Boris Watch

Following a tip in the comments, I’m catching up on today’s World at One interview (near the end).  Rough transcript:

Waffling about the Olympics.  Talking about making savings.  Wants a show that’s ‘equally fantastic’ as China, but on a budget.  Talks about the Olympic parade in October.  Easy stuff for a politician.  Then comes the genuine Boris - hacking a big hole in the Cameron ‘broken society’

Now Parker.  He’s done a ‘fantastic job’ and will continue to do so without having a job, apparently.  ‘Increasingly obvious that it made no sense democratically for the Mayor not to chair TfL’.  Long pauses before Boris answers either question.  Questioned on the removal of the GLA chief executive role: ‘Democratically essential given the way the Mayoralty is structured for the Mayor to chair TfL’.  Nothing on why the GLA suddenly doesn’t need a chief executive, then.

So the Boris line is that TfL needs an elected head, which means the Mayor, and the original structure put in place after the election officially made ‘no sense’, which is a direct quote.  Most interesting.  We’re also still in the dark as to why the GLA suddenly doesn’t need a head honcho.

In this short interview we have the best and worst of Boris - the genuine passion in his voice when talking about the youth of the UK not being demonised as the lazy, fat slobs and thugs of tabloid culture (and three cheers for that, exactly my opinion), then the long pauses and evasive answers on the subject of the embarrassing reversal of the structure of his administration.  I don’t think we’ve heard the last of that.

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