Tim Parker In The Standard

He tells Pippa Crerar:

"'I thought about taking the job for about two seconds really and the rest was just convincing myself that I should be leaving behind a very comfortable life. I intend to run the place for Boris but he is the boss. He has got some very good qualities ... Most of all I think he appreciates that despite having had a very distinguished career doing a variety of different things, he actually hasn't run large organisations. I think that's possibly where I can make a contribution for him.'"

Now read on.

Comments

[Helen]

Being sacked twice for lying? Is that considered a "distinguished career" these days? Boris is clueless about the Public Sector and so is Tim. Ahh, just like Pete and Dud, the idiot who knows nothing and the idiot who knows everything...

[angela]

He did beat Ken though, by a fair margin, so obviously most Londoners approve of his career.

[OneHopeOneChoice]

Or it was insufficiently examined during the election by those who should have been analysing it like the Evening Standard and the- oh wait, there isn't an alternative to the Evening Standard.

And I wouldn't say most Londonders "approve" of his career, I'd say that that most suburban Londoners did not care sufficiently about Bozzer's past experience to allow it to effect their judgement either way.

[angela]

OneHopeOnechoice, you cannot argue that there was not enough publicity devoted to Boris Johnson's so called shortcomings. Ken is to be admired for the thoroughness of his research and he was honest enough to admit he had people combing through every word Boris had ever written or uttered. If he was jaywalking they headlined or discussed it on t.v. it, so there is no doubt that Londoners had every opportunity to think about all Boris's transgressions and all Ken Livingstone's trangressions and they obviously preferred and trusted Boris Johnson more.

[OneHopeOneChoice]

You'd be amazed at what I could argue angela. And I'm not talking about Boris' shortcomings, but Boris' career as a journalist and politician.

Take the Evening Standard (whose article by Gilligan on knife crime has infuriated me to no end); out of the entire mayoral campaign, the Darius Guppy affair was brought up 8 times and mostly it was only as the line "Ken Livingstone attacked Boris today over his friendship with convicted fraudster Darius Guppy" before swiftly moving on. The one time it was examined in any detail by the Standard was in an article by Andrew Gilligan who made the comparison between Lee Duvall's conviction for carrying a "stave" with the intent of self defence back in the 1970s to the Darius Guppy affair in which Guppy asked Bozzer to get the address of a journalist who had been harassing him so he could give him a good beating. Boris committed to getting the address of the offending News of the World journalist and only saved the man a good beating by being totally incompetent and failing to get the address.

Would I call this fair examination of Bozzer's career? Hardly.

Let's push onto Boris' editorship of the Spectator:

Besides the idiotic Simon Heffer editorial about Liverpool, Boris oversaw one of the most pathetic and weakest editions of the Spectator to date, namely the edition which had "Eurabian Nightmare" emblazoned across the front and spent its time talking about the evil Islamic threat which Europe has come under. Contrast this to Boris' mayoral campaign where he was "reaching out" to the Muslim community. This is the November 12th, 2005 edition of The Spectator incidentally:

The front cover:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/8a/The_Spect.jpg

The leading article by Ron Liddle:

http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-magazine/features/14442/the-crescent-of-fear.thtml

An article by Patrick Sookhdeo on how great the threat is from Islam as a whole (committing the cardinal sin of equating all Muslims to Islamists):

http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-magazine/features/14443/will-london-burn-too.thtml

And, finally, an article by Mark Steyn:

http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-magazine/cartoons/14444/its-the-demography-stupid.thtml

And it is Boris who was editor in this period, someone who is meant to have control over the content published and is responsible for editing their content. Did he do his job properly here? Did he make the right call? No. Was this brought up as part of the analysis of Boris' career in the London Mayoral Elections? No.

What about the fact that Boris didn't even bother to turn up to the Parliamentary vote on a transparent Parliament? And yet he campaigned very strongly on a "transparency and openness" platform for City Hall. How can you believe that it is so important to be transparent at City Hall, yet never vote on the issue in one of the most archaic and obtuse institutions in the country?

I'm not arguing Ken's record was picked over better or even to the same standard as Boris', but what I am saying that it is not a fair assumption to say that most Londoner's "approved" of Boris' career, purely because there was such a lack of coverage by supposedly independent, bipartisan institutions such as the media.

Also I might suggest that a certain paid-for London newspaper overemphasised a certain advisor of Ken Livingstone's ALLEGED transgressions... Just maybe.