Boris Watch

Been a while since I’ve had a chance to catch up, but several developments need noting.

1. MQTs this week - Boris has evidently honed his already impressive school debating society skills and is now deploying them to masterful effect to avoid answering any important questions at all in any detail.  This has obviously enraged Caroline Pidgeon of the Lib Dems who has taken the so far unprecedented step of publishing a hard-hitting attack (using words like ‘clueless’ and ‘amazing ignorance’) on Boris’s idiosyncratic attitude to increasing Mayoral accountability both on the Assembly PR site and the London Lib Dems page.  Sample:
   

   Caroline says: “Mayor Johnson floundered when asked key questions of fact on whether London transport will be ready for the 2012 Olympics.

   “He was clueless about TfL’s £40 million cutback on the North London Line at Camden Station which will mean only six trains an hour to Stratford instead of eight.

   “Furthermore, TfL needs to place a crucial contract with Cubic so people coming to the Olympics can use a single smartcard. Boris didn’t know if they had, and amazingly didn’t even recognise the contractors’ name even though I’d asked the Mayor about this issue just last month.

   “And lastly, on the issue of the East London line extension, phase two, he was still unable to give us the certainty we’ll get the funding to build the rail link so south Londoners in Peckham and Clapham can get to East London easily.

2. The budget-busting consequences of the London Travelwatch report on bendy buses continue to ripple, now reaching the shores of the BBC thanks to the tireless Valerie Shawcross, who must still be reading Boris Watch.  Val’s press release today says it all:
   

   “Boris revealed today that he is ignoring professional advice from TfL officers, who earlier this year said the bendy bus was no more dangerous than any other bus in London. He is letting his personal prejudice override any sense of reason and should return the drawing board as soon as possible. It’s not too late for him to change his mind.”

   Boris, of course, firmly up his gum tree, is resorting to the tired old trick used by all administrations - hiding behind ‘commercial confidentiality’.  In this case that won’t wash, since he’s admitting he’s proceeding to commercial negotiations before the results of the consultation are known.  It’s important to understand that this is the result of the collision between Policy Exchange world and reality, where contracts are contracts and people need to get to work.  So far the likelihood of Boris choosing reality still seems remote on this, but it’s his own fault he’s in this position.

3. Talking of Policy Exchange, Boris has given a glowing speech to PX, at least as reported by Iain Dale, possibly because Boris, in his mission to agree with everyone he speaks to, told Dale he was the second most powerful man in London.  Iain’s long term nemesis Tim Ireland (who happens to be Boris’s personal webmaster in another of his hats) is unimpressed by this, although as we’ve seen the Boris/PX relationship is a good deal more complex than a simple puppet/master model.  PX do have far too much power considering the amount of mess they’ve already created, on which note it’s interesting to see Francis Maude boasting (Private Eye 1221 p.27) that he’s running the Tories’ Implementation Team.  Presumably stuffed with PXers in the same way as Boris’s was, to prepare the boys in blue for power and therefore presumably it will likewise come with its own built in portion of FAIL.
4. Going from what laughably calls itself the ‘centre right’ (Dean Godson is about as centre right as I am Greek Orthodox) to the Left, Ken Livingstone (who doesn’t usually get free mentions on here) has given a seriously interesting interview in three parts to 21st Century Socialism, the third of which deals extensively with Stephen Norris, Boris dogwhistling to racists, Islam, PX, the popularity of bendy buses and other meaty stuff we often cover.  Read it here.
5. The 2012 Olympics are in full on cost-cutting mode, it seems.  If Boris thought he was going to preside over a private sector bonanza demonstrating how entrepreneurial spirit and British know how were going to show the Chinese how to do it, he ought to be disabused by now - the private money has dried up like spit on a hotplate and he now has to put on as good a show as he can with the public money on offer.  What price the 2012 Austerity Olympics?
6. Parts of the rail industry have responded very negatively to TfL/Network Rail’s decision to cut back the work at Camden Road station, which results in 25% fewer off-peak Overground services on one of the key Olympic routes serving Stratford.  It’s also a key rail freight route, and the work (ditched to save money and traffic disruption) would have helped seperate freight and passenger services over the intensively used North London Line, the proposed cutting of which is exercising the rail freight industry.  London Reconnections has more.  TfL Chairman Boris, in MQTs, apparently didn’t know about it, which once again raises the question of who runs London.
7. The Met Police crime mapping website is still not updated for September and neither is Boris’s whizzy less-information-more-pretty-colours version.  By the way, has anyone else noticed that youth knife murders are off the front page lately?
8. PZT notes that Boris’s latest article in the Telegraph appears to be channelling John Maynard Keynes.  Not sure what the PXers would make of that, but Boris is right to say that recessions should be time for government-sponsored public works projects to keep people employed and provide the infrastructure needed for when good times return.  Boris’s Presidential pick Barack Obama, I note approvingly, is also talking along similar lines but he’s likely to be President of the United States soon.  If Boris, with the more limited powers of Mayor wants London to join the party he’s going to have to moderate his tone and try working with Gordon Brown and co. in a more constructive manner than his recent behavour over Sir Ian Blair would suggest he favours.  It’s by no means certain Brown and co. would reciprocate - personally I think they should offer help with projects that benefit the worst off and those likely to be hit hardest in the recession, which would give Boris a dilemma.  Dave Hill has just posted a commentary from London First’s Jo Valentine that makes exactly this point:
   

   Public money will go a lot further in this market. Preparations for 2012, once considered a worry because of possible capacity constraints in the construction sector, now appear a godsend. Crossrail and the Tube improvement programmes provide further counter-cyclical investment and jobs. And all three of these major projects are an investment in London’s future, preparing our capital for the eventual recovery, whether that is two months, a year or, heaven forbid, longer.

9. Finally, because I’m starving, the Elephant and Castle shenanigans are getting personal - Boris has clearly been persuaded by some lunatic that allowing more room for cyclists and pedestrians is bad for the environment.  He’s never heard the phrase ‘modal shift’, then.  I’m willing to bet it’s Kulveer Ranger sticking his inexperienced oar in just as with Parliament Square and as I’ve mentioned it before Boris is a hypocrite for sticking to his bendies-squish-cyclists line at MQTs while supporting gyratory schemes that London’s cycle groups and TfL agree are highly dangerous and unwelcoming environments for cyclists.  He’s also a hypocrite for preferring to pander to motorists instead of making the environment safer and less crime-ridden by design, which is something he’s previously trumpeted, probably as a ‘number one priority’.  It’s also notable that TfL recently didn’t feel the need to stop the widening of the North Circular north of Wood Green to check in case it had any impact on traffic, even though it contains a lot of pedestrian friendly, bus friendly, bike friendly, traffic calming stuff.  Of course, this is in the suburbs, not the inner city.  The E&C stuff really needs its own post, I really need lunch.

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