News / Marvin Rees
Rees: ‘The buck stops with me in Bristol’
Marvin Rees’ big idea when he delivered his TED talk in Vancouver on April 13 was that global collaboration among climate-conscious mayors can make cities key to the solution to the climate crisis.
In the time, however, between his talk in Canada and it being released to watch on the TED website, the people of Bristol voted to scrap the position of directly elected mayor in a referendum.
Rees remains committed to the mayoral model of governance, being a leading member of the Global Parliament of Mayors and writing in the Economist on how mayors can save the world.
is needed now More than ever
“I have one of the biggest honours I think that any politician can have in that I was elected the mayor of the place in which I was born and brought up,” Rees said at the start of his TED talk.
“It’s a big job from education to housing, to budgets, to trash collection (sic) to protests to counter-protests.”
He added: “As the mayor, I am the accountable person in Bristol. The buck stops with me. And that is even for issues over which I have very little control or power. And that’s fine, that’s life.”
Rees said that when he was first elected as mayor in 2016, he had “a limited appreciation of the level of responsibility that was… falling on my shoulders”.
Watch Rees’ TED talk in full:
Main photo: Bristol City Council
Read more: YTL have paid for flights, a hotel and meals for Rees
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