Well, well. Here we go again. Not content with overlooking the existence of a key Olympics memo, forgetting that he spent £465,000 on consultants, both ruling out and also not ruling out North Kent as an airport location, both wanting a statue of Sir Keith Park on the fourth plinth and yet also not wanting one, and of course also failing to ensure that full checks were carried out before he appointed senior staff, Boris has now tried to dodge another election promise.
By claiming he never made it.
Which is a bit of a problem given that he was filmed making it.
Caterersearch has the story:
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 … 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.
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12 Comments
Boris’ broken election promises are a truly dreadful record. One must wonder, though, what Brian Paddick would have done in office. He was nearly the Conservative candidate, after all…
Arguably more important is his failure to make good on his commitment to residents of SW London to rezone a number of stations from zone 6 to zone 5.
These zone 6 stations are closer to central London than many zone 5 stations and recent fare increases have been been punitative for commuters and were to be ameliorated by rezoning.
If Boris is simply going to ignore vital commitments like this then I suspect Tory results in 2010 may not be as good as they’d like to think…
Brian Paddick was asked by the Tories and he said no. I don’t see what was “nearly” about that.
The guy forgets to comb his hair. What do you expect – LOL.
[Moderated as, despite the name given, this comments appears to have come from a Conservative activist who has never been a Liberal Democrat. If this isn’t the case, do get in touch to clarify matters.]
Should we really be moderating posts simply because the poster might be lying about which party they support (or used to support)?
I think so, yes. If they’re misrepresenting their position, other posters will view their words differently and the whole conversation is sent in a false direction, which is a misuse of the purpose of this site. It’s wilful destruction of a similar sort to just plain old abusive/threatening language. Open disagreement/dispute from another party, of course, is totally different.
Hmm, well anyone can form an argument of the ‘I used to think this, but now I think this’ line, or ‘I used to support you, but now you’re rubbish’ line, and it’s up the reader to discern whether to give this any credence. We don’t need protection, do we? Especially as names such as “Former Lib Dem” provoke cynicism in themselves. Generally regulating these supposedly open comment areas fails to work as it inevitably leads to inconsistencies.
I must confess that I didn’t see the post, though; so it may have been worse (and / or different) to how I’m imagining.
Hilarious – the only former LibDem is a late LibDem.
Because if you’ve voted for us in the past the potential exists to do it again: we never say never, unlike Conservatives and Labour pack hounds.
“Hmm, well anyone can form an argument of the ‘I used to think this, but now I think this’ line, or ‘I used to support you, but now you’re rubbish’ line, and it’s up the reader to discern whether to give this any credence.”
M’well, how though? Assuming the commenter has a decent grasp of the English language and isn’t as thick as a whale omelette there’s no real way to tell whether they’re a lying troll intent on wasting everyone’s time or not, unless you watch their comment pattern/phraseology/location over a long period of time, which is something only a mod can really do.
The question of whether or not to give credence to something is much more within the grasp of the reader if they know that people who lie in debate are caught out and edited wherever possible. It would actually be unfair on the people who genuinely *do* take the view above to not moderate trolls. We should listen to someone who genuinely holds that viewpoint, and we’ll be less inclined if we know they could be lying.
At this point it becomes a wider question about how to treat trolls, I think. Some people want more protection from this sort of thing and don’t care about swearing, say, others want to be protected from naughty words but couldn’t give a, er, stuff about mischievous Tory activists. My point being a mod is always walking a line; there’s no absolutely correct position for everyone. What do others think?
“…there’s no absolutely correct position for everyone”
That’s why I think we should do nothing.
With the benefit of hindsight, there is a way this could be / have been dealt with that I think would satisfy both our points.
If the LDV People have evidence that “Former Lib Dem” is a Conservative activist who has never been a LD (say, an IP address or something), they could have just made this clear in the following post.
Thus readers would be warned of the ‘trolling’ (if they couldn’t notice it themselves), yet the poster would have the right to reply.
The problem with the current situation is that the poster cannot argue back. S/he can only write to LDV, who have the final decision and all the power.
Therefore LDV could, in theory, block someone’s comments and accuse them of trolling and we would have no idea whether or not this was true, or whether legitimate points were just being blocked because someone didn’t like them.
Now, I doubt this is happening, as Mark Pack & Co. strike me as nice, liberal people – but as liberals we should know the dangers of assuming those in charge are always acting benevolently.
If the post and the charge against the poster were visible, we could all judge without this speculation.
If we consider such comments damaging to the narrower interest then they must be faced down.
If it is adjudged damaging to the wider interest, then the best way to undermine trollery is expose them and use moderating intervention.
I think the case of the ‘former LibDem’ crosses the line from the former to the latter because of the usage of that specific pseudononymous handle, so in this case in the interests of free speech I am happy with the result, but I’d accept a right-of-reply provided no abuse of intent is involved.