From the Croydon Guardian:
"London's Mayor Boris Johnson took up the challenge of riding one of Croydon's buses with a local resident today after she confronted him about the antisocial behaviour and crime on public transport."
Her name is Maureen Reynolds and she's a satisfied customer so far. Now read on.
I was there for all but the last half hour this morning, sitting opposite Ken Livingstone - in the front row again - and Katie Perrior, who was Johnson's chief media minder during the election campaign. There were plenty of jokes, and Katie especially enjoyed Boris's about possible alternatives to the proposed Thames Gateway when answering a question from Darren Johnson. Mayor Johnson suggested a catapult. His Green namesake is keener on cable cars. The occasion was good humoured in general, and the new mayor gave a pretty good account of himself from that isolated desk at the front of the chamber.
For me, it all confirmed the two dominant themes of the Johnson mayoralty so far: polished political choreography in terms of being seen to be honouring pledges, and a deep fog of confusion over the construction of his administration as shown by the still uncertain status of planning adviser Sir Simon Milton, Kit Malthouse as deputy mayor for police, the deeply Tory Forensic Audit Panel and now, it seems, the precise role of Ian Clement, who is formally deputy mayor for government relations but, it emerged, is temporarily at least looking after planning too. There was some stern questioning from Mssrs Duvall and Biggs. A stern Labour Group press release has followed:
"The new Mayor of London Boris Johnson appeared today not to know who is making critically important decisions on his behalf. When asked if it was appropriate that he should delegate strategic planning decisions to an unelected, unaccountable adviser, Mayor Johnson insisted he had not. Yet since he was appointed two weeks ago, Ian Clement - one of Boris Johnson's deputy mayors - has been writing to London Assembly Members saying 'the Mayor has delegated his planning decisions to me'."
They've reproduced a letter to prove it.
These goings-on are my subjects for two Guardian works-in-progress so I won't dwell on them here. But for more on Boris's team read Pippa Crerar's report and the mayor's web page. The webcast of Question Time is here and the Guardian's live blog, here.
From The Times:
"The suburban outer-London boroughs helped to elect new Mayor, Boris Johnson; and now they are demanding payback...[they] had long complained that Ken Livingstone was a 'Zone 1' mayor who prioritised inner-city areas over the fringes and Conservative council leaders have presented Johnson with a suburban-focused list of policy requests... 'There are high levels of expectations that Mr Johnson will realise where his constituency is and will be open to suggestions that come to him,' says David Williams, the leader of Merton Council. Outer councils also want clarity on how far Johnson will push powers that enable him to overule local planning authorities. They say that the Office for National Statistics underestimates the number of people living in London, which has strained local services. 'We expect Mr Johnson to work much more closely with the boroughs,' says Barry Macleod-Cullinane of the London Councils' Conservative Group."
Yeah, I want to know that too, Barry. I mean what if Barnet and Redbridge drag their feet over helping Mayor Johnson meet his 50,000 "affordable" target by the end of 2011? Will Boris bollock them? Or will he push the likes of Labour Hackney and Tower Hamlets around instead?
Yeah, but who did you vote for, Rover?
Mayor Johnson has written to Hazel Blears demanding that no London mayor be allowed more than two terms. "Without any limits on the number of times an individual can serve as Mayor," he says, "there is a real danger of cronyism, misconduct and corruption at City Hall." Not a bad little spoiler in view of the confusion over Sir Simon Milton, who was first hired as Johnson's planning adviser but has now announced he'll be dispensing his wisdom free to avoid breaking the law. Not that Milton's Westminster opponents seem likely to leave him alone. Labour group leader Paul Dimoldenberg has writtten the following to Colin Wilson, Director of Legal and Administrative Services at WCC.
"I know that you will share my concerns following the statements made during ‘Question Time’ at the Council meeting on 7th May by Councillor Robert Davis, Chairman of the Planning Committee and Cabinet Member for Planning, that following the appointment of his civil partner, Councillor Simon Milton as Mayor Johnson’s Senior Planning adviser, he is looking forward to having ‘pillow talk’ conversations and a ‘word in the ear’ with Councillor Milton about how Westminster planning matters will be dealt with by Mayor Johnson. Before the Council meeting I had already written to you to express my concerns about the protocols which would be put in place to ensure that Westminster planning matters are dealt with openly and transparently by The Mayor and his advisers, given Councillor Milton’s continuing membership of the City Council and his relationship with Councillor Davis. Following Councillor Davis’ statements on Wednesday I consider that it is even more important that these protocols are drafted and issued without any further delay. I am copying this to the Chief Executive and Anthony Mayer at the GLA for their urgent attention."
Tomorrow, the GLA's Standards Committee sits for the first time. Mayor Johnson is a member of it. Could be fun. Oh, and what's this that's just arrived? Why, it's an email from Ken Livingstone:
"Only three weeks into his Mayoralty Boris Johnson's letter to Hazel Blears calling for no Mayor to be allowed to serve more than two terms shows he believes his administration is going to fail and he is manoeuvring to try to undemocratically prevent Ken Livingstone running against him in 2012.This assessment by Boris Johnson is entirely realistic. After only three weeks it is already evident his administration is a going to be a shambles - it has abandoned his flagship pledge to introduce a new Routemaster, it has been forced to abandon as illegal its attempt to employ Sir Simon Milton as the planning adviser, it has moved to scrap half yearly taxi safety testing and, in what will be the first of many steps alienating environmentalists, it has backed an energy guzzling desalination plant for Thames Water rather than keep up the pressure for them to stem to (sic) vast loss of water from its antiquated pipe network.
In these circumstances it should come as no surprise that one of Johnson's first concerns is to try to undemocratically block Ken Livingstone from unseating him in 2012."
What was that about the next few years being the best of Boris's life?
This went live yesterday afternoon:
Two weeks into his mayoralty no one can accuse Boris Johnson of lying around in bed all day. He's appointed a panel of mostly fellow Tories to audit GLA and London Development Agency spending, anointed a bunch of deputies and directors and banned boozing on the tube. He's also announced that he'll be chairing Transport for London, at least for the time being, as well as the Metropolitan Police Authority, the latter a task to which the previous incumbent devoted three days a week. Add to these Johnson's (for the present) continuing duties as MP for Henley and his forthcoming resumption of his weekly column for the Telegraph - for which he was paid an astonishing £250,000 a year prior to taking a break from it to fight the campaign - and we might conclude that though the new London Mayor is rich he isn't idle with it.
Continue reading "At Guardian Politics: Boris, Trees & Buses" »
From the Evening Boris:
"The Mayor's plans for a new generation Routemaster may not happen, his new transport boss admitted today. Kulveer Ranger, Boris Johnson's director of transport policy, said that a design competition would be launched - but if no bid was good enough they would look again at the pledge. He added that although Mr Johnson is very keen to bring in a new-style bus in place of bendy buses, they would not press ahead with the idea for the sake of it...Mr Ranger said: 'It's almost a fact to say Londoners are not happy with bendy buses. We want to develop a bus that is safe, reliable and has that extra bit of style and panache. The Routemaster was, and indeed still is, an icon and we need something that has the same iconic status.' But in a departure from Mr Johnson's policies, Mr Ranger said the new design would not necessarily be 'hop-on, hop-off' with a conductor, as on the old Routemasters.
He said: 'Whether or not we have a conductor depends on the design of the bus. We want people to be creative. Our brief is very flexible. Anything is possible. We'll set some sort of ball-park figure but we can't say how much it will cost at this time. Let's see what comes back. The plan is to have them on the roads by the end of his first term but we're not doing this just for the hell of it. If we find there are initially no suitable bids we will review [the policy].'"
Why am I not surprised? Now read on.
Guardian art critic Jonathan Jones:
"Has Boris Johnson's mother embarrassed him? Charlotte Johnson Wahl is a painter who, until she was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, worked in New York; she is now back in the city over which her son has established his classically educated imperium. It has come to our attention that one of her brightly coloured, sort-of-expressionist canvases appears somewhat tolerant of the kind of antisocial behaviour on which the new mayor of London has cracked down in one of his first official acts. It portrays young people riding the New York subway in a nicely dynamic composition that looks down the tubular carriage towards a remote vanishing point...."
"Look at the travellers on the train. It seems to be late at night, and revellers are headed home, their heads lolling slumbrously. In other words, these young New Yorkers are drunk and drugged-up - exactly the kind of behaviour the mayor has set out to tackle by banning drinking on public transport. But they look happy enough in their antisocial daze...This painting is not an apocalyptic warning of the perils of public drinking. It is not a suburbanite's nightmare of the metropolis. On the contrary, it is an affectionate image of city life by an artist who definitely goes against Tory moral cliche."
"He [Boris] may have overreached himself today when he told Nick Ferrari on LBC that he had...decided to cut Ken's sandwich run, implying that the old regime had gorged themselves on ciabattas and bloomers at the taxpayers' expense...Unfortunately, I'm told that [this] suffers from the slight problem of not being true. Ken never had sandwiches delivered to his eighth floor eyrie at City Hall. He always ate in the basement cafe with his staff. But sarnies were indeed specially bought in when Boris took over last weekend - because it was a bank holiday the cafe was not open. So it turns out that the only extravagant spending of taxpayers' cash on a nosh-up has taken place under our new Mayor. Of course, Boris himself wouldn't have known this when he went on the radio - would he?"
Another question for Guto when he gets in touch...
From the Telegraph:
"There have been 14 teenage deaths in the capital this year and [Jimmy Mizen's] was the fifth fatal stabbing in London since Mr Johnson became mayor less than a fortnight ago, pledging a zero-tolerance policy to knife crime in the capital. He has called for an urgent response from police.Officers launched Operation Blunt 2, targeting 10 London boroughs and using controversial powers under Section 60 of the Public Order Act to designate areas where anyone can be stopped and searched, in what they said would be 'in your face policing'.
Under Section 60 officers do not need reasonable suspicion to search someone. There will be 10 search teams each consisting of up to 15 officers who can be deployed anywhere in the city. The Metropolitan Police have just taken delivery of 100 extra walk-through knife detectors and 200 extra search wands which will be used in the campaign."
Well, put yourself in Mayor Johnson's shoes. What would you be doing? I suppose I'd be encouraging something much like this. Yet it still smacks of a need to be seen to be Doing Something. And at root, teenage knife crime is not a policing problem and so cannot be solved by policing alone. Johnson knows this - or appeared to know it during the campaign. Yet his mayoralty will be judged against his promises, especially those on youth crime. How long will it be before Londoners start wondering if those promises are being kept?
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