Tag Archives: boris johnson

Eleanor Besley

The Independent View: how London Mayoral candidates shape up on cycling and transport

By Eleanor Besley | Tue 24th April 2012 - 2:52 pm

The way that we travel and the places we live in have a massive impact on our lives, going well beyond what’s traditionally considered transport policy. Increased car use is driving up levels of obesity, polluting our cities and leading to more accidents. As London’s population grows, the demands on our transport system make it an ever tougher nut to crack.

Sustrans wants to see a London, and a country, where everyone is able to get around, to work, school, shops and leisure facilities. Making it easier and safer to walk and cycle for our short …

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Nick T

LDVideo: Boris Johnson – Night Mayor

By Nick T | Thu 19th April 2012 - 7:26 pm

Here’s a really rather good (but unofficial) video promoting Lib Dem London mayoral candidate Brian Paddick:

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Carl Quilliam

The weekend debate: Should Boris Johnson get his way on London’s tax take?

By Carl Quilliam | Sat 14th April 2012 - 8:50 am

Here’s your starter for ten in our weekend slot where we throw up an idea or thought for debate…

Incumbent Mayoral candidate Boris Johnson has developed plans for Londoners to keep more of the tax revenue generated in the city to spend on better public services. Boris said the capital should be getting a greater return from the tax it contributes to the exchequer.

According to the Evening Standard the equivalent of £2,500 for every Londoner goes to other parts of the UK rather than being spent on public services in the capital.

Boris Johnson said that London should no longer be …

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Posted in London and Op-eds | Also tagged | 8 Comments
Stephen Tall

The Weekend Debate: Should election candidates have to declare their tax records?

By Stephen Tall | Sat 7th April 2012 - 8:45 am

Here’s your starter for ten in our weekend slot where we throw up an idea or thought for debate…

The race to be London mayor took a fresh twist this week when the leading candidates pledged on BBC Newsnight to release their tax records. Lib Dem mayoral candidate Brian Paddick declared himself very happy to publish full details, which appear here on his website:

Brian Paddick has nothing to hide and is very happy to be open and transparent about his income and tax returns as a registered sole trader. His figures show he has never attempted to use any complex

…

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , and | 17 Comments
Mark Pack

Brian Paddick: It is vital that we maximise our vote for the London Assembly

By Mark Pack | Sat 10th March 2012 - 11:43 am

The fantastic Sage conference hall was the venue for Brian Paddick’s speech to the Liberal Democrat spring conference.

Or rather, his co-speech. Because for the purposes of the London 2012 campaign, Brian Paddick is no more. Instead he has been merged into Brian-Paddick-Caroline-Pidgeon.

It is one of the lessons from previous London campaigns that the party needs to be far better at turning profile for a Mayor candidate into votes for the London Assembly list, the best prospect for the party to gain new seats.

This then was not Brian Paddick’s speaking slot. It was the Brian-Paddick-Caroline-Pidgeon speaking slot, preceded by the Brian-Paddick-Caroline-Pidgeon …

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Posted in Conference and London | Also tagged , and | 5 Comments
Mark Pack

Sometimes a bus is just a bus

By Mark Pack | Sat 25th February 2012 - 10:50 am

When Boris Johnson promised that if elected Mayor of London he would introduce a new Routemaster bus, I don’t think many expected him to interpret that quite as literally as he has.

For by the end of his term in office, there won’t be hoardes of new Routemaster buses on London’s roads. Not even scores or dozens. But there will be a new Routemaster bus. One bus. Just the single bus.

As London Assembly member Caroline Pidgeon puts it:

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Posted in London and News | Also tagged | 25 Comments
Mark Pack

Livingstone and Johnson: a record of unsavoury comments

By Mark Pack | Thu 16th February 2012 - 10:25 am

Funny, pointed and relevant: this is one of the best pieces of campaign artwork I’ve seen put out by the party this year.

Posted in London and News | Also tagged and | 25 Comments
Nick T

LibLink: Brian Paddick – London is increasingly policed by force not consent – thanks to its mayors

By Nick T | Thu 9th February 2012 - 5:17 pm

Lib Dem London mayoral candidate Brian Paddick had a piece on the Guardian’s Comment Is Free website yesterday on what is his undoubtedly his strongest issue – policing.

Here’s a sample of what Brian had to say:

Crime will be far more of an issue in the election of the mayor of London on 3 May because the mayor is now the elected crime and police commissioner for London. He alone sets police priorities and the police budget and he alone will hold the Metropolitan police to account. Far from holding the police to account, to date

…

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Carl Quilliam

The weekend debate: Should Stephen Hester accept his bonus?

By Carl Quilliam | Sat 28th January 2012 - 9:25 am

Here’s your starter for ten in our weekend slot where we throw up an idea or thought for debate…

Since the £963, 000 shares bonus for RBS Chief Executive Stephen Hester has been revealed there have been opinions pouring out from across the political spectrum.

When Ed Miliband accused David Cameron of a “failure of leadership” over it, Cameron promptly distanced himself from the process altogether, with George Osborne claiming it was due to rules put in place by Labour.

Boris Johnson seems to be against it, as is our usually economically …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , , , and | 28 Comments
Julian Huppert

Julian Huppert MP writes… Boris Island is no more than an election ploy

By Julian Huppert | Sat 21st January 2012 - 11:45 am

Just one week after the Government gave the green light to a multi-billion pound high speed rail network, taxpayers are being asked to consider another tranche of infrastructure investment.

But the case for a £50 billion Thames Estuary Airport, dubbed ‘Boris Island’ after London’s inimitable Mayor, is so confused that it no longer constitutes a coherent proposal at all.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged and | 6 Comments
Mark Pack

Ken Livingstone attacks Boris Johnson for, er…, agreeing with Ken Livingstone

By Mark Pack | Sat 21st January 2012 - 8:55 am

Ken Livingstone has me a bit confused.

Hearing him attack Boris Johnson is certainly not a surprise.

But hearing him attack Boris Johnson for saying what Ken Livingstone himself said previously? That’s a bit odd, shall we say.

Compare and contrast now and then.

The now:

Boris Johnson and Ken Livingstone were engulfed in a war of words today over whether Londoners are too “lazy” to find work. The Mayor claimed some young people in the capital lacked the “energy” to go out and get jobs which were instead going to immigrants. His Labour challenger Ken Livingstone immediately accused him of branding Londoners “lazy and workshy”.

And …

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Posted in News | Also tagged | 3 Comments
The Voice

London Lib Dems hit out at Boris’s fare hikes as “shameful”

By The Voice | Tue 3rd January 2012 - 11:25 am

London Lib Dem mayoral candidate Brian Paddick and leader of the London Lib Dems Caroline Pidgeon have criticised Boris Johnson’s 7% price hike for public transport fares which came into force today. Here’s the party’s official statement:

Commenting on the Mayor’s 2012 fare rises being introduced today Brian Paddick, the Liberal Democrat Mayoral candidate said:

“Once again we start the year with another painful fare package from Boris Johnson. For the fourth year in a row he has racked up fares by far more than the rate of inflation.

“His latest rises will simply add to the financial problems

…

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Mike Tuffrey

Mike Tuffrey AM writes… The question I asked top London Tory: “Is there anything you would not privatise?”

By Mike Tuffrey | Sun 6th November 2011 - 10:10 am

“Is there anything you would not privatise?” That was the question I asked Brian Coleman, the controversial chair of London’s Fire Authority — a public body which sadly is in the grip of an ideologically-driven Conservative administration thanks to shameless gerrymandering by London’s Tory mayor Boris Johnson and unelected political appointees.

My question to him was prompted by the Tories’ current plans to privatise the London fire 999 emergency control room.

Mr Coleman’s answer? It was a bald and brazen “No”: there’s nothing he wouldn’t try to privatise if he could.

It’s true that in the London fire service …

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Posted in London and Op-eds | Also tagged and | 6 Comments
The Voice

What next for London’s airports?

By The Voice | Mon 31st October 2011 - 11:54 am

One of the first acts of the Coalition was to scrap plans for a third runway at Heathrow, whilst Boris Johnson’s plans for a new airport on an artifical island in the Thames Estuary have not been going anywhere much. So what next for the region’s airports?

This is what the BBC had to report:

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Posted in London | Also tagged | 3 Comments
Nick T

Questions left hanging over Boris’s cable car

By Nick T | Mon 17th October 2011 - 9:58 am

Conservative politicians spend much of their time criticising their Labour counterparts for the often-inefficient way in which they spend public money. This is often quite justifiable: the many billions wasted through disastrous PFI schemes, abandoned IT projects and expensive-but-pointless gimmicks under Labour are a shameful legacy.

But the gap between this Tory rhetoric and reality is often rather stark, and nowhere is this more evident than with the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson.

Take, for example, one of Boris’s pet projects of a cable car to transport people between the O2 arena and the Excel exhibition centre (both Olympic venues). Sounds like …

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Posted in News | Also tagged , and | 5 Comments
Mark Pack

Gay marriage, animal insults and a pair of Conservatives

By Mark Pack | Thu 13th October 2011 - 7:25 am

Conservative Councillor James Malliff  is in trouble with his party after attacking David Cameron’s support for gay marriage, saying that you “may as well legalise marriage with animals”. The Conservative Party says that action is being taken against him for “completely unacceptable” language.

But wait, rummage through your political memories and recall this?

If gay marriage was OK – and I was uncertain on the issue – then I saw no reason in principle why a union should not be consecrated between three men, as well as two men, or indeed three men and a dog.

That would be one Mr B. Johnson, subsequently twice appointed …

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Mark Pack

The Bigger Book of Boris: lots of jokes, not much politics

By Mark Pack | Thu 6th October 2011 - 10:50 am

One of the questions that ambitious politicians often struggle to answer safely is, “Do you want to be leader of your party / Prime Minister?” Answer ‘yes’ in some form and journalists will line up to write stories about party splits, pending leadership challenges and the like. Answer ‘no’ and many will not believe you – whilst also quietly filing away the answer to quote back at the politician at an embarrassing later date.

The Bigger Book of Boris (an expanded version of the earlier Little Book of Boris) shows Boris Johnson’s political skill with humour in his answer to this question. …

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Mark Pack

Guide dogs allowed on London Underground escalators – Caroline Pidgeon campaign success

By Mark Pack | Mon 3rd October 2011 - 8:50 am

Following a campaign by Liberal Democrat London Assembly Member Caroline Pidgeon, the legal ban on guide dogs travelling on the escalators on the London Underground is being lifted on Wednesday.

Transport for London and the Government are changing a by-law which originated in the era of wooden escalators which could expand and contract depending on heat and humidity. This meant larger gaps have to be left by default than on modern metal escalators, with resulting fears that guide dogs (now often called assistance dogs) might get their paws stuck …

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Posted in London | Also tagged | 2 Comments
Mark Pack

A tale of two holes – and a £39m price tag

By Mark Pack | Wed 7th September 2011 - 7:54 am

In principle, I have no objection to people digging holes in the ground. Even very expensive holes. Potholes? Bad. But lift shafts, underground tunnels and other such excavations? Good. A big hole that loops back on itself and could* end the universe? That’ll do nicely. The combination of a hole, Bernard Cribbins and Lego? Excellent.

If I had to postulate a general theory of holes, I’d say that a hole that is not used is a bad hole. And two holes that are not used are doubly bad.

Which brings me to the question of the £39 million spent …

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Posted in London | Also tagged , , , , and | 13 Comments
Mark Pack

Ken Livingstone: mine won’t be a grassroots funded campaign

By Mark Pack | Sun 28th August 2011 - 9:47 am

It was Ken Livingstone’s poor taste joke about Boris Johnson, Hitler and people who don’t vote for him being sent to burn and flayed for all eternity that got the most attention following his interview in Total Politics.*

Taking a look at the printed version of the interview (and forcing my eyes to move past the awful shirt and dreadful trousers) there was one other comment from Ken Livingstone that stood out: “80 per cent of my funding will come from the trade unions”.

Livingstone made the comment in the context of having a go at the sources of Conservative Party funding …

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Posted in News | Also tagged | 25 Comments
Mike Tuffrey

Mike Tuffrey writes… Policing: not just a numbers game

By Mike Tuffrey | Tue 23rd August 2011 - 9:25 am

On the streets of Tottenham, Croydon, Clapham, Hackney and Ealing, we saw what happens when adequate numbers of trained police are not deployed at the right time and in the right way.

And we heard how numbers on the streets were subsequently boosted from 3,000 to 16,000 only by drafting in back-up from neighbouring forces. In fairness, it must be said that riot control is very hazardous and officers must have the right training before they are deployed.

Yet Londoners can still be forgiven for wondering where all the police are, that they’ve been persuaded to pay for in higher council taxes.

Go …

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Posted in London and Op-eds | Also tagged | 7 Comments
Mike Tuffrey

Mike Tuffrey writes… London isn’t working – and the Mayor is asleep on the job

By Mike Tuffrey | Mon 8th August 2011 - 10:23 am

Today 397,000 Londoners are unemployed and looking for a job. As a region, we have the lowest level of skills in the workforce, based on NVQ Level 1 and above. And the problems are getting worse, as we fail to recover fast enough from the cardiac arrest that Labour’s last years in office dealt to the national economy.

Not a pretty picture for our great capital city, powerhouse (so we keep saying) of the whole UK economy.

In fact, weren’t the Olympics meant to help drive forward our economy? A couple of news stories from July sum up for me what’s wrong …

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Posted in London and Op-eds | Also tagged | 6 Comments
The Voice

“Yates must go” – Dee Doocey exposes News International and Met Police’s cosy relationship

By The Voice | Tue 12th July 2011 - 5:18 pm

A Freedom of Information Request has revealed that the then Met Deputy Assistant Commissioner Andy Hayman and Assistant Commissioner John Yates had lunches and dinners with News of the World and executives of News International while investigating alleged criminal allegations against the News of the World.

Dee Doocey, the Liberal Democrat London Assembly policing spokesperson and member of the Metropolitan Police Authority said:

Such a cosy relationship between the News of the World, News International and senior Met police officers who were leading an inquiry into the News of the World phone hacking allegations goes to the very heart of the

…

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Posted in London and News | Also tagged , , , , and | 2 Comments
Mike Tuffrey

Mike Tuffrey writes… Why I’m serious about London

By Mike Tuffrey | Thu 16th June 2011 - 9:55 am

Yesterday I launched my bid to be our party’s candidate for Mayor of London and I started as I mean to go on: working with a large team of experienced colleagues from across London (see photographs here) and talking about the urgent change our city needs.

As a campaigning party, we must focus – pun intended – on the really big concerns Londoners have about living in this city. And as our candidate, I want to work with our campaigners to get out and listen to those concerns and what must be done.

I believe that it is time for serious solutions to the big challenges we face if London is to remain a great city to live, work and raise a family in over the next decade. With new powers coming from central government, we need a GLA – Mayor and Assembly – that is ambitious for London.

At the launch I issued my five point action plan, based on my experience of eight years serving on the London Assembly. These are priorities than can – and must – be delivered:

  • More, better and cheaper housing
  • Investment in transport to keep London moving
  • Action for jobs and a challenge to big business to pay fair wages
  • Protecting neighbourhood policing and promoting youth opportunities
  • Clean air and a healthy London

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Posted in London and Op-eds | Also tagged | 16 Comments
Richard Clare

Opinion: Why you should be taking Lembit Opik seriously

By Richard Clare | Sun 5th June 2011 - 3:15 pm

It’s hard to raise the subject of Lembit Opik without somebody cracking a joke. He’s certainly not loved by our own party’s leadership and many see him as more of a celebrity than a politician. I can, however, name two other people who are hated by their party’s leadership and seem to be two parts celebrity, one part politician, and they’ve both held the position of Mayor of London.

Lembit has great recognition among people. My own unscientific polling leads me to believe that he isn’t far behind Ken and Boris in who knows who he is, which is quite a …

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Posted in London and Op-eds | Also tagged , and | 63 Comments
Mike Tuffrey

Boris Johnson’s funny money

By Mike Tuffrey | Tue 24th May 2011 - 2:30 pm

With a year to go to the London Mayor and London Assembly elections a strange debate is underway about the huge part of London loosely described as “outer London”.

Remember the last election? One of the strongest attacks on Ken Livingstone was that he was just a “Zone One Mayor”. He was accused of having visited Havana more times than the London Borough of Havering. Three years on and the London Labour Party have decided that no speech, press release, letter or comment can go out without the words “outer London” repeated ad nauseam.

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Posted in London | Also tagged | 1 Comment
Mark Pack

Even Boris Johnson is moved to criticise Brian Coleman’s latest expense claims

By Mark Pack | Thu 19th May 2011 - 12:25 pm

Even London Mayor Boris Johnson (a man not adverse to a generous claim or three for expenses) has been moved to criticise fellow Conservative Brian Coleman, whose latest expense claims for a London body attracted criticism a few days ago.

Boris Johnson said,

We have had a word with Brian and I think he understands this is a time for restraint in public spending all round.

Quite.

Hat-tip: @BorisWatch

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The Voice

LibLink: Nick Clegg… AV got the Mayor elected – now he’s voting against it

By The Voice | Wed 27th April 2011 - 3:28 pm

Nick Clegg wrote an article for the Evening Standard yesterday aimed at London voters, who’ll only be voting in the AV referendum on May 5th as London does not have council elections* this year.

As well as outlining the reasons for voting Yes to Fairer Votes, “I believe most Londoners want a new way of electing MPs that cleans up politics, makes MPs work harder and makes every vote count,” Nick busts the myths about AV: “vote-counting machines that don’t exist and won’t be needed. Claims that the alternative vote is too complex for the British people to understand, as …

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Posted in London and News | Also tagged , , , , , and | 24 Comments
Mark Pack

The Yes2AV campaign has persuaded me to change my mind

By Mark Pack | Wed 20th April 2011 - 8:55 am

I’ve long been sceptical about the scope for online fundraising in British politics. That’s partly because I’ve seen a sequence of American political consultants come to the UK, say they know much better than Brits, promise lots and then raise not very much – across the political spectrum. I’ve also seen a sequence of people from Britain go, “Oooh! American! Shiny! Must be better!”, promise lots and then raise not very much – again, across the political spectrum.

Having been responsible for (along with Ashley Lumsden and Martin Tod) the first candidate website in the UK to take credit card donations, …

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Posted in Online politics | Also tagged , , and | 13 Comments
Sean McHale

Opinion: the Liberal Democrats should support a Living Wage

By Sean McHale | Mon 28th February 2011 - 12:40 pm

The Living Wage is a term which has gained ground in mainstream politics over the past year or so. Ed Miliband has used it in attempts to forge his political identity. Boris Johnson has spokenof his support for the concept and would like to see it introduced in London and David Cameron has said it is an idea whose time has come.

According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, a salary of £14,400 is the minimum a single person needs for an acceptable standard of living. This figure includes not only the basics in life, but covers what …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , and | 31 Comments
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    Disappointed. The most obvious means of reducing energy bills is to remove VAT. Relatively straightforward to do and does not adversely impact on the attractive...
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    "As a party we are aware of the absolute disaster our country’s current benefits system has become, where so many sticking plasters have been added by well-me...
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