Could this be Boris Johnson’s achilles heel?
While his party leader talks about trying to help the poor and looking out for their concerns, London Mayor Boris Johnson unveils crippling 20% fare-rises for London’s commuters.
A year ago Boris did exactly the same: hiking up transport fares across London and trying to blame Ken even though the previous administration left him with a 5% growth in budgets.
That’s two years in a row he has brutally punished London’s commuters – hitting hardest London’s poor who rely on public transport. In some cases, as Tom points out here, fares have risen by a third.
During that time he has sucked to the City and defended the very bankers who caused the recession, been ‘bought off’ by hedge funds, wasted a huge amount of money scrapping bendy buses, and created a financial black-hole by getting rid of the Western Extension Zone and of course described his £250,000 income from writing as “chicken feed”.
He’s creating his own negative narrative.
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Boris Johnson will kill children
Boris Johnson is threatening to kill some children and worsen the educational outcomes of many more.
The reason for this is straightforward. He intends to remove the western extension zone of the congestion charge, and delay phase three of the low emission zone, which would charge polluting vans more for entering London.
The effects of these will be to increase congestion and emissions of carbon and nitrogen oxide. Such emissions, however, are quite strongly associated with pre-natal health, as a new paper by Janet Currie and Reed Walker demonstrate.
They studied the impact of the introduction of E-Z Pass in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. This system allows cars to travel onto toll roads without stopping to pay manually. They therefore greatly reduce congestion and emissions around the toll plazas.
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Is David Lammy planning to run for London mayor?
contribution by Michael Gray
Is David Lammy MP slowly positioning himself to make a bid as the Labour candidate for Mayor of London? Dave Hill thinks he is. I would guess it is a real possibility.
David Lammy, who I’ve heard speak several times, is an intelligent and articulate minister. But he has three problems. He is close to New Labour and consequently has a terrible voting record (cabinet ministers have to toe the line despite personal opinions) and this is unlikely to attract the left-wing grassroots.
Second, he is seen as a lightweight because he has not fleshed out his own agenda and a strong personality. New Labour was always good at keeping peronalities in check.
His third problem is that he lacks name recognition.
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Boris ambushed over crisis centres
The Boris Keep Your Promise (over rape crisis centres) campaign yesterday ambushed London Mayor Boris Johnson.
Watch Boris squirm as he tries to explain why he hasn’t kept to manifesto commitments, given the money needed is less than his “chicken feed” second salary.
There’s also a report on the Sauce blog (via The F Word)
Protestors to mock Boris’s “chickenfeed”
Unison members at the Greater London Authority (GLA) will be inviting the public to chuck feed at a chicken man representing Boris Johnson during a protest over job cuts. Tuesday’s picnic protest will kick off a series of events leading up to a rally in October.
Regional Officer, Shirley Mills, said: “Boris ‘two jobs’ Johnson described his £250,000 second job as “chicken feed”, while slashing jobs of low-paid workers. Leo Boland, the GLA Chief Executive, is also earning over £205,000, £10,000 more than the Prime Minister. It is disgusting that these two wallow in their huge wages while low paid staff face the axe.”
Protest: 12.20pm on Tuesday (21 July) at Potters Field, City Hall, The Queens Walk, SE1 2AA.
For Boris Johnson, £250,000 is “chicken feed”
The Conservative Party has been trying furiously in recent years to dispel the notion that it’s a party dominated by and for rich public-school elites. But we know this to be a facade when their own leaders contradict that party line.
There was David Cameron who couldn’t remember how many houses he owned; Anthony Steen MP, who said people were just jealous of his large pad; Michael Gove MP, who made £1,250 an hour. Now London Mayor Boris Johnson says the money from his second salary of £250,000 is just “chicken feed”. The Libdem MP Norman Baker said tonight:
There is nothing wrong with people writing newspaper columns, but this is an enormous amount of money and for Boris Johnson to dismiss it as ‘chicken feed’ shows just how out of touch he and the Conservative party are from the reality of life for millions of Londoners struggling to make ends meet in the depths of a recession.
Mostly right – except that there is something wrong with the London Mayor taking on several side jobs while his own administration is collapsing around him.
Is Brian Coleman AM finished?
Adam at Tory Troll may have dropped a bombshell. He alleges today that: “The London Fire Authority have awarded a £12 million contract to a company that lavished hospitality on it’s Chairman Brian Coleman.”
Through a FOI request he finds that: “The actions of Brian Coleman during a recent Fire Authority meeting were unlawful according to legal papers provided to this blog.” – Coleman is also leader of Barnet Council.
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Tory sticks up two fingers at Boris, amidst cronyism
Tory Assembly Member Brian Coleman refuses to publish his expenses while at the GLA. But will Boris Johnson have the guts to fire him?
Yesterday the full expenses for 24 London Assembly Members were revealed. But one remained – Coleman. He not only refused to publish them but the declared that because Boris asked him to publish them, he wouldn’t! He also said he would not help the “mad, bad and the sad, the bloggers on the internet” by publishing his expenses.
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Value for money Boris spends thousands on taxis
Whatever happened to London Mayor Boris Johnson’s bicycle?? Apparently he has spent over £4,698 in taxi bills since taking up his position, according to details published yesterday.
That enormous amount includes one bill for £237.50 to travel across two postcodes, from his former home in Furlong Road, N7 to Foxglove Close, N9.
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London deputy Mayor reported to the police
The news of Ian Clement’s departure and the fraud he perpetrated under the nose of Mayor Boris Johnson has finally reached the national press. Clement was actually ousted two days ago. Keep in mind this is the third deputy and fourth senior aide the London Mayor has lost in a year.
Concerns about Celement were raised as far back as last year and yet the Mayor did nothing until persistent digging by Dave Hill and further echoes by Adam Bienkov and BorisWatch became too great.
Update: Turns out Boris personally approved Clement’s expenses.
(news coverage now below the fold)
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Boris’s Deputy resigns over credit card claims
Another day, another disposable deputy wheeled out of the spinning doors at City Hall.
“Ian Clement, Deputy Mayor for Government and External Relations, has resigned from the Greater London Authority (GLA) with immediate effect. He tendered his resignation to the Mayor of London this morning following the discovery of further discrepancies in the use of his corporate credit card. The Mayor has accepted Mr Clement’s resignation. His position will be filled in due course.”
You do have to wonder just what has been going on in Boris Johnson’s administration.
The man walks in dishing out vanity titles to any local big-wig, financial whizz kid, or snake-oil salesman who wants one, and then stands in amazement as they fall down around him. continue reading… »
The curious voting patterns across London
This is an analysis piece by blogger Political Animal
If the patterns emerging on the map below (apologies for the atrocious reproduction quality) look slightly familiar, it’s probably because, like me, you spent some time last year poring over maps like this or thiswhich showed clearly the inner/outer London divide in voting in the Mayoral elections.
Perhaps we shouldn’t be too surprised that last week’s European elections produced similar results – voting patterns aren’t likely to change that much in 13 months – but they are evidence of the re-emerging political disconnect between the ‘two Londons’. The dominance of New Labour did much to smooth over that disconnect. It may be the case that its death throes are widening the gap further than ever before.
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Boris Keep Your Promise campaign launches
A new campaign has launched today, called Boris Keep Your Promise. They say:
There is only one remaining Rape Crisis centre for the whole of London.
That’s one small centre for 3.9 million women. The staff and volunteers who run the centre work with constant danger of closing over their heads and can never be sure that their core funding costs can be met from year to year. During the run-up to his election, Boris Johnson promised, with much PR fanfare, to pay for three new centres and fund the only remaining centre for at least 4 years. That he will fulfill that promise, or even part of it, is now seriously in doubt.
Of course Boris Johnson breaking campaign promises is nothing new but this one matters a lot. Spread the word please! Here’s their website, Facebook group and Twitter page (#boriskeepyourpromise). There is also a fundraising event on 4th June.
Ian Tomlinson: 3rd post-mortem and a cover-up
Sky News is reporting a big development today:
Newspaper seller Ian Tomlinson, who was shoved onto the pavement by a policeman during the G20 protests, suffered a head injury before he died. A photograph obtained by Sky News suggests strongly that the injury was the result of the alleged assault by the officer, who has been suspended and questioned on suspicion of manslaughter. The picture shows what appears to be large bruising on the right of Mr Tomlinson’s forehead.
That came after attempts yesterday to muzzle Channel 4 News:
New footage of the moments leading up to the death of Mr Tomlinson will be shown today after the IPCC failed in its attempt to block it being broadcast by Channel 4 News. It tried to secure a court order when it emerged that the programme planned to broadcast a frame-by-frame analysis of the film, but a judge refused to grant the injunction. An IPCC spokeswoman said it believed the footage “would potentially damage” its investigation.
Potentially damaging to who? The IPCC, for doing such a poor job at investigating Tomlinson’s death, perhaps? There are more developments today, with Britain’s top cop saying that officers who conceal ID would face the sack.
Meanwhile, Boris Johnson unbelievably says that, “there are large sections of the media that are currently engaged in a very unbalanced orgy of cop bashing.” — you mean the ones that were reporting that the police were being attacked by ‘bricks’?? Perhaps it’s too much to expect the Mayor to stand up for Londoners instead of the police.
The Trouble With Boris
In 1990, Boris Johnson received an infamous phone call from his friend from Eton and Oxford, Darius Guppy. Dispatches has acquired a recording of the conversation, which until now has never been broadcast. It is a recording that suggests Boris was not only willing to break the rules – but even to break the law.
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Why Labour shouldn’t run Alan Sugar for London mayor
If New Labour really does see celebrity status as the only requisite qualification for running the greatest city in the world, it might as well just cut to the chase and check out whether or not any or all of Girls Aloud would be up for the job.
Better that than a man whose background and value system are antithetical to every last damn thing for which the labour movement used to stand.
The same Alan Sugar who – in explaining his decision to back Tony Blair in 1997 – admitted:
I did very well out of the Tory years. I was proud to be considered one of Margaret Thatcher’s favourite businessmen
Tory AM Brian Coleman triples expense claims – and you’re paying!
The Tory Troll reports:
[Conservative London Assembly Member] Brian Coleman has almost tripled the amount of expenses he claims from the London Fire Authority, Tory Troll can reveal. The figures released to this blog, show that the man Boris Johnson appointed to chair LFEPA claimed a whopping £2275 in ‘subsistence and travel’ between 1 April and 31 December 2008.
In fact, as information collated from other blogs shows, this isn’t the only sign that Brian Coleman is putting the entire London Assembly to shame though his inflated expenses claims.
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Mayor spends £17k on ‘propaganda’
The Mayor of London spent £17,000 to hold an anti-Third Runway rally, a cost that included £1,000 just for taxis.
The information was unearthed by blogger Will Parbury through a Freedom of Information Request which is detailed here.
The £1000 spent on taxis alone will be particularly hypocritical given that the Mayor himself had said he would try and keep his transportation costs down.
The Hillingdon event was originally criticised for being a “Tory propaganda” event.
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Progressive London conference – who’s coming?
Former mayor Ken Livingstone’s re-election strategy concerted attempt to hold Boris accountable kicks off this Saturday with the Progressive London conference. I’m not in favour of him standing again for Mayor but want to see what it will be all about.
Of this parish, Adam Bienkov of ToryTroll and Jess McCabe of F Word will be speaking, as will be our comrades from BorisWatch (represented by Tom), Noel Hatch of Compass Youth and Sam Tarry from Hope Not Hate. Anyone else going?
The fully unveiled agenda is below…
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Brian Coleman AM: Ignorant incompetent sexist buffoon
Oh dear. Boris doesn’t half know how to pick ‘em, right? This time, it’s his Chair of the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority, Brian Coleman AM, that’s shown himself up. His crime? Complete ignorance of fire authority guidelines, a sexist attack on a female MP and a complete unwillingness to actually find out what you’re supposed to do in an emergency.
Beggers belief, doesn’t it? I think the worst aspect of the whole story is that the Tory press is completely on side with his story, and even when quoting fire service sources debunking his claim, have still joined in with his incompetent posturing.
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» The Tories and the curse of proletarian fecundity
» Four reasons why we should be defending the middle-classes too
» Why Labour desperately needs Yvette Cooper or Ed Balls as shadow chancellor
» Our priority should be free childcare, not child benefit
» My average life as an average whore
» Osborne could be planning to disrupt Labour’s plans again
» Three reasons why the child benefits fiasco is a Tory master-stroke
» How Ed Miliband could respond to child benefits fiasco
» No escaping it – the polling looks bad for Ken Livingstone
» Cameron’s marriage tax break shows why child benefits cut was ideological
» The very un-conservative George Osborne
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