Boris Watch

Phil Taylor, occasional commentator on Dave Hill and even more occasionally here, is a Conservative councillor in West London.  Quite how he’s risen to this level while displaying the unerring instinct for gaffes that I’ve witnessed so far quite escapes me, except that I used to live in his ward and these days they’d happily elect a chimp in a blue rosette round there, which in many ways would be an improvement.  Shame, the Plough was a good crack when I used to go there.  Lairy, but fun.  Had a few good nights in the Spinner, too.

Anyway, I digress.  Phil, who prides himself on being ‘all about the numbers’ has a history of unfortunate slips and gaffes that I’ve been onto for a while -

• a famous misstating of the Oyster bus fare as being £1.50 instead of 90p.  It’s all about the numbers.
• being the sole named source for a highly misleading Gilligan article attacking the congestion charge
• mis-spelling Iain Dale’s name in his highly biased blogroll
• not realising that buses being busy at peak times is a feature, not a bug.
• being highly misleading about the huge rise in London bus ridership, pretending that the rest of the country had kept pace, when in fact the opposite was the case.  Amazingly, he disagrees with his own party’s Edward Leigh on this, not to mention the entire British transport industry.
• Attacking Livingstone for buying ten hybrid buses, but being noticeably quiet on Boris’ £90k hybrid taxi plan or the obvious money pit that is the New Routemaster.  Obviously if Boris starts ordering up hybrid buses we’ll all expect Phil to attack him.  Won’t we?
• Asserting, with no evidence, that fare income from reducing fraud will pay for the new Routemaster.  In other words, £5.3m a year will pay for a massive increase in drivers and conductors and vehicles.  It’s all about the numbers, of course.
• Telling Dave Hill ‘If you don’t like elections go and live in China’, in the best childish Tory tradition.
  

There are, obviously, many more examples.  Two recent ones have come to my attention and provoked this long overdue post:

First, Phil (one of the many Tories who hasn’t got over Ken’s departure yet, poor chap) on the subject of the scrapping of the emissions based congestion charge:

The old mayor knows full well that the Emissions Related Congestion Charging scheme he proposed would have led to a reduction in Congestion Charge income. A small number of increased £25 charges from large vehicles would have been more than offset by the loss of £8 charges from many more band A and B cars. The idea that the scheme would have generated new net cash to the tune of £30 million is an outrageous lie.

Oh dear.  Apart from misstating the facts of the scheme (not all A and B cars would go free, and he’s forgotten to include the scrapping of the zero rating for things like Lexus hybrids and Priuses), he’s effectively accused a Certain Mayoral Person of lying.  From the last Mayoral Questions (16/07/2008):

Q: (Darren Johnson):

What net revenues did TfL estimate would accrue from the introduction of the emissions related congestion charge scheme?

A: (Boris Johnson):

TfL’s Report to the Mayor following the consultation on CO2 Charging estimated the revenues that could be raised from the proposals in 2009 to be in the range of £29m to £49m and in 2010 to be in the range of £18m to £61m. Inevitably, any additional charging income would have declined over time as drivers switched to lower emitting vehicles. Given this and the uncertainties involved in terms of the precise effects of the scheme, TfL had not assumed any revenues from CO2 Charging in its Business Plan published in December 2007.

A number of costs associated with CO2 Charging had already been incurred, totaling approximately £10m. This includes some development costs and the costs of consultation and public information. Costs saved by not proceeding are £8m in order to implement CO2 charging and £2m annual operational costs.

In other words, far from being an ‘outrageous lie’, the £30m figure was towards the lower end of the estimates prepared by TfL, and therefore Livingstone is presumably entitled to use it.  Boris certainly considers that he’s entitled to use it without qualification.  Does Phil consider Boris to be an ‘outrageous liar’, then?  Again, we see the tough decision for the Tories of either having to use figures prepared by TfL or saying that they don’t believe them, as with crime.  So far they’ve gone with TfL, which is a bit embarrassing for people like Taylor and Gilligan who constantly told us that TfL manipulated figures to suit Ken’s agenda.

Of course, what the Mayor’s answer also reveals is that the decision means TfL are probably out of pocket by some £20m over the first year, plus the £400k to pay of Porsche.  Still, that’s democracy for you.

The second Taylorism comes from a comment earlier this week on our Venezuela thread.  I reprint it in full:

Anyone who looked at this deal in detail would be able to spot the holes in it. The income was designed to cover the cost of the concession. It did not cover the cost of the services given to the Venezuelans. It did not cover the the £975K ad budget.

The whole thing was always silly. It made Livingstone feel good that he was helping a socialist vote stealer and media censor stay in business. Everyone else just felt sick.

Ignoring the usual childish slurs at the end, I’m baffled to what extent Taylor understands the scheme, which of course I’ve looked at before.  The obvious thing that stood out as a hole in it was the uncertainty over takeup, which Damien Hockney estimated in the worst case would cost London £20-25m, a figure strongly denied by Livingstone at the time.

As it turns out, of course, the combination of lower than expected takeup and the premature end to the PR campaign means only about 30% of eligible people took up the deal, which explains why Livingstone’s figure of £15m (which assumed higher takeup) also turned out to be an over-estimate.  Coupled with the massive rise in oil prices which meant the deal hit the $32m dollar cap it’s not surprising that Boris has found the kitty rather full.  Quite where this leaves Phil Taylor and his opinion I’ve no idea - the cost of the concession clearly came in several million pounds under the contribution from the Venezuelans, and even taking out the PR budget (£1m), set up costs (£2m) and the abbreviated existence of the Caracas office (practically nothing, it was closed before it had properly got going).

Still, it’s all about the numbers, so doubtless he’ll be along to enlighten us soon as to why handing £7m to an oil company which is already earning billions after a massive rise in oil prices is value for money for Londoners.

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