Boris Watch

Speaking on the London segment of today’s BBC One Politics Show, Theresa Villiers MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Transport, today continued the Tories’ talking down of the prospects for the Cross-River Tram.
The programme first gave a bit of background to the CRT scheme, and featured some distinctly positive quotes from Boris in support of [...]

Last September, Mrs. Stop Boris and I were among the 35,000 that registered for, and indeed the 60,000 that turned up to, the inaugural London Freewheel cycling event.
The day was a real success – from a fun perspective, of course, but even from a Tory-pleasing economic point of view: just taking our own expenditure into [...]

Bad luck, Boris: the world didn’t end when scientists switched on the ‘Big Bang Machine’ earlier, so you still have to submit yourself to the outrageous indignity of answering questions in public at 10am today.
You can find the agenda for this morning’s meeting here, and can watch a webcast, as I intend to, here.
You can [...]

The Tory Troll has a round-up – and a wonderful picture he hasn’t managed to track down the source of…

Update (from Ben): Boris’s latest Telegraph column considers the UN, meat-eating and overpopulation, but what’s this curious comment lurking inside it?
“We cannot all eat moose, like Sarah Palin.”
Why, the dastardly liberal elitist.

The Standard has couple of pieces worth reading – in different ways – today.
“Yes, I’m Boris’s chief enforcer – the supertanker is now turning” is an interview with Sir Simon Milton, who more or less confirms the previously unattributed stories that he’s in charge at City Hall now Parker’s had the boot. The Tory Troll [...]

These cartoons are pretty good. For instance:
Boris at the Olympics: high dive

Hopefully it’ll keep going until the next Olympics!

Despite the endless problems that have plagued Boris’s administration so far, today he found time to deliver one of his rare concrete manifesto promises: a consultation on the Congestion Charge Western Extension.
Now, it may be good that he’s delivering a pledge, but whether it’s a worthwhile pledge is another matter entirely.
The previous Mayor also consulted [...]

Speaking on tonight’s Any Questions?, on which Ken Livingstone was also a guest, Sir Simon Milton, Boris’s knife-wielding Deputy Mayor for Policy and Planning, said without the slightest equivocation that Boris has said he will continue with half-price bus fares for Londoners on income support.
Unfortunately no-one challenged this statement, but given that Income Support claimants [...]

The Labour Councillors of Barnet alerted me earlier to the brewing storm over Brian Coleman’s comments on the British Olympians being “tainted with the blood of Tibetans” and leaving “their consciences at passport control”, mentioned earlier by a fellow Boris Watcher.
They sent me a scanned copy of the article, which you can see in full [...]

Thanks to the Tory Troll, I realise what a useful tool Twitter can be for finding out world opinion on topical matters. Here are some search results indicating people’s reactions to Boris’s first appearance on the world stage in front of millions (billions?) of viewers at yesterday’s Olympics closing ceremony:

Twitter search: "Boris Johnson" OR (London [...]