While personally I quite enjoy the occasional edition of Politics Scotland, especially its utterly mismatched pumping dance music theme tune, I must admit that I’ve never quite got into BBC Parliament’s other non-Westminster coverage. Until, that is, this coming bank holiday Monday:
Mayor’s Question Time
BBC Parliament (Freeview 81, Sky 504, Virgin 612, Freesat 201)
Monday 26 May 2008
11.00 to 13.45Coverage of questions in the London Assembly to Mayor Boris Johnson at his first session of Mayor’s Questions since his election on 1 May.
Recorded Wednesday 21 May.
So for those of us sadly unable to join Ken in the public gallery to see the Assembly grilling Boris this Wednesday, we can instead spend nearly three hours of our bank holiday seeing what happened.
(If you can’t wait that long, you can alternatively watch a webcast of the event either live at 10am this coming Wednesday, or recorded from Wednesday afternoon onwards.)
Will anyone actually hold Boris to account properly? Let’s hope so. I’m sure Dave Hill and The Tory Troll will be in attendance to report proceedings.
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Mr. Stop Boris said “Will anyone actually hold Boris to account properly?”
Well they didn’t hold the last one to account…so why start now?
This can only be a good thing…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=567060&in_page_id=1770
Tackling waste will bring down our tax bills…or at least stop rises in the future.
Oh dear another GOOD thing that Boris has done.
You’re right, Chunters, that is a good thing to do. I’m not sure why you think that this is a ‘gotcha’ moment, though. We’d all be pleased if gratuitous tax was abolished.
“Well they didn’t hold the last one to account…so why start now?”
Chunters, Ken’s had MORE opposition as Mayor: http://www.mayorwatch.co.uk/Londoners-Have-Voted-for-Less-Scrutiny-of-Mayor-Boris-article_id-1609.html
Chunters: while we’re discussing things with no relation whatever to my original post, what do you think about Boris reneging so quickly on his pledge to bring back open-backed, conductor-managed Routemaster-style buses? Do you acknowledge that all the reasons given were raised and supposedly rebutted during the campaign but are now being acknowledged because he’s already been elected, thus showing that Boris is a liar who has conned the London electorate? Or do you choose to ignore the bad things Boris does at least as much as you accuse us of ignoring the good things he may or may not do?
To be fair, my reading is that he never specifically promised to bring back Routemasters (the competition idea was always in the manifesto), but allowed that impression to be formed in people’s minds. There’s a good bit of evidence for this in the Standard and other publications over a few months, using the usual tabloid trick of having a headline bearing no relation to the story.
What the concentration on son-of-RMs did mean was that no other transport issue got a look in, which was great news for the Boris camp given their candidate’s total lack of interest or experience The other thing it means is that a lot of people who believed what they read in the papers are going to be going ‘wtf?’, which is where we come in.
I’m working up a post on this and any putative bendy bus withdrawal programme, which is a complicated area as they are actually leased from companies who presumably expected them to have a slightly longer life than four years, and will have priced this into the contracts (i.e. hand them back early and it’ll cost yer). Leasing companies don’t like having expensive assets not earning money.
Mr Stop Boris said “Chunters: while we’re discussing things with no relation whatever to my original post, what do you think about Boris reneging so quickly on his pledge to bring back open-backed, conductor-managed Routemaster-style buses? Do you acknowledge that all the reasons given were raised and supposedly rebutted during the campaign but are now being acknowledged because he’s already been elected, thus showing that Boris is a liar who has conned the London electorate?”
I refer to Toms post above but also refer to Kens ‘ I will not raise the congestion charge after I’m elected”. Liying peice of garbage.
As for buses, I don’t use them and I could not care less what they look or how they work.