Debate, at last!
You can find the first televised debate between the two candidates who stand a chance of winning as well as Brian Paddick here.
Paddick did a good job of making the main issue crime with his speech while Ken batted aside the question over terms as if it were a fly. He is not “Beholden to anyone” he says, which is of course entirely true and perhaps not the case with Johnson. It is easy to forget just what a skilled politician he is, especially when his adversary gave a speech that fell into the notorious “Too much, too fast” folly that debaters are frequently culpable of. He also pronounced “Londoners really care about” as “Rarely care about”, which given that he followed with a complaint about the much-demonised but entirely legitimate Hugo Chavez seemed unintentionally apt. A skilled listener can hear, absorb and appreciate all of the material at even the swiftest of rates but the average ear simply ceases to process. His response to Paxman was a perfect contrast to Ken: overly long and blustery.
His overly optimistic hopes for engagement with the unions were a mixture of pure pathos and absolute hilarity.
I shall gives the whole thing a proper viewing and type up my thoughts once I have.
It seems that Ali beat me to it and considers the decision “The two best between ten evils”. My own view differs substantially:
Boris’ failure was obvious and quite a joy to behold. He not only demonstrated himself to be overwhelmed in the position he had placed himself but also came across as boorish and loud. The interruptions from him began early and remained a constant natter.
It seems that he has been told a few things from people who thought they knew what they were talking about but unfortunately this is far from enough to make him well informed. The cannabis claims he made have been demonstrated by a comprehensive study to be lies intended to make draconian policies more tolerable to hypocrite boomers. We smoked the stuff back then but it’s just not the same. So runs the meme, but reality is of another form. There are more pungent strains on offer but the norm is as potent as it ever was, not more so.
His comments on crime also demonstrated his position as someone exposed to the talking points of the hard right. Stamping out minor crimes was the way you stamp out minor ones, apparently. This is the view concocted by middle aged right wingers and it shows. For instance if you attempt to end rape by ending graffiti you will fail. Graffiti is an element of youth culture as well as hip-hop culture. Performing it means that you are most likely influenced by that culture in your behaviour and use walls and spray-cans as your medium. It is not an early warning sign that you are about to become a rapist.
Brian Paddick did not get to say a lot but to be honest I don’t really mind. He should not have really been there, given that all of the other candidates who stood no chance of winning were excluded. He did raise a few valuable points but did not pursue the only tactic worthwhile in his position: opting for a candidate he wished to destroy and doing all that he could to make it so. Instead he distributed his attacks pretty fairly and although they were fierce he probably did less than Paxman.
Speaking of which, the host was his usual self, rendered cynical and fierce by decades of dealing with slippery political types. He pounding Boris heavily and pleasingly over his crude evasions from the question of a figure. This continued for quite some time and although not epic to the scale of “Did you threaten to overwhelm him?” proportions it was still substantial and displayed his subject’s ignorance perfectly.
A rather odd quirk of the set-up was that Paxman was facing a camera while flanked along the right by the candidates. This meant that he had to turn around to face them but he did so with ease, occasionally advancing when one was being especially recalcitrant in a menacing fashion.
Livingstone meanwhile seemed to have began a shaky start but, for once, ignorance actually seemed beneficial. It seems that his approach towards fund-raising was…Not to. He, perhaps rather inaccurately, seems to have assumed that they would take care of themselves and has little knowledge as to who is giving him funds. This is advantageous in that he is effectively incorruptible as he has no clue as to who is attempting to be his paymaster. Boris, meanwhile, met up with his old chums and had an upper class whip-around. A pity that that went unmentioned.
To my surprise I found Ken most convincing. Ali claims he dodged questions but none spring to mind so perhaps he needs to elaborate. He painted the overly rosy painting of London that a man in his position needs to but to be frank I love the city and I don’t consider it a “City in Distress” or any other such alarmist nonsense.
Ken’s response to the worrying trend of teenage killings is also notable for him in it approvingly quoting Tony Blair. Not a sight you see every day.
Overall I found him far more charming and winning than I had anticipated. Of the three he was unquestionably the one who seemed most comfortable {although perhaps Brian Paddicks dependence upon uncalled for rage discounts him} as well as the one who seemed most fit for office. He was no fire-brand and seemed largely calm and in his element. His grasp of the facts was a stark contrast to that of Boris.
I thought all three were uninspiring. Boris Johnson was stupidly verbose, Ken Livingstone refused to answer key questions and tried to subtly slur his opponents, and Brian Paddick was his usual pseudo-aggressive self. I know I met some opposition when I last complained about the uninspiring bunch we have to choose from, but I stand by my judgement that this is a race to be judged better two of ten evils.
BAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW.
Paddick prides himself on his law and order credentials yet I can’t really think of any proper policy he has on the subject. It seems to be much more “there were lots of murders last year, I used to be a policeman till I got demoted, I’ll fix it somehow…” I can’t really see why a man with a vendetta against Ian Blair would be any better than Ken at tackling crime, who has cut the overall murder rate by 28% (despite the sadness of the heavily covered 27 murders of youths last year), rape by 25 per cent and crime overall for the last five years.
Boris Johnson’s crime policy revolves around “tackling small-scale anti-social behaviour [as it] stops young people going on to more serious crimes [such as knife crime]“. Now I know there’s such a thing as the slipperly slope but I don’t think listening to music too loud on a bus or vandalism is much of an indication of persuing a life in knife crime… And we he talks of small-scale, he really means it. He’s tackling the buses with the grand total of FIFTY police officers.
Hey there Ben,
Looks like we largely agree on Boris’ flawed analysis of crime. He uses the “Broken Window” theory rather than “Slippery Slope”, that being that gradual lack of respect for the environment evidenced by fly tipping and so on is what leads to full on GBH, murder and rape. It gained some ground after the “Zero Tolerance” policy slashed crime rates but there have been policies which reduced it even more in a much less draconian manner.
As for buses: well there is a surprising amount of crime on them. There have even been knifings and muggings of late. People are wary of stopping the criminals for fear of retaliation, despite the security cameras. So this is perhaps not a terrible policy but I suspect the presence of community support officers {which happens already} is enough here. It just needs extension.
I think CCTV, although not necessarily reducing crime by large amounts (it can act as a bit of a deterrent on buses) is effective in reducing the fear of crime, which is the biggest worry amongst the young despite having actually declined. I agree with you about PCSOs - it’s about having someone in uniform, firstly as a deterrent (although again, I believe crime on buses is ceclining) but most importantly about reducing the fear of crime. It’s a complete waste of money to have a real police officer just sitting on a bus.
Ken is extending the Safer Transport Teams scheme started last year, whereby large numbers of PCSOs (18 I think) with a PC and two Sergeants are deployed onto buses in targeted moves to reassure the public.
I have a couple of responses to Ben in comment #5
Of course fear of crime is the biggest worry (fear / worry…) but crime is the genuine danger. What kind of politician responds to opinion polls on fear of crime instead of crime rates? Police should be deployed according to need, not as a response to misplaced fear.
Here, again, your argument is concerning. PCSOs should be community officers - working in the community. In this role they are good. They are a recognisable face, breaking down the “us and them” mentality between potential petty criminals and the police. They should not be treated as sub-police officers, used only for the sight of their uniform. The PCSO scheme has so much potential because it takes the uniform and puts a face behind and person within the uniform. You seem to see them as spare bodies so people will feel safer.
The PCSO policy has potential so long as you keep your perverse inversion of it well away from reality.
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As an aside - and it’s not an argument that I want to get drawn on here - I firmly believe that part of the rise in fear of crime is a direct result of Labour’s authoritarian legislation.
“and it’s not an argument that I want to get drawn on here”
Then why mention it?
No, it’s not. There was a peak once free travel was introduced for under-18s on the buses but since then it’s stabilised and last year, I believe crime on buses actually went down by 20%. Of course, this is rarely reported and everyone assumes Johnson is right when he suggests London’s a few crimes away from downtown Jo’burg.
You make a claim for community policing, I can’t see it being realistic in a city of over seven million that everyone’s going to know the bobbie on his bike on the street corner. What PCSOs can do is what their mission statement sets out to achieve: “support the work of your local police force and provide a visible and reassuring presence on the streets… Police Community Support Officers particularly work to reassure the public and to tackle the social menace of anti-social behaviour.” On the basis of this, I really can’t see how I’m making a perverse interpretation of their real function.
You can’t just say to people, “You have an irrational fear of crime” when they’re scared. You need to reassure them that they’re safe. That makes for decent community policing, because the community feels more comfortable and so is more at ease with itself.
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It may not surprise you to know that anti-terror legislation (I can’t think of anything else which could be considered particularly authoritarian) does not increase the fear in crime.
Doug in #7 - it’s like one candidate in an election making a statement declaring their lack of interest in the news that his/her opponant has a history of bovine sexual escapades. I did want to raise the issue, but didn’t want to be accused of totally changing the direction of the discussion
Ben in #8 - I do not suffer greatly from crime on buses - indeed, I feel less safe walking from the bus stop to my door than I do whilst travelling. (Note here that I have no knowledge of fact, but mere perception. Will you allocate police according to statistics or my perception?) I fear this discussion really bases itself in what role one believes the police should take in society. I believe firmly that the police force is there to uphold law and order - to catch criminals and preferably to prevent crime in the first place. To this end, I couldn’t care less if I felt at risk from crime on a bus if a police officer was busy raiding a terror cell - my perception of fear of crime should have nothing to do with how the police are deployed.
I like the principle of community policing simply because I believe it is a necessary link in cutting crime. Community Support officers are there to foster relationships with communities in order to bring crime rates down, not to act like a scarecrow on buses so you feel safer while you travel.
The problem is that Ken was lying, and demonstrably so, when he claimed ignorance of who was funding him. He is just another corrupt “leftie”, Derek Hatton eat your heart out.
“Brian Paddick did not get to say a lot but to be honest I don’t really mind. He should not have really been there, given that all of the other candidates who stood no chance of winning were excluded.”
You don’t get to decide who stands a chance of winning, and neither does the BBC. It’s in the hands of the voters. Presumably the BBC invited the Labour, Tory and Lib Dem candidtes along because those are the three parties with representation in the Commons, and which have occupied the top three places in both previous mayoral elections (allowing for the fact that Ken ran as an independent in 2000, of course). Can you think of a fairer way for a state-funded broadcaster, with a duty of neutrality, to behave?
Jonny, I couldn’t agree more. It’s a shame that all 10 candidated weren’t there, if only to expose the idiocy of the BNP candidate.
I think a debate between 10 would be pretty unwieldy, and make for bad TV, but in principle I think you’re completely right. I also quite agree about the BNP - the best way to beat them is to debate against them; they’ll shed votes very quickly when people see them cross-examined by a decent interviewer.