Boris Watch

The Evening Standard is tentatively reporting on Boris’s plans for curbing adolescent crime. If it’s correct, then it indicates that the Mayor is attempting to satisfy both the hard and the progressive factions.
Boris will apparently spend £100 million on a variety of education initiatives. These range from school programmes, which we detailed previously, to ‘about [...]

Boris is to give £710,000 of funds to three educational programmes motivated towards deterring youths from “the lure of gangs and criminal activity“. In a statement, the Mayor said:
‘These projects are perfect examples of the youth initiatives we desperately need across London to engage young people. They offer guidance, information and most importantly steer young [...]

Announcing the impending arrival of his budget, Boris stressed the importance of anti-crime measures:
“Crime is the number one issue for Londoners. I will build on the
early measures I have introduced such as the alcohol ban on the tube
and extra 440 safer transport police officers. Tackling the long-term
root causes of crime and violence and ensuring a [...]

So Boris did indeed axe the CO2 charge earlier, apparently losing TfL £30-60m a year in revenue, but he still claims to want to pursue the £500m, ten-year cycling programme Ken planned to fund with the extra income.
And now the Greens have spotted another bit of dodgy maths, in relation to the much-heralded savings on [...]

In a written response to a question by Darren Johnson, Boris last week refused to reveal how much the public was paying for his team of his advisers. Today, however, we see that slyly imbedded in a report to the Business Management and Administration Committee is the admission that the pay of these consultants ‘will [...]