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?
0 Responses to “The first week”