the transition. The acting chief executive is Peter Rogers, brought in from Westminster Council when Boris defenestrated his predecessor Manny Lewis and chairman Mary Reilly shortly after taking office.

The LDA website, however, claims that there are currently no vacancies, what with looming cost cuts. When I point out the omission, the advert for a chief executive appears. Running the LDA requires a closer involvement with the impending train crash that is the 2012 Olympics than anyone sane would wish for. Plus, Boris has put in a hit team, or Forensic Audit Panel, to find out where all the money went, led by my former boss Patience Wheatcroft.

For some reason, I feel rather sorry for the LDA ...

Bottling anger

I seem to have caused some upset and offence at Bloomberg over something I wrote the other day about the water bottle that staff in London have been issued with, so let's see if we can do it again. I mentioned a patronising e-mail that went to some staff telling them to look after the bottles. “No such e-mail was sent to employees,” a furious American spokeswoman says. Funny, that, I'm looking at it now.

Several e-mails later, my story has become “misleading and inflammatory”. But the bottles exist, she does confirm, and they are “bisphenol-A [BPA], polyethelene and polystyrene free - and made from 20-40 per cent recycled material”, staff have been told. Delighted to hear it. But I hear the bottles don't actually fit under the water dispensers at Bloomberg offices. I attempt to check this fact, but there is no reply. Just the barely audible sound of grinding teeth.

Table for two? We're full, but we can make space

This seems to be a curious time to set up a posh restaurant in the City, to say the least, but Devonshire Terrace, an all-day bar and brasserie, will open this month at the new Devonshire Square development near Liverpool Street. It is “about flexibility, designed around the Bauhaus theory of utilisation of space”, says a puff piece for the place. This seems to involve sliding walls that allow you to parcel off different bits of the room. Thus allowing you to conceal, I suppose, just how empty the place is.

Bad advertising

Someone from price comparison website Cheapflights.co.uk seems weirdly keen to inform me that Neil Entwistle, the British man who got life for killing his wife and daughter, was revealed to have used the site to plan his failed getaway. It is perhaps not the celebrity endorsement a company would wish for. Chairman David Soskin admits: “It's all a bit embarrassing.”

Making merry

Tomorrow night is the Financial Services Skills Council's second black tie dinner, champagne reception and comedy show at the Plaisterers' Hall. It does, indeed, include routines from two stand-up comics, while a third, who used to be a business analyst, will compere the event. I wonder if the general level of merriment will have declined since last year?

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