Boris Watch

I’m not sure watching Mayor’s Question Time is doing a lot for my health – it’s certainly giving me a headache – but since I’m stuck at home ill it seems remiss not to tune in to the webcast.

So far I’ve been pleased to see two members of the Axis of Progress – the Greens’ Jenny Jones and Labour’s Len Duvall – tackling Boris on the issue raised by the Tory Troll yesterday.

Jones first pointed out that the average Band D home would save just 11 pence per week thanks to Boris’s much trumpeted freeze on the GLA council tax precept, whereas she reckoned the typical commuter would be £4 per week worse off through the fare rises Boris has instituted at TfL thanks to his self-dug black hole.

Duvall followed this up a short while later, with figures for a full year for a two-person Band D household. He calculated (or perhaps half-pinched from the Troll) that while such a household will save £6 a year on their council tax, they’ll be stumping up £50–90 more for their transport over that same period, so the Mayor’s plans are hardly anything to be proud of.

In both cases Boris failed miserably to address either question fully, instead blathering on with lines like:

the people of London will find it incredible that you so minimise the importance of bearing down on their council tax

Personally I find it incredible that he can expect me to be pleased that thanks to his fare rises, even as a non-commuter, within just a few months of 2009 beginning I will be worse off directly as a result of this Mayor’s decisions. Saving 11 pence per week from Council Tax fully deserves to be minimised – not to say ridiculed – given its negligible impact on anyone’s finances.

At time of writing, the other main point of interest so far has been the Freedom Pass, and its extension to 24-hour operation.

The shock revelation (to me, in my recently-returned-to-Nerdistan status, anyway – sorry if this is already well known to everyone else) was that the 24-hour extension will not apply on National Rail. And there was I thinking that a substantial proportion of Boris’s voters were getting on a bit and living in the suburbs, most of which are served better by National Rail than by TfL services. Way to thank them for their support, Boris.

And in a further illustration that even this far into the job Boris still hasn’t got his head round even the most basic facts relating to many of his key election pledges, in discussing the extension of the Freedom Pass (with Caroline Pidgeon, who raised the matter), Boris claimed, desperately trying to defend his failure to help his suburban voters:

it doesn’t include the trains at the moment!

Oh dear:

National Rail

Free travel for all freedom pass holders in standard accommodation on most local rail services between 9.30am and 4.30am the following morning Monday to Friday, plus all day at weekends and on public holidays. On some routes holders of the Older person’s freedom pass may travel free from 9:00am Monday to Friday and any time at weekends and on public holidays.

Failing to extend the hours of operation of the Freedom Pass on all the methods of transport on which it can currently be used off-peak hardly sounds like a fulfilment of his election pledge, a “cast-iron commitment to extend the Freedom Pass 24 hours a day”, as Pidgeon pointed out.

And if he’s allowing the private rail companies to kill off one election pledge, are those of us in the Tube-free suburbs ever really likely to see Oyster Pay-As-You-Go on our trains, I wonder?

P.S. Just after posting this I noticed today’s Dictionary.com Word Of The Day, which I think I may have seen once or twice before. In the Tags for this post, for a start. Nice of them to pick a MQT day for that one

Tags:   Council Tax · fares · finances · Freedom Pass · gaffe1 Comment