Taxis ahoy: how Boris Johnson is spending other people’s money

Our place to talk – an independent website for supporters of the Liberal Democrat party in the UK.

The most-read independent website by and for Lib Dem supporters. Not paid for by trade unions or millionaires.

Taxis ahoy: how Boris Johnson is spending other people’s money

By Mark Pack | Sat 7th February 2009 - 2:16 pm

Follow @markpack

Tory Troll has highlighted just how Boris Johnson’s political rallies public meetings are racking up the bills, including taxi fares and very expensive “Audio/Visual services” for one. What on earth was done at one meeting to require £9,800 on “audio/visual services”, and why should a meeting in London which ends mid-evening require £1,000 in taxi bills?

Read more by Mark Pack or more about boris johnson.
This entry was posted in London and News.

Advert

5 Comments

letterman 8th Feb '09 - 3:27pm

Obviously I can’t be sure but I do know that parts of the civil service (for some reason?) use a really expensive video conferencing system as part of their environmental management systems to try and reduce the amount of traveling and hence carbon required for meetings.

Boris might have thought he was being good by video conferencing to reduce his carbon footprint without realising the prohibitive cost, which is the main reason why most civil servants don’t use it!
Anonymous 8th Feb '09 - 3:54pm

Is it just me, or is this article not written in English?
Anonymous 8th Feb '09 - 7:10pm

Thanks. That makes much better sense now.
Mark Pack 8th Feb '09 - 7:56pm

Excellent 🙂
Nick 9th Feb '09 - 12:55pm

I was at the rally.

“Audio visual services” probably covers the cost of the cameras and palantypists that were at the event. Bit like what you see at our Party conference. Being interesting to know how much that costs for week, so a comparison could be made as £9,700 sounds a large amount. It was also recorded for broadcast on the London radio station the next day, although I hope the radio station paid any costs associated with this.

If you go to the Becks theatre website it tells you how easy is to get to the theatre:

BR Paddington to Hayes & Harlington, then buses 90, H98 or 195 to the theatre. Alternatively Metropolitan or Piccadilly lines to Uxbridge Station, then buses 427 or 607. Night bus N427 to / from Trafalgar Square.

The meeting was over by 8.45pm. What sort of message is that sending out to Londoners if Boris feels that is too late a time to travel on public transport? Uxbridge isn’t exactly the end of the earth.

One thing that has gone unremarked in all the comment on this is the number of police there were in attendance outside the meeting venue. I don’t know if the local police borough commander had misunderstood and really thought that Gordon Brown was going to turn up (remember Boris had invited him to the meeting and put a chair up on the platform for him), or if the Mayor’s Comms Director Guito Harri had thought there would be thousands of people turn up to see the blond messiah arrive in Uxbridge, but someone should do an FoI on those costs alone. The only place I have seen more policemen recently was (insert your own joke here…..).