I usually refrain from a running commentary on Boris Johnson’s acts as mayor.  Some people have taken to follow his every move, and while it is a very valid exploit, I cannot hope to carry it out effectively*.

Today, though, I feel I must comment on the resignation of Johnson’s First Deputy Mayor.  Let’s not forget, this was a position that he created despite reasonable warnings at the time that such a position was against GLA rules (with good reason).  Tim Parker now, apparently, sees that the position was not a sensible one to inhabit, or indeed to exist to begin with.  This effectively sees the end of Johnson’s Deputy Mayor scheme.

Such an error in judgement in creating posts only to realise that there was a perfectly good reason why they did not exist to begin with is forgiveable.  To lose so many high-ranking members of your administration in a matter of months is shocking.

I hope for London’s sake that this is a repeat of the Winter, as Johnson’s campaign got a complete overhaul and turned from a joke to a highly successful operation.  If not, London will be mismanaged for the next 42 months.  With the Olympics approaching, the last thing we need is a lack of decent thinking at the top of London government.

As always, though, the Tory Troll has the most insightful comment on the subject:

But with ‘King Stooge’ out of the building, and with planning powers now passed back into the Mayor’s hands, we are now faced with the very real prospect of Boris Johnson actually doing his own job. These are scary times people.

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*To see it done properly, see Tory Troll and Boris Watch.

Concepts and artwork for the new Routemaster.

Via the indefatigable Tory Troll.

Via Pickled Politics:

Here are a list of popular festivals in London that currently receive financial support from the Mayor’s office or the London Development Agency.: Chinese New Year; St Patricks Day; St George’s Day; Vaisakhi; Africa Day; Baishakhi Mela; Pride and Soho Pride; Rise; Carnival del Pueblo; London Mela; Notting Hill Carnival; Liberty - disability arts festival; Thames Festival; Trafalgar Square summer festival; the Jewish Simcha on the Square; Chanukkah; Black History Month events; Diwali; Eid; Celebrating Sanctuary (refugee festival); Capital Age; Festival of Youth Arts.

Unsurprisingly, now Boris wants to cut funding from them all so they can rely on the businesses to support them. The guy is adamant on making London lifeless again. Meanwhile his office will spend over a quarter of a million on head-hunting alone.
This is just a start.

When Munira Mirza removed Rise’s anti-racist theme for Boris, she claimed Londoners, “deserve a great, free music festival.” The logic behind such a claim is fair; many Londoners don’t have the means or ability to organise street carnivals alone, so providing some support to ensure some can - and to make those festivals open to all - allows everyone to let off some steam. And, of course, the cultural elements allow Londoners to learn a little about each other and so reduce conflict within communities.

But, apparently, Londoners only deserve the one party now. What fun, eh?

Boris Johnson scrapped two more projects today - one on the grounds it might result in the accumulation of chewing gum. On his halting of plans to pedestrianise Parliament Square, he said:

“This scheme would have turned a green glade of heroes into a vast, blasted, chewing-gummed piazza.

“There is absolutely no sense in Londoners paying £18m from their already stretched transport budget in order to reduce capacity on London’s roads.”

Note BoJo’s strange lack of faith in humanity, whom he feels would be unable to respect his heroes. He damns the plan for possibly creating a, “vast, blasted piazza”; and yet fails to note that, in its present state, it’s virtually impossible to cross the Square in less than 10 minutes on foot. It’s left a vast, blasted, choked field surrounded by busy roads. Hardly a, “green glade,” then.

Perhaps more crucially, the Mayor’s scaled back plans for 60 hydrogen vehicles designed to act as prototypes for sustainable public transport. It’s a strange move for a man who claims to be committed to cleaner fuel and to the environment in general; those buses could represent an important step. Boris can ride his bicycle all he likes while the press watch - but he can’t expect to be taken seriously on green issues if he just ignores them.

BoJo appears to enjoy abandoning election promises. Today, one on the living wage:

London Mayor Boris Johnson has reneged on a pre-election promise that only hotels and restaurants paying a ‘London living wage’ would be promoted by Visit London ahead of the 2012 Olympics.

Johnson, who increased the London living wage from £7.20 to £7.45 an hour earlier this month, made the vow at an election debate held by campaign group London Citizens in Westminster on 9 April.

The Mayor initially denied making the promise in a letter to Caterersearch, but when we presented his press office with video proof, he then sent an updated letter, in which he claimed a partnership with businesses would be a more effective way of implementing a London-wide living wage.

In the updated letter, Johnson said: “During my election campaign, I supported a list of proposals on the living wage that included this idea. However, further work in this area has made it clear that a positive approach of partnership with business to promote the London living wage is more appropriate, and likely to be more effective in achieving the key goal of the wider implementation of the living wage.”

Emphasis mine. Let’s translate that statement:

“I broke a pledge made during the election, probably because I can’t be bothered to implement it. Because to do so, I’d need to put the squeeze on tight employers and make sure they paid decent wages. Instead, I’d prefer a few dinners - sorry, partnership- building exercises - with them. Thus, I can claim all of the credit while delivering nothing myself.”

If, of course, he ever meant it. The Mayor made that pledge, you may recall, at the London Citizens’ hustings while under intense abuse from the audience for his original opposition to the minimum wage. Who wouldn’t say a few shallow words at the start of the evening to silence the hecklers for the night?

Although it’s still customary to keep even false promises…

(Hat-tip: Dave Hill)

Boris claimed he’d be more open to scrutiny than Ken ever was. So, naturally, he’ll rearrange the second meeting of the City Hall Standards Committee he missed today to attend a photoshoot. The Troll informs us:

Has anyone seen the Mayor? I’m only asking because he’s just missed his second meeting of the City Hall Standards Committee.

Under discussion is the question of who should make sure he hasn’t employed any congenital liars, and how to avoid staff suing each other. So nothing that important really.

And that:

And with the Standards Committee being the only Assembly committee that he has any statutory commitment to attend, it is pretty disappointing that he has so far missed every single meeting.

Very true. If he’s to be accountable, he really does need to start attending the committees designed to hold him to account. That’s especially true of this committee, which today explored how Boris’ administration managed to miss Ray Lewis’ record - questions he really ought to answer.

It’s almost as though he’d prefer not too…

Remember one of Boris’ key points during the election campaign? He said he’d increase police presence on the streets in an attempt to tackle petty crime. And yet today, the Mayor announced swinging cuts of £12 million - including to the police, a move likely to reduce numbers. Tories on the Assembly defended the move thus:

“I understand the number of people employed by the met are at record levels and yet we still have problems with crime in London.

“We need to challenge the perception that has grown up in recent years that the solution is to just buy more and more people and to spend more and more money because that has not borne fruit in the past” (Richard Biggs AM)

Let’s cut that down - there have been more police on the streets for a short period as part of an attempt to tackle what everyone agrees is a deep-rooted problem. So, naturally, we should give up?

Increased police numbers won’t eradicate crime in London. Nor do they present a long term solution; they’re merely a sticking plaster over problems with deep socio-economic roots that need to be addressed. But, surely, they’re a necessary sticking plaster, to a certain extent? A cut in a force devised to protect the citizen during an attempt to tackle crime seems somewhat perverse. Especially when that attempt to tackle crime rather misses the point, and is largely based in police presence on the streets.

So much for increased spending on youth crime, then.

(Hat-tip: Tory Troll)

On Boris’ plans to criminalise young adults:

“Dear [Assembly Member]

I’m writing to you because I’m very concerned about the Mayor’s scheme to encourage shops not to sell alcohol to those between 18 and 21. You’re my Constituency Assembly Member, so I hope you’ll raise the issue with the Mayor.

The scheme might be voluntary, but the precedent it sets is disturbing. The drinking age is 18, not 21. The young people whom they move discriminates against are adults. If they want to buy alcohol, it’s their right. The GLA shouldn’t make decisions for them - unless they want them to behave like children.

It’s also the right of businesses to sell to whom they want. Many shop-owners are feeling the pinch, at present; some may need these sales to stay in business. And yet, they’ll feel obliged to comply, or be attacked for it. Who wants the editor of a local newspaper, hungry for lurid headlines, denouncing them as soft on yobs? Small businesses face a stark choice; lose money they can ill-afford, or get a bad name.

Nor will the scheme have many tangible benefits. The Mayor believes the drinking culture amongst young people to be deeply ingrained; so how does he think this will help? The move does nothing to address the desire for alcohol which makes binge-drinking happen. It makes it harder for people to get their alcohol - so they try a little harder to get it, and probably look beyond sources where real regulation is possible.

What the move will do is further alienate young adults. The media already demonises youth at every opportunity. This just adds to their social stereotype of young people as incurable monsters. A move against 18-21 year olds to tackle binge drinking, rather than a move against binge drinkers, suggests one thing; that all adults between 18 and 21 years of age are virtually alcoholic. That’s patently untrue, and rejects the vast majority of young adults who comply with the law. Why should they listen to their elders, when those elders just criminalise them? If the Mayor wants to address

I hope you’ll speak to the Mayor about this counter-productive and unjust scheme.

Best Regards,

[Concerned of London]“

Thoughts? I’ve an increasingly large facebook group protesting, and nothing to do with them. There’s little use in gathering an angry e-mob unless you mobilise them…

BoJo pretends to be a liberal Conservative. He’s transparently not; first, he banned alcohol on public transport, and now he wants to restrict access by under-21s to it. Thus:

Young adults will be banned from buying alcohol in shops under a scheme being backed by Mayor Boris Johnson.

Off-licence owners are to be asked to stop selling drink to under-21s, even though they are legally entitled to buy it at 18.

The voluntary scheme will start in Croydon and is likely to be rolled out across London.

Mr Johnson said that it was the type of solution that Londoners would welcome to the “huge problem” of binge-drinking by the young.

Let’s explore what this actually means. BoJo wants the state to encourage shops to actively discriminate against a group of adults on the basis of a factor beyond their control. That group has the legal rights of every other age-group - and potentially has done for three years.

And, of course, it won’t work. 18-21 year olds have been drinking for as long as can be remembered, and show no desire to stop. They’ve quite possibly been drinking since before their 18th birthday, and most will know how to get alcohol without the state’s consent. So, it won’t eliminate drinking; it’ll simply drive it underground, beyond any reasonable hope of regulation.

So - discriminatory, ineffective and generally illiberal. 18-21 year old are adults with full legal rights and who pay taxes - and yet BoJo wants to treat them like children. He’s not a liberal. He’s a disgusting paternalist willing to sacrifice the rights of a minority for populism’s sake.

From an account of anti-racist festival Rise. Apparently, some discontent:

Did you know Boris Johnson actually got rid of the anti-racism message of the Rise festival this year? Every single thing he’s done since he became mayor I despise, and I was pleased to see a conga of people at the festival singing “Boris is a cunt, Boris is a cunt, na na na na, na na na na”. Only in London.

Quite right.

(Via Dave Hill)