Boris Watch

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 to attend to contact their local council’s youth service. My child’s secondary school had no information about this event and I could find nothing in my borough’s main library/Tourist Information Centre.

Still, the Mayor’s office proved how hip and happening he is by setting up his own bebo profile.

I managed to track down the transcript for the meeting through google’s cache as the link from the City Hall website no longer leads to the event (named Your London Your Say) but to the forthcoming Brixton People’s Question Time, the publicity for which is styled as though it’s a gig at Brixton Academy – see how cool and trendy Boris is, kids?

The fact that the transcript is effectively hidden (the link on this page doesn’t lead to it, either)  might lead someone of a cynical nature to believe that Boris’s office doesn’t really want anyone to read it – accountability, eh? Judge for yourselves, whilst I examine some of the more eyebrow-raising comments made by Boris and his advisers: [PDF] http://www.london.gov.uk/gla/pqt/docs/20090922-o2ypqt-transcript-.pdf

Participant
I am Radika[?] and was just wondering: there has been a lot of concern about crime in the increase in crime and the only thing I really see happening is punitive measures or corrective measures. Is there going to be more focus on actually preventative things and long-term methods and what will they be?

Boris Johnson
Radika, there is obviously you have to do the law-enforcement side of it, and we will be doing a lot of that, but you are absolutely right: you have got to give kids opportunities; you are to give young people something to do with their lives that takes them away from the gangs and the culture of knives or whatever it is – to get to your question, Chris – the media always say they are up to…The tragedy is that most kids who are going to go off the rails will find that their critical life experiences are between nought and three; that is when it happens. If you look at the relative brain size and this terrible thing of a kid who is been brought up in a dysfunctional household. The physical size of the brain of a kid brought up in a dysfunctional household compared to a kid who has a happy stable family, I am afraid it is very sad to see the difference in opportunities.

Boris is stating quite categorically that children from dysfunctional families have smaller brains. I recognised exactly were he’d got this garbled “fact” from: Iain Duncan Smith, former Tory leader and director of “independent” think-tank, The Centre For Social Justice. Studies apparently exist that link ante-natal substance-abuse with reduced brain size in offspring  but that’s rather different to claiming that a child “brought up in a dysfunctional household” has a smaller brain.  I wonder whether Boris is also an advocate of phrenology?

Participant
Yes. My name is Aaron Wallis. Anyway, there is so much young disillusioned people at the moment, I wanted to know Boris what do you think of my solutions? I think for the young black people out there that are disillusioned and getting involved in crime I think a lot of them need to know a lot who are about black history, and when I mean black history I do not mean we come from slavery, I think we should talk about what happened before slavery so that that people know that we do have a culture and we have actually come from somewhere and we have something to be proud of.

Munira Muniz (sic)
I should just like to say that, whoever said it, about Black History Month being too narrowly focused on slavery, I think you are right. Sometimes, it can get a bit boring, doing slavery every year. So, this year, we are doing Black History Month events next month of Notting Hill Carnival: 50 Years of the Notting Hill Carnival in London. Actually, I think that is London history and not just black history. We are inviting lots of people – it does not matter your background or your ethnicity to come and enjoy that, to see performances. If anybody would like to come to that event I am sure that somebody at the GLA can tell you some more details about it.

50 Years Of Notting Hill? Great! Except Black History Month doesn’t actually feature on the current GLA Events Calendar and there’s no information whatsoever on the Mayor’s website about this particular event. “It does not matter your background or your ethnicity” – well, who said it did? I was also puzzled by the curious qualifying statement “everybody welcome” on the TfL travel leaflet for this year’s Notting Hill Carnival – why wouldn’t they be?

Participant
Hello. My name Michael from [Envision?] and basically what I want to know is that, they are saying that the Tate Modern is free and these arts things are free; theatre is free and all that. But I do not care, because obviously I do not understand any of that stuff. I want to go to the Tate Modern with my friends, but if I go there I am just going to see a picture, like ‘Yeah, cool’! So it is free, but I do not understand it so what does it matter to me? Bring some stuff up for me so I can go and learn about new things and that. But it just does not make no sense to me, so why should I go?

Munira Mirza
On this question on the art in Tate Modern and it not making sense. It does not make sense to a lot of people actually, not just young people. But that does not mean that it is not good and it does not mean it is not worth looking at sometimes and learning about. One of the best things at Tate and Tate Modern is that they do have programmes where you can go and learn about the stuff on the walls or the stuff they have in the Turbine Hall, so you do not just get along and get completely confused. Tate are really, really good at it and it is free; you can go along every week, you can go to different classes during the summer and that is a way of learning about art. Even though some stuff even I do not like it, and I know a bit about art, you can always change your mind. A few years ago, I did not really like classical music, in fact I actually hated it, I really hated classical music. I thought it was boring and I am sure lots of people here who also do.

Munira Mirza
I promise you given a chance it is worth it, because it is incredible and I go to the Proms and I just love going. It is one of the fantastic things about London. I grew up in Manchester so not a lot of huge amount of culture growing up in the early eighties I can tell you! One of the great things about London is you can go along to loads of things and try them for free and you can decide then if you like it or not and you can learn about them. So I would say give it a chance, it is really not as bad as you think it is.

Michael doesn’t understand art and it makes no sense to him so he’d like some free activities or events that are relevant to him. Munira, of course, believes that her Stalinist culture programme will give the kids her version of culture, whether they like it or not, and conceding that some of them may perhaps be more engaged by Hip Hop, for instance, is forbidden.

As for this statement by Munira:

I grew up in Manchester so not a lot of huge amount of culture growing up in the early eighties I can tell you!

Absolutely astonishing! Manchester? Apart from a plethora of theatres, museums and art galleries which would probably conform to Munira’s narrow vision of culture, Manchester in the early ’80s was home to Factory Records and the associated music scene, notably the Haçienda. An incredibly ignorant and arrogant statement from Boris’s “cultural adviser”.

What other words of wisdom do we have from Boris’s panel? Tim Campbell patronises a young man with dyslexia by telling him that he’s “really, really lucky” to suffer from it and informs a young woman who’s desperate to go to university that she really doesn’t need to. Unsurprising, then, that a teenage caller to last Saturday’s programme on LBC radio, discussing Young People’s Question Time, described how she’d felt that Boris Johnson hadn’t really answered the audience’s questions and she’d found the whole experience “really disheartening.”

Boris Johnson
Here a question, who thinks young people need more opportunity to exercise? Who thinks we have a problem with obesity in London? Who thinks kids should be able to travel for free a very short distance on the bus?
(Cheers)
I just wanted to know; it is very, very interesting!

That doesn’t sound to me as though our Mayor’s 100% committed to free bus travel for school children.

Munira Mirza
Let me tell you something. He really does cycle everywhere, he hardly ever takes the taxi, which is a bit annoying for the rest of us when he turns up late to things.

“Hardly ever”? Nearly £5,000-worth of taxis in the last financial year, including £237.50 for a taxi from N7 to N9? Right. And I think you’ll find that he’s always late because he’s rude and disorganised, or maybe you really believe that a big, black cab can negotiate central London traffic more efficiently than a bicycle?

A final quote from the Mayor himself to an audience member, just before he, as usual, passed the buck:

…am I not answering your question?

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