The Tory Troll reports that the latest batch of publicity for the approaching Rise festival now features a quote from Boris claiming it “is still an anti-racist event”. It seems between the various people making decisions for him, they can’t quite agree on the nuances of their message here.
The latest news here is that apparently the event used to be “negative”, which as an attendee at last year’s event is news to me. Even in the pouring rain that plagued part of last year’s festival, it was a positive and enjoyable day of celebration.
I don’t think I’ll be returning this year to this hollow shell of what Rise once was. I’ll also regard all the major artists performing at it with a degree of suspicion from now on, for failing to change their minds about appearing in the light of the rebranding.
The trades unions have withdrawn their funding in protest, of course, raising the question others have raised about whether the result of this decision will actually be to require more taxpayers’ money to be spent by our new Value For Money Mayor. In this respect it would be like the similarly pointless and dogmatic decision to cancel the Venezuelan oil deal, which will either result in doubled bus fares for the poor or require more money from the taxpayer to subsidise their fares. Either way, of course, Londoners lose.
Tags: anti-racism · rise · value for money9 Comments
9 responses so far ↓
Haven’t they already said that the fares for the poor will double?
Together with the congestion charge crap today and the cancelling of the hybrid bus scheme we can see how ferociously anti public transport they are.
CF: there’s still *some* doubt over whether they’ll find a way to continue the discount, but even if they do it won’t kick in until the next fare review, which I believe is in January, whereas people’s half-price Oysters will expire from August onwards (six months after they registered for them) so there’ll be a sizeable number of people getting their fares doubled *at least* temporarily, if not everyone getting it for good.
Speaking of CCs, there’s a report on the Western Extension that I wanted to find. It’s titled - rather uninspiringly - ‘Congestion Charging: Proposed Western Extension Public Consultation Economic and Business Impact Assessment’. The link has expired, but does anybody know where else I could find it?
Mr Stiop Boris:
I thought he’d said that as only 20% of the income support recipients got the card it wasn’t worth continuing with?
The vile free papers today were all full of “Boris to scrap CC”, I thought about this as I was stuck in traffic on my bus.
“I thought he’d said that as only 20% of the income support recipients got the card it wasn’t worth continuing with?”
Yes, but he made vague reference to “y’know, some kinda alternative”. The ‘alternative’, however, will probably constitute attempts to keep the general fare low, which will be difficult, I think, if the C-Charge is scrapped.
CF: indeed, what Ben said. Basically they’re trying to stave off for as long as possible the day when they admit they are definitely getting rid of the discount for good. More on this here:
http://davehill.typepad.com/london3ms/2008/06/concessionary-b.html
“I thought he’d said that as only 20% of the income support recipients got the card it wasn’t worth continuing with?”
Actually, this means we were spending less on providing the free transport that expected, which means we were quite possibly in profit on the deal. I spent last night going through the TfL budget figures and found nothing related to the deal (it’s under something like ‘added contributions from elsewhere’, I presume). In not announcing the figures, I suspect they aren’t discreditable to the previous regime (as in costing hugely more than the income, as Damien Hockney suggested at the time).
Another thing that comes out is that the 90p bus fare cut wasn’t (just) a political stunt, TfL’s fare income went up about 10% last year, which is about £300m or so. The CC Western Extension added about £50m on its own. Incidentally, word to the wise, TfL is majority funded by farepayers, the rest by central government grant. It’s not a drain on London taxpayers specifically, so watch for Parker’s cuts being portrayed as such, and jump on them. If I were a betting man I’d suspect that some of the beneficial schemes in poorer areas will be scrapped to fill the gap from CC, Routemaster, Venezuela and the other Boris-dug holes. Anything Olympic-related should be safe, thankfully.
Gah, I couldn’t find any financial information for the Western Extension. We should do some analysis while consultations are taking place.
That’s all really interesting Tom - sounds like another quality transport post from you is brewing there!