Boris Watch

An attempt to enhance the accountability of the new London mayoralty

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Bob Crow Issues A Challenge…

May 7th, 2008 by BenSix
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Yahoo reports that the alcohol ban may find opposition. Bob Crow of the RTM transport union is wary of the risk of violence towards staff if they try to enforce the rules with drunk passengers.

“”We are in favour of any measure that will make our members’ lives safer and curb anti-social behaviour, but it appears that this really hasn’t been thought through very well and could well make matters worse,” he said.

“Perhaps the mayor will come out with his underpants on over his trousers like Superman one Saturday to show us how it should be done.”"

The RMT, with Mr Crow at the helm, was such a thorn in the side of Ken Livingstone that he was moved to conclude that he couldn’t “explain the mindset” of the union. It seems that Boris may have similar battles ahead.

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Booze In The Bad Old Days

May 7th, 2008 by Tom
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Boris has banned booze on tubes, buses, DLR and Tramlink.  I wonder how much of problem this was?  Here’s a snippet from the last TfL Board Meeting in February:

Over the Christmas and New Year period, Underground services performed well.  In particular, there were only two significant incidents.  … . The post event de-briefs have shown that there was an overall reduction in incidents caused by alcohol/anti-social behaviour incidents across the network, with a significantly lower number of staff assaults after 04:00.

Well, thank goodness the new Mayor put that at the top of his transport priority list, eh?

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Advertising Gets a Haircut

May 7th, 2008 by MarthaRose
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Bojo is planning to reduce his press office from 73 to 50 and cut London’s advertising budget by £2 million.

This is actually a good idea. As well-done as a lot of Ken’s ad campaigns were, it’s rather hard to defend the cost. Another £2 million freed up for other, more important, projects sounds like a good deal. (We shall leave the question of what these more important projects may be for another time).

However, before we start toasting our blond bombshell too much, it’s worth noting that London-specific public-health campaigns also come under this advertising budget. Let’s hope that these more worthwhile endeavors don’t suffer the same fate as those that deserve to be cut.

After all, in this article about the planned spending cuts we are also told:

The mayor plans to get the message across with new posters to be unveiled advising passengers of the no-alcohol policy across the transport network including the underground and at bus stops.

Those posters have got to come from somewhere, Boris. Make that money count.

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(Partial) Drinking Ban Announced

May 7th, 2008 by Tom
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Not through the TfL press centre yet, though, but it’s on the BBC.  It’s seemingly a ban on the drinking of alcohol rather than the carrying of it, which is an important distinction, particularly if you want to take the bus home from the shops.  There’s one omission though:

Mr Johnson said: “I firmly believe that if we drive out so-called minor crime then we will be able to get a firm grip on more serious crime.

“That’s why from 1 June the drinking of alcohol will be banned from the tube, tram, bus, and Docklands Light Railway.”

What about London Overground trains?  From Gunnersbury to Richmond I can presumably get on the Overground and crack a can open, but if I get on the District Line train on the same route I get nicked, is that it?  Also National Rail seems to be excluded, presumably because the Mayor has no powers there.  Not that that stopped him attacking their fare policy during the campaign.

As ever, I’d like to see the exact wording of the ban and the legal background behind it, if anyone notices one.

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Just Saying, Is All

May 7th, 2008 by Tom
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TfL Press Releases April 2008 - 29

TfL Press Releases May 2008 (so far) - 1

May not mean anything, after all there has been a Bank Holiday weekend in that lot, but we should see about one a day really.

In other rune reading news, over at uk.transport.london John Band thinks the TfL leadership are safe:

[Y]esterday I played crazy golf with the Times’s Westminister correspondent and a corporate
finance bloke from TfL; they both reckon there’s no chance in hell that Boris is going to sack O’Toole, and that it’s unlikely he’ll sackHendy…

while Paul Corfield quotes Andrew Gilligan as saying they’re out on their ears come the summer:

Mr Gilligan says Hendy will be gone by the summer in his Standard article today.  The only reason for delay is that potential replacements are asking too much money.   Gilligan also says that Boris needs a rail experienced commissioner rather than a bus one - odd given that Mr Hendy has a large amount of knowledge about all the modes he’s responsible for.

Hendy is on £320k a year, which is a lot, but if what Paul reports is true* then it suggests that Boris is putting cutting the costs of the GLA ahead of finding the best man for the job.  Boris Watchers take note.

Elsewhere on the transport side:

  • the first new London Overground train is taking shape
  • the GE19 bridge for the East London Line Extension was successfully moved over the weekend (this is what I was expecting a press release for, incidentally, along with the ELLX Phase 2 work that Ken hinted had been approved, although this hasn’t been officially announced)
  • a Transport & Works Act application has been made for the next DLR extension, to Dagenham

There’s a fair bit of momentum to dissipate at TfL and the pounds are going into the ground at a rate of knots, but you’ve got to keep the pipeline stoked with new projects.  Ironically, Boris is going to spend a good deal  of time unveiling shiny new bits of Ken Livingstone’s legacy, and we’ll be watching to make sure he does the decent thing and gives credit where credit is due.

* Yes, it’s Gilligan, a partisan tabloid hack who’s spent months smearing Livingstone, but why would he now spend time smearing Boris?

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Playing with Trains

May 7th, 2008 by MarthaRose
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Success, ladies and gentlemen, may take years - decades, even - of hard graft and dedication. Failure takes only a moment and a poorly thought-through manifesto pledge.

Our new blond boy hasn’t even had a chance to get over his celebratory hang-over (I kid because I love), and he’s already facing a tube strike. Now, that’s not all that unusual in this Great City. Surely he can’t be blamed? He’s only been in charge five minutes!

Five minutes, it seems, is more than enough.

Bojo told us he would “look to reduce the disruption caused by strikes on the Tube by negotiating a no-strike deal with the unions.”

Yes, Boris told us he would take the right to strike away from the transport unions.

For some strange reason, the unions are not best pleased. They are also rather nonplussed – how could Boris have ever expected them to agree to this?

Looking at this policy, I’m starting to think that even Boris didn’t reckon he was going to win. Regardless of your views on Tube strikes, there was no way that this was ever going to work. Even without the recent fireworks between the government and prison offices over almost exactly the same issue, it’s pretty easy to see that no self-respecting union is going to agree to a no-strike deal.

Either Boris has absolutely no foresight (not improbable, of course), or he was counting on never having to follow through. It’s been mooted a couple of times, but this has convinced me that the plan was simply to rattle Labour, not actually defeat Ken. In that case, the workability of the manifesto pledges becomes irrelevant: Boris was never supposed to have to deliver on them.

Labour undermined, Cameron could swoop in later in the year for the win.

Unfortunately for the Conservatives, someone forgot to factor in Boris’ unnatural ability to have things fall into his lap. He won, and now he’s got to deliver these impossible pledges with a straight face. His choice: suffer the fallout of reneging on manifesto pledges, or attempt to do battle with the unions.

Link to Evening Standard article - even they can’t spin this into sounding like a good idea.

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Richard Barnbrook - A Freudian’s Dream

May 7th, 2008 by BenSix
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With the
impotence
of the London Assembly already established, it seems that much of it’s work will be concerned with restraining the ludicrous Richard Barnbrook. His acceptance speech portrayed him as an almost parodic example of a demagogue - berating the crowd, pounding the stand and looking every bit as if he’s been weaned on the speeches of Mussolini. It’ll certainly take a strong Mayor to ensure that he doesn’t hamper debate.

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Lesser London Assembly?

May 6th, 2008 by Tom
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I must be going senile.  Damian Hockney, the ex-Tory, ex-UKIP, ex-Veritas and now very much ex-Assembly member has written a really rather good article at Mayorwatch on how the new London Assembly is even more supine than the last one, which isn’t saying a lot.  The Assembly isn’t designed to be able to do much to stop the Mayoral will, but previously the Greens could at least get some traction on budgetary issues, siding with Labour in return for a quid pro quo.  You know, proper PR politics.

The new Assembly has a completely impregnable Conservative group of 11 votes which means that whatever budget Boris sets is automatically rubber stamped, since you need only 9 votes loyal to the Mayor to defeat any attempts to change it by the 14 non-Tories.  Therefore, if you didn’t vote for Boris or the local Tory and don’t live in one of the Tory boroughs from where Boris is drawing his team, you can get stuffed as far as accountability is concerned.  He doesn’t care about you.  Isn’t that rather wonderful?

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Revenge Of The Right

May 6th, 2008 by Tom
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So much for Big Tent Boris and the new caring, green, cuddly Tory Party.  The latest batch of Deputy Mayors has been announced and even a brief google research into the grim coterie of right wing flotsam the new Mayor has chosen to lord it over us suggests it’s going to be a long four years.  So, without further ado, here are Boris’ Eligible Bachelors:

Deputy Mayor Number 1 (Official One) - Richard Barnes.  Already fingered as one of the rabid car loving crew who sank the West London Tram and who think that TfL is run by ‘1979 throwbacks’, he was nailed on for this role, having been head of the Conservative Assembly group.  It’s not a role with a great deal of power, although he does take over if Boris swallows a bad oyster* and has to stand down.

Sample Contribution To London:

London Assembly member Richard Barnes and Mayor Ken Livingstone are having a spat over Heathrow Terminal 5 (T5) bus services. Mr. Barnes had submitted a question to Mr. Livingstone, but withdrew it ‘after it was exposed as being based on a lie,’ according to the Mayor’s website.

Mr. Barnes submitted a question concerning Transport for London’s (TfL) preparations for the opening of Heathrow T5 at the Mayor’s Question Time. This asked the Mayor to reconsider his position regarding ‘Transport for London’s decision to introduce no extra bus routes’ when the new terminal opens in March next year.

He withdrew his question, after it was pointed out that TfL plan to create 3 new bus routes, the 350, 423 and 482 to serve the new terminal. They will also extend the existing 490 and N9 routes to create new passenger links from areas including Southall, Feltham and Richmond directly to Terminal 5.

Deputy Mayor Number 2 (Policing) - Kit Malthouse.  Formerly Deputy Leader of Westminster Council, so at least he doesn’t have to get much of his business card redone.  Notable chiefly for wasting council taxpayers money (and, arguably, GLA money, since they had to fight it) on a doomed challenge to the congestion charge in 2002.  This was inexplicably not mentioned where Andrew Gilligan launched his final hatchet job on Livingstone just before the election, stentoriously taking the Mayor to task for wasting money on challenging Metronet.  Since Livingstone was proved right and Malthouse was proved wrong (the case bizarrely claimed the CC would increase air pollution) I call shenanigans on Mr. Malthouse.

Sample Contribution To London:

The Thames estuary is only four metres deep in parts and it would be relatively simple and cheap to construct an artificial island with a beautiful modern airport on it. All the planes would come in to land over the North Sea, which would mean a 24-hour operation, with no disturbance while expanding capacity, at a stroke. In fact, the airport could easily accommodate all the flights from Gatwick as well, meaning we could probably close it too.

[explanatory note: in 1974 the plans to do just that were ended by three basic facts; it's the wrong side of London, rising oil prices were affecting airline growth and the economy was slowing down.  All three are true today.  Still, it explains where Boris got his late campaign 'big idea' from, despite not having the whiff of the breath of a chance in hell of having the money or powers to do it.  Simple and cheap my arse, and I've got a civil engineering degree.].

Deputy Mayor Number 3 (Government Relations) - Ian Clement.  Formerly Leader of Bexley Council, the Government Relations bit sounds interesting.  There is a surprising amount of umbilical linkage between the UK Government and the GLA/Mayor, the latter’s Strategies have to have regard to national policy, for instance.  Therefore appointing someone to do the go-between is probably essential, if only to keep Boris away from meetings with easily frightened grey faced Whitehall mandarins.  We’re looking for a cool, urbane hand here, who can present a professional image away from the incoherent right wing anarchy I sense developing.

So what do we find?  He’s not actually been appointed to liaise with central government at all, he’s been brought in from the London Councils executive to cement the takeover and emasculation of the GLA by the Boroughs.  Note now how many of the Boris team are from Tory boroughs?  It’s deliberate, this is the Revenge of the Right in full flow.

Sample Contribution To London:

Bexley Council leader Ian Clement, who led the march along with Bexley Conservatives, said there were other ways to save money.

He told BBC London: “The NHS is a cash cow but there are ways to save money without doing what they do. There is nothing with efficiency [sic].

“It is about giving people a service. It’s about doing the right thing, I understand that but people need their local A&E. People need this to remain a district general hospital.”

Very little of any note really, seems to have kept his head down, his nose clean and climbed the ladder through Bexley Council.  Probably fairly hard-boiled (ex-TA member), but doesn’t seem to court publicity in the way Malthouse and Barnes have.  Campaigning against local NHS cuts is bread-and-butter stuff (and another absolute gift from New Labour to London’s Tories, come to that).

Senior Adviser Number 1 (Planning) - Sir Simon Milton.  They’ve evidently got bored with pretending these right-wing advisers are official roles by now.  Sir Simon is (wait for it….oh the suspense…can you guess?) a senior Tory from a Tory borough, in this case Westminster again, where he was/is council leader (I suspect the reason he’s an Adviser rather than a Deputy Mayor is that he may well be staying on).  Now, did the previous GLA regime have any planning problems with Westminster, I wonder.  Yes, of course they did, Milton was strongly opposed to new skyscrapers (I have to say I’m not a particular fan, but a few here and there are fine, and I’m actually quite impressed with current architectural fashion, which hasn’t always been the case) and regularly clashed with Livingstone on planning issues.  Again, one suspects he’s been brought in to make sure the old regime is dead and buried and the Tory boroughs are in charge.

Skyscrapernews.com is worried:

The first indications are now becoming obvious with Boris Johnson appointing, Sir Simon Milton as his senior advisor on planning whereas Ken Livingstone had access to Richard Rogers.

The gulf in creativity and vision between the two speaks volumes. One is the world famous Pritzker Prize winning architect who is widely recognised as one of the leading lights of his generation. The other is a City of Westminster Councillor who is a well known critic of the former mayor’s urban planning and architectural policies. He’s frequently supported NIMBY campaigns in London and tried to have Westminster Council exercise a veto over the planning decisions taken by neighbouring councils.

The redevelopment of urban spaces is also likely to suffer. Milton has long been critical of Rogers plans for creating a new group of public plazas and miniature parks through London, believing they are unrealistic because of the motorcar and the domination that roads exercises [sic] over our streets.

Triumph of the NIMBY, then, like Richard Barnes.  No nasty tall buildings and don’t touch our cars.  On that subject, Milton, along with Malthouse, came up with five tests for the congestion charge back in 2003 - looking at them I think it passed with flying colours, not that this will change their minds.

Well, that’s given us a taste of Boris-style government, and very mean-spirited, narrow-minded and sour it seems to me.  Don’t expect inclusivity, blood-stirring measures or eyecatching new initiatives from this lot; it’s a very, very small tent indeed, from a very, very small pool of extremely right-wing senior local government officials.

* the shellfish, not the smartcard.

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The Standard Of Journalism…

May 6th, 2008 by BenSix
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In The Independent, Andrew Gilligan is fuming at the suggestion that the Evening Standard - to quote Stephen Fry, ‘as grossly partisan as is permissible without actually dropping pretence and coming out as a Tory Party broadsheet’ - ‘won it for Boris’. His stories were, he writes, ‘factual and measured, thoroughly and transparently sourced’. The suggestion that his paper was in any way partisan is treated with equal scorn. They ‘looked – quite hard’ for material on Boris, but, like ‘the anti-Boris papers’, ‘came up…blank’. Boris’s past record of bigotry and scandal, as well as his platitudinous, and deeply contradictory, policies, apparently passed by the beady eyes of these investigative journalists.

On his Times Online blog Daniel Finkelstein has nothing but praise for The Standard. They were ‘true and important’, he writes, although he ‘[doesn't] think it is hyperbole to say that without the Standard’s journalism, Boris Johnson would not have won’. Humm…

The Mirror, meanwhile, reports on the ‘glitzy bash’ at Millbank Tower, and quotes Boris’s sister, Rachel, as saying “It’s been champagne all night…oysters…caviar…it’s been fantastic. God knows who paid for it.” We’re sure that the boys from the Bullingdon Club swung by to add their congratulations.

Rachel, however, had bad tidings to add. “I don’t think you can write him off as Prime Minister,” she said. “As we were driving here tonight, we passed Downing Street and I said to my children, ‘It’s going to be City Hall one year and it might be Downing Street another year’.” God help us all.

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