please empty your brain below
Ken is nearly 67.
Ken was good in his day. That was yesterday. Time he retired.
"The cost of travel for many people in London is extremely high and I think it is scandalous for the Mayor to sit here and tell the people of London there is absolutely nothing he can do"
Shame it was privatised in a sale and leaseback deal to a certain Mr Stan Lucipher a while back, then.
It would be interesting to see the balance between the two.
"The choice is between going back to the high tax, high spending creed of a bunch of taxpayer funded, Châteauneuf-du-Pape swilling, Outer London ignoring, car hating, semi-reformed Trotsyisksts and bendy bus fetishists whose approach to Government helped to get this country into this economic mess, or going forward with sensible, moderate and cost-effective government that invests in our future."
dg writes: Unlike all the others, #12 is cut-and-pasted from the Back Boris website. Even down to the fact that they can't spell Trotskyists.
I also like Jenny and Siobhan and am thinking of which I should plump for as second preference.
Boris may be funny and at times charming but, ultimately, he represents the selfish, the mean spirited, the small minded curtain twitchers, short termist big money and the climate change deniers.
Boris has done nothing for London except revved up the Chelsea tractor and thrown the thing into reverse.
But ee's funny, innit?
:O(
CF
Bear in mind that DG hates Boris... wonder what he's planning to do with all this lot... (other than telling those of us who've commented in this box that the one for such reasons is under the link to no. 25 in the post)
But you are right that Ooona K would have been a much better option than the cynical old crook.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/juliang2006/6982757374/
Nuff said
BTW DG there are 3 NB4Ls actually in London (numbers 1,2 and 6) but only 2 are allowed out at the same time. I see Londonbusroutes.net say a third will be in service from the weekend but this rather depends on another bus being delivered.
Boris.
a) because he isn't Ken
b) even better, he isn't Jenny Jones
Is not riven with class hatred. Does not need to galavant around the world to support various the dictators or terrorists that are the lefts latest cause celebre and pretend these were somehow promoting London. After all Cuba and Venezuela are important markets for London tourism and trade.
He also brags about his three white elephants
- a bus which costs far more than a conventional hybrid, and has the energy-hungry combination of airconditioning and an open platform: equivalent to leaving the door open on a fridge - the aircon is trying to cool dowen the entire city!
- a collection of blue paint splodges connecting accident black spots together.
- a new transport link which will be slower than the existing service and only provides a direct connection between two places, although hardly anyone is likely to visit both on the same day - lots of people go to Excel, lots of people go to O2, but who will want to go from one to t'other?
Keeps his promises? Well, sadly he's thrown the baby out with the bathwater on the bendies: the queues on the 521 are back to pre-2002 levels.
And despite his promises, my station is still in the wrong zone.
Siobhan Benita is my first choice, for various reasons but primarily her education policy (and in the expectation that she won't get that third runway to fly!), with KL as a pragmatic second.
I was a supporter of his for years, but that was before he invited every Jew hating Imam over, at our expensive, for a personal love fest. Also before George Galloway promised 900,000 (approx)London Muslim votes to guarantee his election. Does that count as gerrymandering?
Ken is the only candidate who says things like "Jews don't vote for me because they're too rich".
Let me put him right on this point. We don't vote for him because we think his overt dislike for us, or for any ethnic group of Londoners, makes him unacceptable as Mayor.
I think the biggest reason is probably 9. Although the flesh creeping thing is a close second, not helped by Ken's appalling decision to go outside in his braces.
I think the biggest frustration must be that Labour have been unable to find a better candidate than Ken. I wonder how many of those on here planning to vote for Boris are genuinely supporters of his and how many are just voting against Ken.
Surprised not to see the DG irony flag - http://diamondgeezer.blogspot.co.uk/2007/05/isnt-it-ironic.html - being hoisted.Looking at what Boris and Ken have, respectively, done for London gives you a better idea of how to vote.
Boris has:
» Spent public money on a "100% privately funded" and largely useless cable car.
» Cancelled the Dagenham Dock extension, Cross River Tram, Croydon Tramlink extension, and other projects, which in some cases were already funded and ready to start, at untold social cost.
» Poured millions into a developing a new bus which is slightly more efficient than existing hybrids, but can never be sold to any other city, and basically deals with the existing problem of fare-dodging by employing an extra member of staff who could have been just as usefully employed on a bendy bus.
» Dropped out of a pledge to replace London's bus fleet with actual new hybrid buses in favour of the above.
Ken has:
» Introduced Travelcards. (30 years ago.)
» Introduced the fare zones system. (30 years ago.)
» Cut fares drastically using public subsidy. Who says he can't do it again? Of course, this relies on the Bromley Tories not putting a stop to it again...
» Introduced the Oyster card.
» Created the London Overground network and vastly improved the old Silverlink service. (Boris later claimed credit for this.)
» Built the East London line. (Boris later claimed credit for this.)
» Forced the suburban train companies to accept Oyster cards. (Boris later claimed credit for this.)
» Built all the DLR extensions which Boris didn't cancel. (Boris later claimed credit for this.) [1]
Although he also:
» Purchased a fleet of buses which, after they'd stopped exploding, turned out to be a fare-dodger's paradise.
» Campaigned against tax avoidance while avoiding tax.
» Broke several manifesto pledges, such as not scrapping Routemasters and not raising fares.
» Tried to force through unpopular and less than necessary projects like the West London Tram.
» Brought the five ring circus and its accompanying unprecedented social cleansing to the East End. (Apparently some people think this should be listed in the other section.)
» Trod on a lot of very important toes.
Neither can really claim credit for:
» The cycle hire scheme and the blue stripes, both of which were in embryonic form at the time of the last election.
» The abolition of the PPP - which half-collapsed under Ken and half-collapsed under Boris.
» Crossrail, which is almost older than Ken's time at the GLC, and ended up being funded by Boris on the political advice of Ken.
» The Croxley Rail Link, which is definitely older than the GLC, and only got funded because George Osborne was desperate.
[1] I have a vivid memory of the Stratford International extension on the day it opened, and I deliberately got the second train out of the new terminus, which was a much more revealing experience than getting the first one. (The very first train was an 'enthusiasts' run', with three cars of shiny new stock, whereas every subsequent - and much emptier - train was two cars of 15-year-old stock.) Anyway, I was surprised to discover a TV crew taking advantage of the quiet to film a press release in the front of the train, with a DLR bigwig standing there obligingly reciting the line "This is a great day for the DLR, the final piece in the jigsaw, etc. etc." over and over whenever he could find a long enough gap between automated announcements. Anyway, between two of the many failed takes, I took the opportunity to ask him, "I thought the final piece in the jigsaw was Dagenham Dock?" He replied, "Yes, but I'm not telling the press that!"
Unfortunately Boris does.
I see from the Evening Standard that the first test run of the dangleway ran today - anyone would think there was an election tomorrow.
Ken is nearly 67.
Boris was good in his day. That was yesterday. Time he retired.
It's more interesting to ask why people feel such strong dislike for one candidate they want to vote against him, despite his arguably better track record as mayor. It would also be interesting to think about why we have two such uninspiring candidates and what that says about the job of London Mayor and, more widely, the state of British politics generally but that may be beyond the scope of this blog and its comment thread.
1) I still remember the BoJo 'Parks Scheme' - probably after hearing about it here - and my initial scepticism as to whether the large chunks of money being talked about (£200,000 for each park that won its local vote) would actually be spent, or whether the whole thing was just a grand PR exercise, from which there would be little actual end result.
I was happy to be proved wrong: the money DID actually get spent.
2) It was good to see the way BJ confronted Westminster City Council over their plans to charge for evening and Sunday parking.
3) It was good to see BJ giving the OK for motorcyclists to continue using [certain] bus lanes, following an initial trial period.
4) I actually had, in the past, tried very hard to like Ken. The day that stopped was when he announced his proposals to more than double the Congestion Zone charge for people with "big" cars. Although I think he threw in some reference to 'gas guzzlers' to make it sound 'environmental' it was all just a bit too obvious that the interests behind the idea were not so much green, as red, and showed me how vindictive the Left can actually be.
2) Who the hell drives into Westminster anyway? Apart from Evening Standard journalists? And what about all those multi-storey car parks? The Daily Boris - ahem - Evening Standard's campaign against that always puzzled me, because it seemed like a damned good idea to me.
3) The trial had mixed and disputed results (journey times decreased because motorcyclists broke the speed limit and crashed more), and even if it had worked well, it's not exactly a bold policy step...
4) Way to be a stereotypical Internet commenter, there. I almost cricked my neck trying to follow your logic. Ken proposed a financial incentive to drive smaller (and less polluting - thousands of deaths per year, spraying glue on the roads, ahem) cars - therefore - COMMIE TAKEOVER!!11 No, much like trying to reduce the numbers of people driving into the borough best served by public transport in the country, it's eminently sensible. But I can see from the common theme in your points that you're a petrol-head, and since Boris has been an extremely pro-car and anti-cyclist and anti-pedestrian mayor, you don't need me to tell you which way to vote.
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