Boris Watch

Nick Boles is a key link between the Policy Exchange think tank and Boris Johnson’s mayoralty.  Nick Boles has done the decent thing and admitted he put Boris up to appointing Lewis, which is another bit of evidence (along with the Routemaster competition*) of Policy Exchange being able to put its ideas into practice via [...]

Andrew Gilligoon, wetting himself about the sketch-a-Routemaster announcement:
“…what TfL tended to do when a route went from Routemasters to bendies was to reduce the frequency - so it should be easy enough to increase the frequency right back again.”
How true is this?  First off, only three routes went RM->bendy, the others were either double deckers [...]

I have no wish to distract you again from Tom’s superb post on the problems of the Routemaster, but this little nugget is worth extracting from the ether.
What’s everybody’s favourite erotic cinema director/Assembly member doing posting invective on an eighteen year old’s book review?
Cllr Richard Barnbrook
“Burke…you are full of the self indulgent introspective lefty [...]

With loud denouncements of the bemused onlookers, Iain Dale has thrown his hat into the ring .
“There’s nothing the left hate more than a black person who does well in the Tory party.”
That’s a pretty audacious assertion, Iain. You’ll need some strong material to substantiate it, won’t you?
“They look at successful black or Asian Tories [...]

OK, OK, so you thought the big news is Ray Lewis.  You were wrong, buses are much more interesting:
A leading investment bank, Deutsche Bank, warned that the Routemaster revival would come at a price. Passengers would have to stomach an 11% increase in fares because the estimated annual cost of running the network, already subsidised [...]

Ooh, London Connections linked to us. Welcome, I’m a long time fan.
Anyway, in the long-running saga of bendy bus routes and contracts, the uk.transport.london newsgroup has turned its giant collective transport fact-collecting braindump on the subject and has some corrections for me. Their distilled wisdom appears to be:
25 and 73 have been extended [...]

One thing I’m pretty sure of about Lewis is that he thinks of himself as a tough guy (he may *actually* be a tough guy, even if he does apparently live in Milton Keynes) who doesn’t mind making waves and ‘rubbing people up the wrong way’. Given that, and his previous career (such as [...]

Honestly readers, you’re too good to us. More specifically, Wireman, who previously provided the “Are you sure?” footage for us to put on YouTube, has come good again. This time he’s sent me the Boris/Ray Lewis clippings from most of today’s newspapers!
If you’d like to see them, click to read more, below.
SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “Today’s newspapers”, [...]

A police team has been established specifically to combat knife crime in London. The force is comprised of 75 officers, who will “build on the co-ordinated activity already being carried out under borough-wide Blunt 2 operations and will work in the areas of London worst affected by knife crime“. The GLA press release links to [...]

From the Telegraph:
It since emerged that the Bishop of Barking wrote to the mayor less than two weeks after he appointed Mr Lewis warning him that he was no longer authorised to serve as a minister, and inviting him to get in contact to discuss the [...]