Boris Watch

Via Dave Hill comes the dread announcement that Tim ‘Slasher’ Parker will be the new Chair of Transport for London from September.  Transport experience: nil, slash’n'burn cost cutting, sacking and outsourcing experience: lots.  I have an extremely nasty feeling about this, increased by looking at the revised Board from 14th June 2008:

• Boris Johnson   Chair, Board Member
• Tim Parker   Board Member
• Steve Norris   Board Member
• Kulveer Ranger   Board Member
• Peter Anderson  Board Member
• Christopher Garnett  Board Member
• Sir Mike Hodgkinson  Board Member
• Judith Hunt   Board Member
• Eva Lindholm   Board Member

Going by the current list on the website, that means no place for the following:

• Honor Chapman
• Stephen Glaister
• Kirsten Hearn
• Paul Moore
• Gulam Noon
• Patrick O’Keeffe
• Rana Roy
• Dabinderjit Singh Sidhu
• Tony West

Of these,

• Chapman used to chair the LDA (so she’s out)
• Glaister is an academic specialising in transport economics (perhaps he might do the maths for the Routemaster),
• Hearn specialised in ‘inclusion and equality’ (so she’s out),
• Moore is ex-GLC and a Trade Union man (so he’s out),
• Noon is a smart businessman who didn’t deserve to get involved in the Lord Levy peerage scandal (but is a Labour supporter, obviously, so he’s out),
• O’Keeffe is another Trade Union man (out)
• Roy is another transport economist (what have they got against them?)
• Sidhu is a highly experienced auditor with an OBE to his name (or ‘terrorist’, if you believe the Evening Double Standard)
• West is another Trade Union man

Who’s left then?  No one, they’re all very right indeed (arf!).

• Johnson is a lifelong Tory (obviously)
• Parker is a slash’n'burn hatchet man appointed by Boris
• Norris is a former Tory MP and minister
• Ranger was Vice Chairman of the Conservative Party and an unsuccessful election candidate
• Anderson is a businessmen (MD of Canary Wharf PLC)
• Garnett is a businessman who used to run the privatised rail operator GNER
• Hodgkinson is a businessman
• Hunt is the only one who falls outside the businessman/Tory mould, being a consultant on wishy washy liberal things like race and equality.  You know, the kind of person Gilligan wants taken out and (virtually) shot.
• Lindholm is a finance whiz from J. P. Morgan

So no union representation (just wait for the RMT announcement on Parker…), less ethic minority representation (1 out of 9 instead of 3 out of 14), no academics or economists but a heaving sea of businessmen and loyal Tories (out of the five new faces, three are high-ranking Tories, one’s a highly controversial direct Boris appointment (Parker) and one’s a businessman (Anderson), albeit one already working with TfL as an adviser.  How is this in any way an improvement or, more pertinently, not a political clique?

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