Boris Watch

Allegedly concerned by the fearsome oratory abilities of the Mayor, the Conservatives have only granted Boris the minimal 3 - 3.15 Sunday slot at the Party Conference. In only fifteen minutes, he is to ‘outline his vision for the capital’s future‘.
The Mirror quotes a source as saying:
“He will not be the darling of the conference. [...]

Transit magazine is an industry journal dealing with, er, the transport industry.  It previously came up during the elections in May as pouring cold water on Boris Johnson’s Son-of-Routemaster idea, and now they’ve got some interesing quotes about Tim Parker leaving TfL:
Sources with strong Conservative Party connections told Transit that it would now be more [...]

Sir Simon Milton’s reported comments that the half-price bus and tram fares for income support claimants will continue raises further questions about the nature of the deal and any ‘hand back’ of moneys.  To refresh our knowledge, here’s what the Mayoral spokesperson said recently about the deal during a recent spat with Ken Livingstone:

“The fact [...]

Speaking on tonight’s Any Questions?, on which Ken Livingstone was also a guest, Sir Simon Milton, Boris’s knife-wielding Deputy Mayor for Policy and Planning, said without the slightest equivocation that Boris has said he will continue with half-price bus fares for Londoners on income support.
Unfortunately no-one challenged this statement, but given that Income Support claimants [...]

The Labour Councillors of Barnet alerted me earlier to the brewing storm over Brian Coleman’s comments on the British Olympians being “tainted with the blood of Tibetans” and leaving “their consciences at passport control”, mentioned earlier by a fellow Boris Watcher.
They sent me a scanned copy of the article, which you can see in full [...]

Brian Coleman has declared that Britain’s Olympic medal are “tainted with the blood of tibetans“. A wounded Boris has replied, “preposterous“.

Boris is cracking on with his Routemaster competition, despite which it’s been missing from the TfL front page for several weeks now.  It is prominent on the Corporate subsection, however.  Latest message reads:
Budding bus designers have just three weeks left to submit designs for a new bus for London. The competition to design a bus [...]

From The Metro:

“Fresh from the Olympic ‘hand-over’ in Beijing, London Mayor Boris Johnson on Tuesday pledged massive funding to produce a new generation of champions.
He said he wanted to ring-fence tens of millions of London Development Agency cash to inspire youngsters in the capital to take up a sport.
He said: ‘You can have [...]

The following is just one of the findings of a new paper by Andrew Eggers and Jens Hainmueller on political power and wealth:
MPs with at least one (self-)reported outside interest (directorships, consultancies, and work in journalism) attended fewer votes compared to MPs with no outside interests; attendance rates are around 4-6 percentage points lower and [...]

Thanks to the Tory Troll, I realise what a useful tool Twitter can be for finding out world opinion on topical matters. Here are some search results indicating people’s reactions to Boris’s first appearance on the world stage in front of millions (billions?) of viewers at yesterday’s Olympics closing ceremony:

Twitter search: "Boris Johnson" OR (London [...]