Boris Johnson was for student violence before he was against it
Mayor of London Boris Johnson badly overstepped the mark yesterday, ludicrously claiming that Labour leader Ed Miliband will have been “quietly satisfied” by the violence in the capital which risked overshadowing the TUC’s March for the Alternative on Saturday.
Meanwhile, Boris can hardly be surprised to be accused of silliness and hypocrisy for a response in the lower traditions of student politics, though Shelly Asquith misses out what is surely the most hypocritical about the claim….
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Bringing the City of London to account is more difficult than we realise
Maurice Glasman, a lecturer at London Metropolitan University was appointed a Labour peer in the New Years Honours List. He has long researched the City of London and all that is abusive about it.
It is a power Maurice has threatened, as he told at a meeting at LSE last night, when he shared a platform with Nick Shaxson of the Tax Justice Network and author of the excellent Treasure Islands.
Maurice threatened that power in a very simple way. He asked to have the title when offered a peerage of Lord Glasman of the City of London. And he was told that was not possible.
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Whatever happened to Mayor Boris’ green promises?
When Mayor Boris Johnson addressed the Environment Agency in November 2008, it seemed he had converted to “the religion of climate change”, and put his indifference to environmental action behind him. So has he delivered?
Unfortunately the Mayor is a politician who likes to hype one or two catchy ideas. One first appeared in the long list of promises made in that speech – to spend £100m in his four-year term helping households to install insulation. The second is the target he then set – to insulate 200,000 homes by 2012.
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Four questions Labour will have to ask over voting reform
Former Cabinet minister Ben Bradshaw is to lead a Labour campaign for a Yes vote in the Alternative Vote, it is reported in today’s Guardian.
Fittingly for Labour’s contribution to a pluralist campaign, the Labour Yes campaign will engage a very wide range of Labour voices, with Compass and Progress from the left and right of the party joining forces too.
Ed Miliband has committed to supporting a Yes vote and I expect that most prominent Labour figures will also do so. But others in the party are uncertain or agnostic.
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A firefighter speaks out: ‘who would you trust, us or politicians?’
This was posted as a comment on an earlier article, and we thought it was good enough to publish properly as an article. It has been slightly edited for clarity.
I’m a London fireman.
What annoys me is a lot of people choose to believe the spin made up by politicians who are infamous for spouting lies to support their cause rather than believing the voice of firefighters who are prepared to risk everything to get people out of dire situations.
Who would you trust with your life – a firefighter or a politician?
Firstly, I think the beds argument is irrelevant, I’ve not heard this mentioned once at work, there are much more important things at stake.
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London’s increasing debt: what will Boris do about it?
The Mayor put on an upbeat performance on Wednesday by claiming that the cuts could have been worse and London had benefited as a result of Crossrail and the tube upgrades being protected.
The reality is that Transport for London (TfL) is facing the same cut in its grant as the rest of the country, with the significant exception of £890m ring fenced for the tube upgrade.
However, Londoners have been given the green light to continue its previous plans to go massively into debt in order to pay for Crossrail and the tube upgrades.
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Expelling Ken Livingstone would be political suicide for Labour in London
Ken Livingstone has raised a storm by seemingly endorsing the independent candidate in East London’s Tower Hamlets Mayoral elections. The Labour candidate did not get his endorsement (video below), which has led to some demanding Labour expel Ken.
People will be spitting blood: not just local Labour MP Rushanara Ali but also Ed Miliband because it presents a potential headache.
And the mayoral race is a big deal because it’s the “Olympic borough” and its annual budget is over a billion pounds. It’s more important than many by-elections.
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Boris talks a lot about climate change, but will he spend the money?
The Mayor’s latest draft of his Climate Change Mitigation and Energy Strategy was published last Friday without so much as a whisper in the press.
This worthy wishlist sets out how London could cut its carbon dioxide emissions by 60% by 2025, creating tens of thousands of jobs in the process.
But there are snags:
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No escaping it – the polling looks bad for Ken Livingstone
Yesterday’s ComRes poll for London had bad news for Ken Livingstone’s chances of being elected Mayor of London again. The survey found that 44% of people would vote for Boris again, compared to 35% who would support Ken.
Closing that 9% gap is not an impossible but definitely a monumental task for Ken. The numbers are not artificially depressed by voters who don’t know the candidate well enough (as would have been the case for Oona King, who I didn’t vote for, incidentally), making this all the more harder. Ken is already well known with voters and shifting perceptions will be difficult.
I think all this illustrates a few points.
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Why Boris Johnson’s 50% rule against strike action won’t work
Boris Johnson was elected Mayor of London in an election where the turn out was 45.3 per cent.
But he wants industrial action ballots to be valid only if the turn out is greater than 50 per cent.
As well as the obvious whiff of double standards, it’s a bizarre proposal when you examine the detail.
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Why I’m supporting the London tube strikes
There’s a strike on on the London tube at the moment.
I know anything that causes mild inconvenience is always treated as a gross affront to our human rights and anyone exercising their actual human rights is to be automatically denounced as selfish and evil -but I still support the strike.
Is it because I’m a godless communist? Well, yes and no. Certainly being a godless communist helps if you’re going to oppose the press, the government, the Mayor of London and just downright, globally accepted, common sense. However, there is some common sense on my side too.
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How Ken could win London again
Here’s a few stats which show what a difference good local campaigns make, as well as the task facing Ken in defeating Boris in the London Mayoral elections in 2012.
I’ve looked at five London constituencies which Ken lost in 2008, and which were close fights in the General Election in 2010 Labour and the Tories.
In some of these, Labour ran weak local campaigns with poor candidates, in others, they ran strong local campaigns with excellent candidates.
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Why the London Mayor race might be harder for Ken than expected
In the end, I spent more time deliberating over the Labour London Mayoral vote than the leadership ballot, to my own surprise. Eventually, I voted for Ken Livingstone.
But a few thoughts keep niggling at me, and I fear that the Mayoral race will be harder for Labour to win than many on the left think or expect.
First, I think Oona King has been quite unfairly tagged by some as a ‘New Labour clone‘. She never was.
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London media rig poll to boost Boris
The Evening Standard, LBC radio and London Tonight have just commissioned an opinion poll about who Londoners think should be the next Mayor of London.
Normally in voting intention polls, the question about who to vote for is done first, in order to get an accurate indication of who people plan to support, and then followed by questions about specific issues.
Instead, the Evening Standard poll started by asking people about Tube Strikes and Boris Johnson’s proposals to make it harder to strike, then a couple of questions about the Liberal Democrats.
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When will London’s new cycles reach suburbs?
It is so hard keeping track of the cycling budget. We know that (up to now) whatever is claimed in Mayoral press releases from Boris is different to what has actually been spent.
It does feel like there has been a big expansion under this Mayor, but the reality is that in the first two years he spent around £8m less than the previous Mayor promised.
Much of that is because of delays in setting up the cycle hire and superhighways which the Green group had agreed with the previous Mayor as part of our budget deal.
Much of the gap between Ken’s planned expenditure and Boris delivery is explained by the cancellation of the LCN+. This was a big strategic scheme led by the boroughs to establish a linked up series of cycle lanes and facilities all across London.
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Where New Labour led, the Tories follow
It’s so long ago it gives me a little warm glow of nostalgia, but time was that New Labour tried to ban the largest demonstration in British history, all for the sake of some grass.
No, not the sort Ministers stuff into their crack pipes, the grass in Hyde Park of course.
The demonstration, which eventually attracted over a million people, making it the largest mobilisation in the history of the UK, was to be cancelled because the grass issue may also mean…
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It’s now down to Ken to win London for Labour
While the hoo ha continues about whether someone left of the center gets to lose the leadership to the Miliband franchise there is a far more important selection taking place inside of Labour.
It’s going to be a Oona King vs Ken Livingstone stand-off with the winner to be decided at the Labour caber tossing contest late September.
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A new approach to help first-time home buyers
How many young people today would like to buy a home but are hopelessly priced out?
As Mayor, Boris Johnson has tried to champion first time home buyers but he hasn’t really made much difference.
It’s time he made a radical switch to co-operative home ownership.
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David Lammy’s backing for Ken is a double-edged sword
On Tuesday former cabinet minister David Lammy announced he was going to chair Ken Livingstone’s Mayoral campaign.
This signals two things: that Ken wants to shake up his campaign and bring in someone new who would have fresh ideas. It also means that David Lammy is positioning himself as the main Labour mayoral candidate in four years time.
I wish him well in that, but it is a double-edged sword and he should be careful of that.
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Is Labour stitching it up for Ken Livingstone this time?
David Lammy, who was considering running for the Labour nomination for London Mayor in 2012, is instead to chair Ken Livingstone’s Mayoral campaign.
He makes the case for Ken in today’s Guardian, acknowledging that he considered whether to enter the race himself.
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