Boris Watch

Black History Month is celebrated annually in October in the UK and, as October starts tomorrow, it would be reasonable to expect a full programme of events to be displayed on the Mayor’s events calendar. The previous administration’s events calendar from October 2007 tells us that Black History Month has been celebrated across London since [...]

How useful were Boris’s answers in response to questions from the floor?
Participant
Do I have to stand up? So we were on the DLR from Lewisham coming here, and we are talking about the Olympics and some of our youth workers went to Stratford today, and said it was unfinished. Do you believe that young people [...]

Boris Johnson’s first event specifically for young people, Your London Your Say,  took place at the O2 Arena a week ago, although media coverage was sparse and pre-publicity virtually non-existent. It would appear that attendance was limited to those who were already associated with community youth groups as the Mayor’s website instructed those who wished [...]

Boriswatch, September 2008
Why, if one of the purported reasons for phasing out bendy buses is the fare evasion issue, are two of the first three routes (507 and 521) to be phased out the ones with the least fare evasion (figures from 2005, but the routes and user profile haven’t changed).
Boris, September 2009 (via London [...]

This morning, Boris Johnson was at the Victoria & Albert Museum with representatives from the arts, business and public sector to “warn against cuts in spending on arts and culture”.
We have to rise to the challenge brought about by the downturn. Arts and culture are not a luxury, they are part of this city’s DNA, [...]

One problem with essentially being too knackered to post for a week is that entire stories can arise and conclude in your absence.  24 hour news, blogs, Twitter etc. mean even Boris’s honed PR shield can get taken by surprise from time to time.  So it proved with the temporary removal of the River Thames [...]

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Boris’s trip to New York [sponsored by British Airways] came as something of a surprise, but it was no real surprise to find it was basically a PR exercise – the @MayorOfLondon Twitter feed went nuts

http://twitpic.com/htact – Just arriving at Manhattan Institute with good [...]

I’ve been on a course up in the City this week, and thus, armed with a 7-day Oyster Z1-3 Travelcard (which, as an aside, repeatedly failed to open the barriers at Waterloo) have been trying out some unusual bus routes.  I tried using the 521 every morning to see what it’s about and here are [...]

I’ve been a bit remiss in posting various researches that have appeared on other forums, so I’m going to put them here in a big lump.  First off, Red Arrow bus types and capacities over time:
Bus    Seats    Stands    Total    %sts    %stnds    stnds/sts ratio
MBS    25    48    73    34%    66%    1.92
N/nal2    28    46    74    38%    62%    1.64
CitaroG    [...]

A brief round up of online reaction to the 521 debendification over the weekend.  Notably less pro-Boris cheerleading this time round:

DJDarkside: Since when did they scrap the 521 bendy bus from London Bridge? These singleton ones are not cool.

jamiebarry: Well done Boris, replacing the 521 bendy bus with a single decker bus WITH HARDLY ANY [...]