Boris Watch

Via a red-baiting Dave Hill, this blog has an interesting report…

“I wrote the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson ’s office about his plans for [International Women's Day]09. His office wrote back informing me that on 22nd July 2009 the mayor will be hosting – Peoples Question Time with the key theme being women.
AND Mayor Johnson [...]

An hilarious new sitcom, for the consideration of production companies nationwide.
The Councillor
Sorry I’m late. Damn taxi didn’t arrive.
Secretary
Er, but Councillor, you were only in the next room…
The Councillor
Yes, yes, okay, whatever.
Secretary
*Sigh* Didn’t Boris tell you all to be a little more…restrained?
The Councillor
Christ, nobody ever used to take what Boris said seriously. What on earth has [...]

While we’re waiting for the online answers, here are a couple of choice questions:
1: Val Shawcross with her usual boot-in-groin moment:
Question number    0479/2009
Meeting date    25/02/2009
Question by Valerie Shawcross
Do you regret falsely claiming that bendy buses “wipe out cyclists, there are many cyclists killed every year by them”?
2: Ominous sounds – when Tories conduct ‘reviews’ they [...]

Boris is now fairly notorious in the thinking world for the WEZ consultation, which was, possibly deliberately, split into two sections which produced different answers.  The one Boris went with was an entirely unscientific write-in campaign orchestrated mainly by Tory boroughs including the Thatcherite ultras at Hammersmith and Fulham, whose well-fed leader previously helped Boris’s [...]

Normally when a senior member of Boris’s team leaves, we respond with a mixture of ‘haha’ and ‘phew’.  Today we respond with ‘oh shit’.  Tim O’Toole, MD of London Underground and one of the best transport managers in the country, has decided his future lies away from leading the Underground through the next few decidedly [...]

Rebecca Hutson writes in Seven Magazine…
“It was therefore a welcomed relief when bumbling, politician Boris Johnson made rape crisis centres a central aspect of his mayoral manifesto, promising to pour £744,000 into the existing centres and build three more. He even went so far as to write to Liz Kelly, Chair of End Violence Against [...]

Well, the Evening Standard’s certainly changed its tune.  Would you have believed that there was a downside to Boris’s car-friendly policies?  I wouldn’t, if I’d only read the Evening Standard.
That’s all changing now – not one but two pieces, neither of them from ‘transport expert’ Andrew Gilligan, both pointing out that Boris is, by scrapping [...]

Boris is fond of putting professional gloss on the Borisport scheme by referring to Doug Oakervee, his pet engineer on the study and currently Non-Executive Chairman of Crossrail Ltd., in glowing terms as the man who built Hong Kong airport, etc. (although Boris is rather reticent on the fact that Oakervee was originally appointed by [...]

I still think Boris’s most ludicrous manifesto policy was the Routemaster one, but a close runner up was the idea that he could negotiate a no strike agreement with the Tube unions to save us all from the bother of uppity Marxists like the RMT’s Bob Crow ruining our day in their nasty lower class [...]

I’ve been looking out for this, and it came out yesterday:
2009/S 30-044219
UK-London: buses and coaches
DESCRIPTION OF THE WORKS, SERVICES OR GOODS TO BE PROCURED THROUGH THE QUALIFICATION SYSTEM:
Transport for London (TfL) announced the winners of a public competition for design of a new bus for London in December 2008 in support of the Mayor of [...]