Boris Watch

If Lord Brocket - convicted fraud, old Etonian and absolute cretin - is given public money then Britain will, in the words of Peter Cook, ’sink giggling into the sea’.

Boris, employing a fraud would hardly the best way to ‘target sleaze’, and if you’re really concerned about transport then you won’t involve the presenter of Privates Exposed, will you?

““I had dinner with Boris a couple of weeks ago and we discussed a whole raft of ideas I have about improving the transport system,” Brocket told me over lunch at the Capital Club yesterday.

“His people want me to come in and make a presentation on some of the issues.””

Hat tip: Tory Troll (be sure to read his piece on Richard Barnbrook, and, well, the rest of the site).

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The Telegraph reports that Boris had been given a new opportunity to test his diplomatic skills as Mayor. Seasoned Johnsonians may remember that after the poisoning of the former spy Alexander Litvinenko, Boris portrayed Moscow as a place where one could be killed “in coffee lounges just because [one has] been mildly disobliging to the regime”. Now, however, officials in Moscow have invited him to visit.

“We hope Boris Johnson will come to Moscow soon and see with his own eyes what a vibrant and fast-developing city Moscow really is,” said Alexander Pogorelov, a spokesman for the city government’s foreign economic relations department.

A visit to Moscow, however, would not come without criticism. The Moscow Mayor, Yury Luzhkov, has previously banned gay rights parades and called homosexuality ’satanic’. Boris should consider the moral implications of such a meeting, and the political effects of mayors hugging homophobes.

Update: The Moscow Times - which describes Boris as being ‘regarded in the opposition Conservative Party as something of a loose cannon’ - alleges that a spokesman for the Moscow city government asked, “Is [Johnson] as friendly with the gays as the former mayor?”

Tags:   DiplomacyNo Comments.

After his promise to “clean up” City Hall, Boris has established a forensic audit group, which will investigate the finances of the Greater London authority. In a statement he declared that:

“I was elected on a promise to provide Londoners with better value for money from their taxes. I am delighted to have recruited some of the most capable and experienced people in the capital to scrutinise recent performance at the LDA and GLA and suggest ways to prevent mismanagement and waste in future.

“We will leave no stone unturned in our efforts to ensure that the LDA and GLA deliver value for money to the taxpayers of London.”

The curious choice for the head of the group is ex-Sunday Telegraph editor Patience Wheatcroft, who controversially spiked a Christopher Booker column that contained heavy criticism of David Cameron. Nevertheless, it is good to see promises being so quickly honoured, and the report will be released to the public within 60 days.

Tags:   Reports7 Comments

Yahoo reports that the alcohol ban may find opposition. Bob Crow of the RTM transport union is wary of the risk of violence towards staff if they try to enforce the rules with drunk passengers.

“”We are in favour of any measure that will make our members’ lives safer and curb anti-social behaviour, but it appears that this really hasn’t been thought through very well and could well make matters worse,” he said.

“Perhaps the mayor will come out with his underpants on over his trousers like Superman one Saturday to show us how it should be done.”"

The RMT, with Mr Crow at the helm, was such a thorn in the side of Ken Livingstone that he was moved to conclude that he couldn’t “explain the mindset” of the union. It seems that Boris may have similar battles ahead.

Tags:   Unions7 Comments

Boris has banned booze on tubes, buses, DLR and Tramlink.  I wonder how much of problem this was?  Here’s a snippet from the last TfL Board Meeting in February:

Over the Christmas and New Year period, Underground services performed well.  In particular, there were only two significant incidents.  … . The post event de-briefs have shown that there was an overall reduction in incidents caused by alcohol/anti-social behaviour incidents across the network, with a significantly lower number of staff assaults after 04:00.

Well, thank goodness the new Mayor put that at the top of his transport priority list, eh?

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Bojo is planning to reduce his press office from 73 to 50 and cut London’s advertising budget by £2 million.

This is actually a good idea. As well-done as a lot of Ken’s ad campaigns were, it’s rather hard to defend the cost. Another £2 million freed up for other, more important, projects sounds like a good deal. (We shall leave the question of what these more important projects may be for another time).

However, before we start toasting our blond bombshell too much, it’s worth noting that London-specific public-health campaigns also come under this advertising budget. Let’s hope that these more worthwhile endeavors don’t suffer the same fate as those that deserve to be cut.

After all, in this article about the planned spending cuts we are also told:

The mayor plans to get the message across with new posters to be unveiled advising passengers of the no-alcohol policy across the transport network including the underground and at bus stops.

Those posters have got to come from somewhere, Boris. Make that money count.

Tags:   cuts budget advertising drinking14 Comments

Not through the TfL press centre yet, though, but it’s on the BBC.  It’s seemingly a ban on the drinking of alcohol rather than the carrying of it, which is an important distinction, particularly if you want to take the bus home from the shops.  There’s one omission though:

Mr Johnson said: “I firmly believe that if we drive out so-called minor crime then we will be able to get a firm grip on more serious crime.

“That’s why from 1 June the drinking of alcohol will be banned from the tube, tram, bus, and Docklands Light Railway.”

What about London Overground trains?  From Gunnersbury to Richmond I can presumably get on the Overground and crack a can open, but if I get on the District Line train on the same route I get nicked, is that it?  Also National Rail seems to be excluded, presumably because the Mayor has no powers there.  Not that that stopped him attacking their fare policy during the campaign.

As ever, I’d like to see the exact wording of the ban and the legal background behind it, if anyone notices one.

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TfL Press Releases April 2008 - 29

TfL Press Releases May 2008 (so far) - 1

May not mean anything, after all there has been a Bank Holiday weekend in that lot, but we should see about one a day really.

In other rune reading news, over at uk.transport.london John Band thinks the TfL leadership are safe:

[Y]esterday I played crazy golf with the Times’s Westminister correspondent and a corporate
finance bloke from TfL; they both reckon there’s no chance in hell that Boris is going to sack O’Toole, and that it’s unlikely he’ll sackHendy…

while Paul Corfield quotes Andrew Gilligan as saying they’re out on their ears come the summer:

Mr Gilligan says Hendy will be gone by the summer in his Standard article today.  The only reason for delay is that potential replacements are asking too much money.   Gilligan also says that Boris needs a rail experienced commissioner rather than a bus one - odd given that Mr Hendy has a large amount of knowledge about all the modes he’s responsible for.

Hendy is on £320k a year, which is a lot, but if what Paul reports is true* then it suggests that Boris is putting cutting the costs of the GLA ahead of finding the best man for the job.  Boris Watchers take note.

Elsewhere on the transport side:

• the first new London Overground train is taking shape
• the GE19 bridge for the East London Line Extension was successfully moved over the weekend (this is what I was expecting a press release for, incidentally, along with the ELLX Phase 2 work that Ken hinted had been approved, although this hasn’t been officially announced)
• a Transport & Works Act application has been made for the next DLR extension, to Dagenham

There’s a fair bit of momentum to dissipate at TfL and the pounds are going into the ground at a rate of knots, but you’ve got to keep the pipeline stoked with new projects.  Ironically, Boris is going to spend a good deal  of time unveiling shiny new bits of Ken Livingstone’s legacy, and we’ll be watching to make sure he does the decent thing and gives credit where credit is due.

* Yes, it’s Gilligan, a partisan tabloid hack who’s spent months smearing Livingstone, but why would he now spend time smearing Boris?

Tags:   transport tfl runesNo Comments.

Success, ladies and gentlemen, may take years - decades, even - of hard graft and dedication. Failure takes only a moment and a poorly thought-through manifesto pledge.

Our new blond boy hasn’t even had a chance to get over his celebratory hang-over (I kid because I love), and he’s already facing a tube strike. Now, that’s not all that unusual in this Great City. Surely he can’t be blamed? He’s only been in charge five minutes!

Five minutes, it seems, is more than enough.

Bojo told us he would “look to reduce the disruption caused by strikes on the Tube by negotiating a no-strike deal with the unions.”

Yes, Boris told us he would take the right to strike away from the transport unions.

For some strange reason, the unions are not best pleased. They are also rather nonplussed – how could Boris have ever expected them to agree to this?

Looking at this policy, I’m starting to think that even Boris didn’t reckon he was going to win. Regardless of your views on Tube strikes, there was no way that this was ever going to work. Even without the recent fireworks between the government and prison offices over almost exactly the same issue, it’s pretty easy to see that no self-respecting union is going to agree to a no-strike deal.

Either Boris has absolutely no foresight (not improbable, of course), or he was counting on never having to follow through. It’s been mooted a couple of times, but this has convinced me that the plan was simply to rattle Labour, not actually defeat Ken. In that case, the workability of the manifesto pledges becomes irrelevant: Boris was never supposed to have to deliver on them.

Labour undermined, Cameron could swoop in later in the year for the win.

Unfortunately for the Conservatives, someone forgot to factor in Boris’ unnatural ability to have things fall into his lap. He won, and now he’s got to deliver these impossible pledges with a straight face. His choice: suffer the fallout of reneging on manifesto pledges, or attempt to do battle with the unions.

Link to Evening Standard article - even they can’t spin this into sounding like a good idea.

Tags:   manifesto · strike · tube8 Comments

With the
impotence of the London Assembly already established, it seems that much of it’s work will be concerned with restraining the ludicrous Richard Barnbrook. His acceptance speech portrayed him as an almost parodic example of a demagogue - berating the crowd, pounding the stand and looking every bit as if he’s been weaned on the speeches of Mussolini. It’ll certainly take a strong Mayor to ensure that he doesn’t hamper debate.

Tags:   BNP1 Comment