We’re watching you, Boris, so don’t screw this up…

My, but Boris has been busy in his first week in office. First up, appointments.

We have a new Director for Transport Policy, by the name of Kulveer Ranger. A little snooping reveals he is an ex DJ, and a little more suggests that he isn’t afraid to kick up a little trouble. He’s the man behind Oyster cards, and seemingly something of a rising star in the Conservative party. Seems like a fair choice, Boris.

I’m slightly more dubious about the new Deputy Mayor for Young People, Ray Lewis. Appointing an ex-prison Governor to be in charge of all the ‘young people’ in London is in keeping with Boris’ general theme, which I don’t like, of dividing London into Us Grownups Who Deserve Better and Them Yobs Who Spoil It For Everyone.

Accountability is the order of the day, and Boris has formed a Forensic Audit Panel to monitor and investigate the financial dealings official government bodies in London. The panel will make a final report in 60 days. I’m predicting a little bit of dirt on Ken. Not enough to get weighed down by mutual finger-pointing, but enough to make Boris look squeaky by comparison. We await with baited breath.

Boris also seems keen on deputising the Mayor of New York. He demonstrated his desire to emulate NYC in his election manifesto, where he pledged to introduce New York-style crime maps. Now his Innovation Exchange Programme is set to create more a formalised idea-sharing mechanism. But is it really necessary? Yes, external opinions are useful, and yes, it’s useful to compare notes with other major cities to see how they do things. But New York, a whole ocean away? What’s wrong with European capitals? Or even major other major British cities? It seems to me Boris is making this a lot more complicated than it needs to be simply to accumulate some Yankee chic, if such a thing exists. What’s wrong with exchanging ideas with Liverpool? Paris?

Both the Forensic Audit Panel and the Innovation Exchange Programme had transparency and accountability as their priorities. Which are surely Good Things. Strange then, that in the same week Boris should choose to do away with one of the main media for keeping people informed about Mayoral activities - The Londoner. This page of the Mayor of London site (I am sure that once the paper closes down this link will break) explains that The Londoner is “a newsletter for Londoners from the Mayor of London. It provides information about the policies and services delivered by the Greater London Authority and key issues affecting life in the capital, and encourages participation in current debates and consultation.” And yet Boris has decided to close it, to save £3m, and the only thing he has so far chosen to spend the saved money on is trees.

In justification he claimed that the money used to fund The Londoner was “unnecessary funding of the Mayor’s personal publicity budget“. He says personal publicity, I say accountability, and we’ll have to agree to disagree. But his defence of spending the money on trees is more than slightly ambiguous. He’s clearly convinced of their imporance, claiming that Ken’s allowing of the decline of street trees in London was “short-sighted”, and that “as many areas as possible should enjoy the many advantages that street trees bring.” But he doesn’t ever say what these advantages are, except for a suggestion that trees can “protect London’s open spaces.” How they’ll do this is unclear. Perhaps when Boris said “trees” he meant “police”.

Finally, he’s already made two moves towards realising his transport pledges. First he is looking to extend Oyster cards to more train stations in London. I recently suggested that in order to bring real benefits to commuters Oyster cards would have to extend outside London, to the far-flung places people commute from. But I suppose the extremities of London are pretty far-flung, and this development should make life easier for many. Note however that the only solid pledge is to have Great Western trains on Oyster by September. Other train operating companies have yet to sign up, so the news isn’t as big as you might think.

The second transport-related announcement is a deal done with Thames Water to reduce the impact of roadworks in London. Thames Water will, among other things, try harder not to disrupt our roads when they do their essential maintenance work, and in return Boris won’t follow Ken in criticising their proposed desalination plant in Beckton. Another feature of the package is that waste energy from Barking power station will be used to provide hot water, reducing CO2 emissions, but the environmental impact of this deal is unclear. Ken Livingstone’s legal challenge to the Beckton plant was based largely on environmental grounds. From my perspective I just can’t tell if overall we’ve got, as Boris claims a “good deal” or not. Any opinions?

The point of this blog is to keep track of what Boris does, and make a hell of a lot of noise as and when he (a) screws up, and (b) goes back on his promises. But needless to say I’m not the only one doing this. My blog is, and will continue to be, suffused with personal (doubtless prejudiced) opinion, and facts drawn from the interweb whose truth I cannot guarantee. For alternative perspectives, some less obviously biased than my own, the avid Boris watcher is encouraged to visit the following sites:

Boriswatch.com - It describes Boris Johnson as ‘the mutt’s nads’. Infer from that what you will.

Boriswatch.co.uk - This site ’started as an act of frustration, at the loss to apparent personality politics, and the accusation that somehow young people are to blame.’

Boriswatchers.blogspot.com - This is a publicly editable blog, with all the possibilities and pitfalls that entails.

Bozzawatch.blogspot.com - Has a bunch of polls, and updates often.

Let me know of any more that focus on or around the Mayor.

Next up in our analysis of Boris’ policy declarations is transport. I’ve taken what he promised before the election from here, and summarised it below. Boris says:

For every pound we spend on fares, too much is spent on running costs and advertising - too little is spent on investment in the technology and infrastructure that will improve transport in the future.

How much is too much when it comes to running costs? Was Ken making public transport run too well? Or is what Boris means that too much is allocated to running costs but gets diverted elsewhere? Forgive me for being pernickety, but the more ambiguous Boris is in his claims, the less accountable he makes himself. We should note it when he is not clear, so that we discern in advance the areas in which he could screw us.

Londoners must see more police on the buses, especially in outer London. This is why I will double the number of police officers to patrol them.

Yes, we must. Wait, why must we? I thought the plan was to have live cctv on the buses, and boost security at transport hubs. Given that crime on buses has been falling apparently, I’m having trouble seeing exactly why this is a must…

Suburban stations need to be safer, which is why I will provide funding for 50 extra British Transport Police Officers to patrol the worst stations.

Alright, this one we will watch. You’ve promised us 50, Boris. This blog will keep count.

The bendy bus is unsuitable for London’s streets, they are twice as dangerous as non-articulated buses and have almost three times the rate of fare evasion. I will phase out bendy buses and run a new competition to find a 21st century Routemaster that has full disabled access, runs on clean fuel and has conductors.

Yes, well I think we’re all familiar with the debacle that arose from Boris having no idea how much this would cost.

I will introduce live, interactive bus tracking so you can see where your bus is and avoid long waits at the bus stop.

No, no, no, no, no. This is a terrible idea. Deeply deeply awful. For several reasons. First of all, and it’s a minor point, the last thing we want is for bus tracking to be interactive. You don’t want anyone who’s bored at a bus stop to be able to have any effect on the bus. That’s just stupid.

More importantly, this sort of thing is almost certainly very expensive to implement, and from my own experience I can say that it doesn’t work very well. They spent a lot of time trialling it in Cambridge over the past couple of years, and it never once accurately predicted the arrival of a bus. It could be one big giant black hole for cash to make this thing run.

But most importantly, there’s absolutely no point to it. Why? Because you gain nothing from knowing when the next bus will come. Boris will claim that it’ll help people to make the decision as to whether to wait or not for the next bus but (a) since what holds buses up in unexpected traffic, knowing how far away a bus is won’t necessarily tell you how long it’ll take to get to you and (b) it doesn’t matter because Harvard mathematicians have demonstrated that you’re normally better off waiting anyway.

It’s a waste of money, Boris.

The tube needs to be rescued from the ruins of Gordon Brown’s finance deal, so that vital upgrades that were promised actually happen. I will look again at having an air-conditioned tube. We need to take the thumbs of the RMT off the windpipe of London commuters with a no-strike deal that gives both sides the benefit of an independent arbitrator.

I’d agree. Except that those vital upgrades already are happening. Has Boris been on the tube recently? The entire Victoria line is suspended four nights a week so that upgrades can happen. Trying to give the impression that the tube is stagnating and blaming the trade unions isn’t fooling anyone.

The Congestion Charge must be reformed. Congestion has now risen above pre-Congestion Charge levels. Ken Livingstone’s £25 levy will not improve congestion or emissions and will hit families and small businesses - it is a stick with which to beat motorists which is why I will not introduce it.

The levy in question is this one. Yes, it would havehit families. Families who own completely unnecessary 4×4s, which are expensive to buy and expensive to run. So… it’d hit the families who can afford pointlessly expensive cars.

He does have a couple of sensible points, though. Small businesses, which cannot afford to upgrade their old clapped-out vans would have been hit by the charge. And few people would have traded in their 4×4 for a hybrid, or even stopped driving, because of it - they’d simply have paid the charge. So congestion and emissions would not have been drastically reduced.

But at some point the change has to happen. 4×4s and clunking vans are out of place in the 21st century, and you don’t have to be an eco-terrorist to see it. The £25 charge would have been a step, albeit small and largely symbolic, towards acknowledging the shift that is needed.

Cars stuck in traffic emit more than cars that are moving so we need to rephase traffic lights to get traffic moving more smoothly and to achieve this, I will lobby government for powers to fine utility companies that run overtime when digging up the roads.

Surely putting pressure on utility companies not to spend as much time as they need doing maintenance work is a bad thing? I mean, Thames Water is currently replacing seemingly most of the water mains in London. Isn’t it more important that they do a thorough job now so they don’t have to dig up the damn things again in a year’s time rather than keeping motorists happy by making them rush through a job now?

We must also encourage Londoners to walk and cycle more and I will provide £2 million for safe cycle parking. I will work with boroughs to improve existing cycle and walking routes.

No complaints about this one, and a nice statistic we can keep track of. Remember this: he promised £2 million.

I will fight for London’s rail commuters and campaign for longer trains, more frequent services and Oyster at all stations.

All stations? As in, every station that commuters commute from in the morning and back to at night? I mean, that’s what it sounds like. But is he really going to put Oyster terminals at Worplesdon? Basingstoke? Southampton Central? If not, then how exactly is it useful to commuters?

The Freedom Pass will be protected as an untouchable right for London pensioners.

Injured veterans who live in London will be able to travel free on London buses.

A positive note to end on. Yes, pensioners and veterans. No complaints there.

So. As with his Crime pledges, he’s got some good ideas, some bad ones, and some embarrassingly stupid ones. But whether I think they’re stupid or not, he’s said he’d do them, and now we can keep track of his actions to see whether he fulfills his promises. We’re watching you, Boris…

Boris Johnson has banned alcohol from all public transport in London. I hope I’m not alone in having thought it was already illegal. I always used to drink my booze surreptitiously. Now I learn I could have flaunted it.

Anyway, this is the first BorisWatch post, to keep track of all the things Boris does while in office. Generally the goal is to compare what he does with what he said he’d do, but annoyingly I haven’t got round to looking at what he said he’d do about public transport yet - I’ll put a longer post up about that later.

In the meantime, here’s what Boris had to say about his new initiative:

“I firmly believe that if we drive out so called minor crime then we will be able to get a firm grip on more serious crime. That’s why from June 1st the drinking of alcohol will be banned from the tube, tram, bus, and Docklands Light Railway.”

Let’s take a second to think about this. First of all, it seems slightly contradictory to make something illegal in order to reduce minor crime.  What he might be getting at is this: To reduce minor crime it’s worth reducing the cause of minor crime - alcohol. If people are less drunk on the tube, people’ll be less likely to vandalise, abuse, assault, harrass etc. Very sensible.

Except…

Stopping people drinking on the tube won’t stop people being drunk on the tube. I doubt if it’d even noticeably reduce it. Yes it can take forever to get from on end of the district line to the other, but not quite long enough that I might get on while sober, drink a few tinnies along the way and be fully tanked up and looking for something to break by the time I get to the other end. Surely most of the alcohol-related crime is being caused by people who are already drunk by the time they touch in with their Oyster.

So what’s the real effect of this ban going to be? Well, I’d imagine that not everyone’s going to meekly obey the ban. So to enforce it is going to take resources, both in terms of patrolling the tube and then, presumably, administering the prosecution of people unlucky enough to get caught a few times. So by tying up the transport police et al in this way, Boris is in fact making it harder to “get a firm grip on more serious crime”. And by criminalising drinking on the public transport, he’ll also slightly increase the number of minor crimes committed, as cracking open a Stella on the way to a party will be another entry in the police log-book.

The ban won’t really do any good then, is my guess. It’s a nice big gesture to mark the start of his reign, but all Boris’ll achieve is… well, fewer people drinking on the tube, if he’s lucky. But don’t expect to see reams of positive knock-on effects.

This is the first of hopefully many posts taking a look at the different areas of Boris’ manifesto, pledges and policy areas. First up, crime. This is what Boris has to say about it (taken from here):

“It is the Mayor’s first duty to ensure the safety and security of all Londoners and his second to reassure them that they truly are safe, to offer an antidote to the apprehension that darkens every late-night bus ride or walk home.”

A noble sentiment. Notice that his focus is exclusively on street crime. Perhaps it is right and good that he only campaigns on that front. But it means that any other forms of crime - domestic violence, corporate crime - are being implicitly shunted off as not his responsibility.

Still, if street crime is what he wants to tackle, how is he going to do it?

• “I will give support to the wonderful work of local community projects that get young people off the streets and give them purpose and a realisation of their value as members of society.”

Excellent. But what does he mean by “support” here? It’s a lovely sentiment, but he hasn’t actually promised to do anything more than use adjectives like “wonderful” every once in a while - that’s support in a way, after all. So there’s nothing here we can really hold him to.

• “I will provide £2.6 million to fund hand-held scanners or new knife archways at transport hubs to hinder the mobility of those who carry knives and guns.”

According to the Met, though, the major increases in “Violence Against the Person” crimes have occurred in Ealing, Lewisham, Newham and Southwark, far away from the major transport hubs in London. In theory I think I support the idea, but if I see police officers scanning for knives at Waterloo I will be very angry.

• “Too much time and money is spent on form-filling, when it could be used to employ more police on the beat. I will lobby for an end to the stop and account form”

Ah yes, that celebrated Conservative goal of cutting through New Labour red tape. But the point of forms like the stop and account form (stop and account is explained here by the Hampshire Constabulary website) are to ensure that police do not discriminate when stopping and searching people. As someone who has been stopped and searched by the police on the tube because I looked the wrong way at his dog (I kid you not), I believe it’s right that when police inconvenience a member of the public they should have to record and explain their actions in writing. Yes it takes time, but it also provides us with a level of reassurance that the vast powers (not the phrase “they do not need reasonable suspicion” on this website) held by the 3rd Millenium police force are not abused.

• “We must stand up for our brave, hard-working police men and women to ensure they get a fair deal from government.”

See, now, this is good - if ever there’s another police pay-related strike, we now know where to look for Boris - standing firm at the centre of the picket line. Remember this, police men and women - he’s promised he’ll be on your side.

• “I will provide local neighbourhoods with New York-style crime maps, to enable residents to hold local police to account.”

Hang on. So he’s going to create maps of London, detailing crimes by district, like this one of New York? But we already have them. Here. So he’s just going to print them out and stick them up over all London. First of all, how does this square with the second duty of mayorhood, to reassure Londoners that they are truly safe? I don’t want to be bombarded with the exact figures of how many people were killed in my area every time I walk down a street.

But I’m ignoring the point of these maps, which are to “enable local residents to hold local police to account.” Right, except that he’s already said that our brave and hard-working police to do a brave and difficult job, and that it’s not their fault but rather that of all of New Labour’s red tape which ties them down. So… in what way would crime statistics hold local police to account? Boris has already passed the buck to the bureaucrats. Explain again the point of these maps, would you?

• “I will double the strength of Safer Transport Teams, by releasing funding for approximately 440 extra PCSOs to patrol the buses and trial live CCTV.”

This one seems reasonable. Alright, Boris, make it happen and let’s see if it helps.

• “Those who abuse their free transport privileges will be able to earn back their free Oyster by doing community service as part of my Payback London scheme.”

Nice idea, terrible name. “Pay Back London” would be great - the message being that anti-social behaviour creates a debt to London that should be paid back, and can be. Nice, establishes social norms, creates a sense of community, encouraging participation. “Payback London”, however, suggests images of retribution, suggests that the London authorities get pissed off by anti-social behaviour so subject perpetrators to punishment as a form of payback. Not so great for the sense of community, and in general ties in with Boris’ general theme that there are two camps in London: Londoners and mindless thugs, and the mayor’s job is to protect the former from the latter. I don’t like it.

• “I will provide funding for 3 new Rape Crisis Centres to help the forgotten victims of sexual violence.”

Another one I can’t really fault. According to the Met, rape has fallen by 17% in the last twelve months, but that’s no reason not to keep addressing the issue. A good idea, Boris, so long as you do it.

So there are some ideas here that I think are good, and some here that I think are fundamentally stupid, but most importantly, as far as this blog is concerned, we have a list of promises that Boris has made. These are the things that he said he would do if he became Mayor, and Londoners voted him in so that he could do them (in theory - let’s ignore all the idiots who voted him in because they liked his hair). You’ve told us what you’re going to do, so do it, and remember: We’re watching you, Boris, so don’t screw this up…

Let me be clear. I do not hate Boris Johnson. He has done nothing, yet, to deserve my hatred.

But I do not trust him.

He’s a man with a reputation for buffoonery and public gaffes. His experience of running a large administrations is seemingly limited to running the Spectator. And now he’s in charge of London.

He needs keeping an eye on.

Here’s the Boris story so far (taken from here and here).

• He was sacked from the Times for “falsifying a quotation from his godfather Colin Lucas“, but at least he admitted his idiocy after the event.
• In 1995 a phone conversation was recorded in which he promised to supply the address of journalist Stuart Collier to school friend Darius Guppy explicitly so that Guppy could have Collier beaten up for finding out too much about his attempted insurance fraud.
• In 2004 he managed to offend the entire city of Liverpool by criticising the mourning of Ken Bigley, a contractor murdered in Iraq, and then blaming them for the Hillsborough disaster. He apologised, but only after the then Tory leader Michael Howard ordered him to.
• He was later sacked by Michael Howard from the Tory front bench for allegedly concealing the truth about an affair.
• In 2005, following the 7th July bombings, he wrote that, to non-Muslim readers of the Koran, “Islamophobia … seems a natural reaction”, in an article in the Spectator.
• In 2006 he suggested in a Telegraph article that Papua New Guinea was a country of cannibals, and when asked to apologise the best he could manage was the sarky:

“I meant no insult to the people of Papua New Guinea who I’m sure lead lives of blameless bourgeois domesticity in common with the rest of us.”

• A rotund figure himself, he allegedly dismissed Jamie Oliver’s (admittedly unsuccessful) efforts to get school children eating better meals, apparently saying:

“If I was in charge I would get rid of Jamie Oliver and tell people to eat what they like”

• Rod Liddle has allegedly accused Johnson of being prone to refer to black Africans, in private conversation, as “piccaninnies” - a term that he used in a 2002 Telegraph article, albeit in a sarcastic context.
• In April he said of Portsmouth that it was:

“…one of the most depressed towns in southern England, a place that is arguably too full of drugs, obesity, underachievement and Labour MPs”

Now, none of these are reasons to hate the man, or even to suppose him to be unfit for the job. We might even agree with some of his opinions. But I worry about having someone who’s quite so prepared to make public gaffes like that run my city. Ken was no model of tact, certainly, but that’s no reason to condone the practice of saying really stupid things to a wide audience.

Then there’s the figurehead issue. Everyone equates the words “Boris” with “Buffoon”. And this man is to be the face stamped onto the front of London. Two YouTube videos to demonstrate what I mean:

So this is the man who is to run London for the next four years.

In the next post, Boris’ manifesto. Let’s keep track of what he said he would do, and compare it to what he does do.

If you come across this blog and have anything to add, put it in a comment below.

In the meantime, Boris - we’re watching you.