Liberal Burblings

Archive for the ‘Mayor of London’ Category

From Dave Hill on Comment is Free:

The alleged crony in question is Veronica Wadley who, as editor of the Evening Standard during the 2008 mayoral election campaign, daily waged a zealous war against Johnson’s opponent Ken Livingstone. In some ways, it did her no good: under a new owner the first large act of her successor was to woo lost readers by launching an advertising campaign apologising for the previous regime. Johnson, though, has remained a Wadley fan.

In late April this year, the couple lunched. Afterwards, Wadley wrote Johnson a note, daintily seeking his blessing to apply for the post of chair of Arts Council England’s London region which he had “mentioned” while they dined. Three people presided at her subsequent first interview. One was Munira Mirza, Johnson’s culture adviser. The other two were ACE chair Liz Forgan (who also chairs the Scott Trust, which owns the Guardian) and Sir David Durie, a former governor of Gibraltar, who provided independent oversight.

Durie, as was later made clear to him, was a panellist without a vote. But he knows what he saw, and didn’t like what happened next. Both he and Forgan considered Wadley to lack the necessary arts background, and claim that she interviewed markedly less well than three other candidates before her. Both claim it was agreed at the end of the interview meeting that those three, and not Wadley, would go forward to a second, final interview with the mayor. Both made clear their dismay on learning a few days later that, in fact, the mayor intended interviewing Wadley anyway at the expense of one of the other three.

Johnson later consented to seeing the elbowed candidate too, but required little time to make his final choice. Wadley was the last of the four he saw. Her appointment with him, witnessed only by a senior GLA official, was for 3.30pm on 24 July. A letter informing her that she was the mayor’s pick was being drafted by 5.15pm on the same day. The saga didn’t end there. Johnson needed culture secretary Ben Bradshaw’s approval of his choice. After consulting Forgan, Bradshaw declined to oblige. Johnson’s riposte has been to start a rerun of the whole process, scheduling it to end handily close to an expected change of government and surely heartened by shadow culture secretary Jeremy Hunt’s indication that he, unlike Bradshaw, wouldn’t prevent Johnson from getting his way. The job was re-advertised on Monday. Aside from Wadley, it seems that only rejection addicts need apply.

For a racier and, indeed, fruitier narration of these events, try Alastair Campbell.

An enjoyable little video of Boris being confronted, on his bicycle, about Rape crisis centres.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjcaRzAUiXc&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]

Er…..A weekly article for the Telegraph, that is. From the BBC’s Hard Talk:

It’s chicken feed. I think that frankly there’s absolutely no reason at all why I should not knock off an article as a way of relaxation. I write anyway, I happen to write extremely fast. I don’t see why on a Sunday morning I shouldn’t knock off an article – if someone wants to pay me for that article then that’s their lookout and of course I make a substantial donation to charity.

Just while you’re trying to stop your head spinning (understanding any outburst from Boris is a bit like having one’s head stuck inside a washing machine while it’s on fast spin) let me point out that the “chicken feed” he refers to is the alleged £250,000 a year he receives for his Telegraph articles on top of the, presumably “half chicken feed”, £140,000 mayoral salary he gets.

I find this all very depressing. It is very tiresome indeed that the Mayor of London reckons that a quarter of a million pounds – more than ten times the UK average salary – is “chicken feed” and is, furthermore, happy to declare that to the public.

It is hard to decide what attitude brings forward such a statement. Is it the “I’m an arrogant toff with loads of dosh but at least I am honest and open about it and people love me don’t they? – or at least they love my lovely hair don’t they?” attitude?

Or is it the “I really don’t know what I am saying: I just open my mouth and all sorts of nonsense falls out. I really couldn’t care if anyone objects to it, because we’ve got the next few elections sewn up anyway” attitude?

Or…are there any other attitudes that could be behind this? I am genuinely anxious to find out.

Could it be the “look, of course it is lots of money, but if I call it ‘chicken feed’ people earning £20,000 a year won’t start thinking I am a pompous arrogant twit because they will believe that it doesn’t mean a lot to me and therefore they shouldn’t worry about it” attitude? (Sorry that one is rather obscure, but I am hauling a whole variety of foreign objects up the flagpost here so stick with me and let’s see if any of them get saluted). That is, the “Keep calm and carry on – nothing to see here attitude but oops it doesn’t quite work but who gives a monkeys? – I certainly don’t, I am not going to run for a second term and there’s a cabinet job with my name on it and I’ve got the Camster by the short and wotsits” attitude?

I think we should be told. But we may never know.

Hardly a day goes by without me thanking the Lord for Boris Johnson. He certainly fills in the twiddling bits on the mosaic of life!

Just when you think he’s got all sensible and is concentrating on mundane things like snow types (right or wrong, huge or not) the good-natured gaffe geyser which is Boris explodes into a vast spurt of life enhancing activity.

The latest Boris emission is this one:

The Tory mayor is said to have used the F-word 10 times and accused Keith Vaz, the Labour chairman of the home affairs committee, of talking “bullshit” during a telephone call, according to the London Evening Standard.
Minutes of the conversation were produced and circulated to members of the committee, the Standard reported. Johnson’s aides said he had used the F-word no more than two or three times and was disappointed that a private conversation had been made public.

…Johnson wrote back to Vaz saying he had fully cooperated with the committee and regretted suggestions to the contrary. However, he is said to have been more forceful in his telephone conversation with Vaz, saying: “The key point that is not getting across: I didn’t give any f***ing information to Cameron,” according to the Standard.

Hardly a day goes by without me thanking the Lord for Boris Johnson. He certainly fills in the twiddling bits on the mosaic of life!

Just when you think he’s got all sensible and is concentrating on mundane things like snow types (right or wrong, huge or not) the good-natured gaffe geyser which is Boris explodes into a vast spurt of life enhancing activity.

The latest Boris emission is this one:

The Tory mayor is said to have used the F-word 10 times and accused Keith Vaz, the Labour chairman of the home affairs committee, of talking “bullshit” during a telephone call, according to the London Evening Standard.
Minutes of the conversation were produced and circulated to members of the committee, the Standard reported. Johnson’s aides said he had used the F-word no more than two or three times and was disappointed that a private conversation had been made public.

…Johnson wrote back to Vaz saying he had fully cooperated with the committee and regretted suggestions to the contrary. However, he is said to have been more forceful in his telephone conversation with Vaz, saying: “The key point that is not getting across: I didn’t give any f***ing information to Cameron,” according to the Standard.

Boris was on a 400 foot dredger yesterday, sailing up and down the Thames Estuary to find somewhere to stick an airport.

What a pillock!

He just doesn’t get it does he? There is a simple one-word reason why an airport in the Thames Estuary is a complete non-starter:

Birds.

More specifically, over 200,000 wild fowl and wading birds which overwinter in the estuary, plus thousands which visit there while migrating.

A report by the Central Science Laboratory stated:

It is difficult to envisage a more problematic site anywhere in the world.

Perhaps Boris should read this article from his own newspaper, the Telegraph:

One recent headline – London estuary airport best for environment, says Johnson – suggests he has a double problem: memory loss and a lack of news cuttings, not only from the 1960s and 70s, but from as recently as six years ago.
Had this not been apparently the case, he would have been well aware of the outcome of past proposals for Thames mouth flight terminals. One reason they failed was the environmental damage they would cause.
There were other considerations – notably danger of aircraft colliding with flocks of birds. As opposition mounted in 2002 to plans to build an £11.5 billion airport on Kent’s wildlife-rich Cliffe Marshes, conservation hopes were boosted by a Central Science Laboratory report.
It notes that 200,000 wildfowl and wading birds overwinter in the Thames estuary, plus thousands on migration – and the obvious way to protect aircraft would be by not developing there.
As the report put it: “It is difficult to envisage a more problematic site anywhere in the world.”
Something else the London Mayor has not mentioned while enthusing over his idea for a man-made island for international air traffic is that the whole area is covered by the EU-backed Thames Estuary and Marshes Special Protection Area.
That means extra economic drawbacks and other headaches highlighted during the Cliffe controversy by Sir Martin Doughty, chairman of the what was then called English Nature.
He said: “Under European law, new land would have to be set aside for the migratory birds affected. The cost of this task would be huge and there simply may not be enough land available in the southeast to achieve it.”
Proposals for the Cliff Marshes airport were in due course dropped – just as the case for a Third London Airport on the brent goose-haunted Maplin Sands, Essex, didn’t survive the vigorous opposition 30 years earlier.
Mr Johnson’s argument on the lines of “if Hong Kong can do it, why not London” has a big flaw. In the Far East, internationally important environments have been destroyed by major engineering projects repeatedly, with scant regard for the views of conservationists. Here the approach is very different.
He can be sure of a battle with the country’s leading conservation bodies, which are ready to go for a “hat trick” of victories. It has already started following the recent launch of Waterbirds in the UK 2006/2007, a report stressing the international importance of UK wetlands to 43 wetland bird species.
The report stems from a continuous study which has its roots in the Third London Airport row that began in the late 1960s. It rates the Thames Estuary in the UK’s top five out of 143 sites nationwide due to the high number of waterbirds found there during winter or migration periods.
The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds has been quick to point out that “this is further confirmation that the idea of an international airport anywhere in the Thames Estuary is a complete non-starter.”
Chris Corrigan, RSPB South East’s regional director, prominent in the campaign that helped kill the Cliffe Marshes project, said: “If ever Boris needed proof of the environmental cost involved in building a Thames Estuary airport, this report – which actually came about in response to a past airport proposal – is it.
“For years we have been pointing to the estuary’s importance for countless species and here, in black and white yet again, is proof of just how remarkable the area really is for wildlife.
“The nearby Swale and Medway Estuaries, similarly recognised by this report for their international importance, will also lose out if an airport went ahead. If Boris thinks building an airport anywhere in this area is viable, this report shows he needs to think again.”