The release of a new book, “If We Can Put a Man on the Moon . . . ,” by Bill Eggers and John O’Leary, helped set the stage for the National Academy of Public Administration’s annual meeting that centered on management issues related to health care reform.

The authors examine big successes undertaken by the government – like the Manhattan Project, the Marshall Plan, the Berlin Airlift, and the moon landing – and draw some lessons about what each took to be successful.  They also contrasted these successes with failures such as Boston’s Big Dig, Iraqi reconstruction efforts, and Hurricane Katrina.

In surveys of senior career executives in the federal government, “60 percent said that government was less capable of executing large projects today than it was thirty years ago,” noted the authors.

The authors declare: “This book is about executing large, important, public initiatives. . . making sound policy choices is critical . . . however, brilliant policies poorly executed will likewise disappoint.” They then look at large government undertakings from a process perspective, identifying six key elements:

• The undertaking must start with a good idea.
• The idea must be given specifics, often in the form of legislation, that become an implementable design.
• The design must win approval, as when a bill becomes law, signaling commitment.
• There must be competent implementation.
• The initiative must generate desired results.
• Over time, the initiative must be subjected to reevaluation.

The authors take on each of these steps, describing potential pitfalls as well practical principles, tools, and techniques to be successful.  They provide entertaining, well-written stories of people and projects, from the efforts of Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen in the wake of Katrina; to the implementation of the 2003 London traffic congestion charging program by Mayor Ken Livingstone; to the rolling blackouts in the California energy crisis of the late 1990s created by well-meaning but ill-designed state legislation, that led to the recall of Governor Gray Davis.

Their book contains insights and warnings helpful to the ongoing health care reform debate.  For example, they note that poor policy design “occurs because the work of drafting a bill that launches a major initiative isn’t generally treated like the design process it truly is.  Instead of a sound, executable design, the goal of the legislative process is often producing a bill that can pass . . . “  The authors continue, “Fully 45 percent of federal executives say that policy is rarely designed by those with relevant experience.  The dramatic disconnect between policy designers and policy implementers is perhaps the most broken part of the journey to success.” They recommend role playing and scenario planning efforts, like those used by military strategists and the private sector before it launches major initiatives.

They conclude with a warning:  “The tendency to see the enactment of legislation as an end unto itself, to claim credit for a great achievement upon the creation of a new law, is one of the most destructive tende3ncies in democratic governance.”

While Congress leads the legislative and policy design, the executive branch (and the Government Accountability Office) could proactively offer insights on the implementability of the pending legislation.  Eggers and O’Leary offer an ideal(istic) approach, recommending an objective “implementation feasibility assessment” to be done by an independent review board, much like the Congressional Budget Office offers its independent assessment of the cost of legislation.  However, that is not likely to happen any time soon!

Franny Armstrong voted Ken Livingston, but when a crowd of hoodies attacked her on her walk home from Camden, it wasn’t Ken who appeared as a ‘mayor on shining bicycle. It was Boris. Or should we say Batman?

And even better, the Mayor of London was on his bike (wearing his helmet of course), and proudly displaying his back

Boris Johnson

pack. What every decent superhero needs. Franny, 37, is a climate change activist – and we can only hope she appreciated being rescued by someone on two wheels.

But getting back to the daring rescue: Franny was on her way home when the hoodies cornered her in an alley way, shoving her against a car. They were about to hit her with a metal bar when she called out for help to a passing cyclist.

Boris heard the cries and ran after the hoodies wielding the forgotten bar and shouting “OIKS!” after them. Franny, only slightly bruised, has lived to tell the tale (because Boris, like Batman, failed to mention it).

Gotham City

After a day of gruelling news – soldiers shot in Afghanistan, violent clashes in Tehran, political reputations crashing around us – this inspiring tale of bicycle chivalry is a breath of fresh London air. Unfortunately, there is a chilling undercurrent to this tale…as we all should know, with every Batman comes a Gotham City.

The hoodies who attacked Ms Armstrong were girls, all aged around 12. Disturbing to say the very least.

Have we not heard very recently about teenage girls getting involved in violent gangs? Police are discovering an increasing number of young women joining male groups, getting gang raped, and carrying weapons or drugs to up their status. Some are forming their own all-girl gangs – and these are no better.

Recently, a 17 year old gang leader was jailed for four and a half years, and another 16 year old for three, after their gang attacked a 16 year old girl at knife point, dragged her to an alley and beat her with a metal buckle. One girl in the gang even said she wished they had got a guy to rape her, according to the Times. The group has been sentenced by Snaresbrook Crown Court.

A meeting has been planned between the Metropolitan Police, the Home Office and the Greater London Authority to address the problem. Boris chairs the Metropolitan Police and leads the GLA. Franny couldn’t have chosen a better hero. He biked into the fray without fear. Let us hope he does the same now.

Picture: http://alcopop.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/boris-johnson-bike_667500n.jpg

Courtesy of HMG, or so the conspiracy theorists would have you believe...

Con⋅spir⋅a⋅cy [kuhn-spir-uh-see]

1: An evil, unlawful, treacherous, or surreptitious plan formulated in secret by two or more persons; plot.
2: A combination of persons for a secret, unlawful, or evil purpose.
3: An agreement by two or more persons to commit a crime, fraud, or other wrongful act.

Part 1: Theory.

I imagine there’s some satisfaction to be gained by being a conspiracy theorist. Empowered by a hermetically sealed certainty that you alone have access to forbidden fruits of knowledge, you can look down with great superiority at the mindless, lumpen rabble that buy any government line with such unquestioning naïveté.

It’s a soothing position to take, conspiracy as dummy; in which the conspiracy theorist (latched and firmly sucking onto their Weltanschauung in an attempt to bring a sense of order and security into their life) looks to create a sense of order in a disorderly, fractured and unpredictable world.

After all, if some omnipotent sinister figure or group is behind the scenes manipulating events on the global stage, someone — phew — is actually in charge of this mess. Conspiracy theories are therefore all too often redolent of a distorted search for a father figure, or even an inverted form of God-longing (in which black helicopters replace cherubim in the pantheon of esoteric authorities).

Sadly — some would argue — such people have no shortage of fodder. For where there are events of political or public violence, the reason and result of which are not immediately discernible in all their naked truth to the casual eye, there will by default be conspiracies.

Yet to take a contrarian view, there is something in essence almost scientific about the determination of conspiracy theorists to continually question received truths. That admittedly sounds like a stretch: it’s a touch hard to reconcile the paranoid ramblings of those obsessed with Operation Paperclip, or the lizard-bloodline believing insanity of David Icke’s followers with the fruits of the Enlightenment.

But surely it’s nothing if not scientific to question received wisdom, collect data and formulate hypotheses, even if you can’t quite test them properly without putting on a tin foil hat first. And given that it is often those of a conspiratorial bent who are inclined to notice discrepancies in government accounts of disturbing incidents, their efforts could be construed as instrumental in ensuring full disclosure.

No matter that their hypotheses and suppositions may be wild: after all, as historian of science William Glen put it:

“The success of a hypothesis, or its service to science, lies not simply in its perceived “truth”, or power to displace, subsume or reduce a predecessor idea, but perhaps more in its ability to stimulate the research that will illuminate … bald suppositions and areas of vagueness.”

"History's current impasse."

Part 2: Practise.

In contemporary times, it is conspiracies about September the 11th and the vociferous legions of 9/11 “Truthers” that have attracted most – and mostly mocking — attention. Harmless, if a touch wild-eyed, seems to be the general consensus. Alexander Cockburn of Counterpunch, in a piece on the emergence of “Birthers” in the U.S., disagrees:

For all too many on the left, the so-called 9/11 conspiracy still remains the magic key. If it can be turned, then history at its present impasse will be unlocked and we can move on. For those on the racist right, aghast at the reality of a black man (actually a half-white, half-black) in the White House, the magic key to reversing this unpleasing development is Obama’s allegedly fake Hawaiian birth certificate. Their suppositions and claims shift, but the essence is always the same: He’s alien. He has no right to be president. And as with the Truthers, the provision of evidence rebutting their claims is merely fuel piled on the bonfire of their insanity.

He is entirely right to a point. Yet what Cockburn overlooks is that it may be precisely the kind of “moving on” by those accepting official narratives and their justification that has contributed so greatly to history arriving at “its present impasse”…

To turn to England:

The Daily Mail — a squawking, xenophobic, poster child for the bigotry of so-called Middle England — surprised not a few readers in July of this year with an excited denunciation of a DVD called “Ripple Effect” apparently doing the rounds in British Mosques.

The article, entitled “Conspiracy Fever” called for a public inquiry into the July 7, 2005 bombings in London, and blamed government opacity for the burgeoning popularity of the “outlandish and offensive” DVD (which accuses British security services and MOSSAD  of carrying out the attacks under a “false-flag” operation).

Yet the writer’s lengthy exposition of the inconsistencies and basic mistakes in official accounts of the attacks only served to cast a light on how plausible the notion seemed, and if the comments under the article are any guide, Middle England was in full baying agreement that the yarn the DVD spins sounds substantially more likely than the government account.

Before I examine some of the questions raised by both the article and the 7/7 attacks themselves, a few notes on quite how it has come about that a largely conservative, middle class readership of an established newspaper seem to be quite open to accepting that a democratically elected government of a western liberal democracy could be capable of conducting a Reichstag-like attack on its own populace and the subway system of its own capital:

Like all too many ills in the body politic circa 2009, it all goes back to Iraq.

(Sorry. Despite the title of this blog post, this is the only sex you're getting.)

Part 3: Method.

The 2002/2003 preparation for war in Iraq was bolstered, as journalist Anatol Lieven has written,

“By a propaganda programme which for systematic mendacity has few parallels in peacetime.”

Simply speaking, the government’s “systematic mendacity” met the strict definition of conspiracy: “An evil, unlawful, treacherous, or surreptitious plan formulated in secret by two or more persons; plot”,  and a case could be made that not one, two, or three of the adjectives in that definition could be met, but every single one.

When a government spin-doctor was allowed to chair meetings of the joint security committee and subsequently released an intelligence report to the public later found to be casually ripped from the internet with all the uncaring panache of a lazy GCSE student sure his markers don’t give a fuck, the skepticism of the general public hardened into cynicism.

When a chemical weapons expert caught up in a row with the government over his leaks to the media was found dead in the woods near his home not long after telling friends that if Iraq were invaded, “I will probably be found dead in the woods.” conspiracy theorizing went mainstream, with everyone from Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker to Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke saying outright they thought he was murdered, probably by the security services.

When two years later, plainclothes police officers and special forces personnel executed a young Brazilian man working in London in broad daylight, a growing certainty that the government was giving security forces free rein gained momentum. Shooting him seven times in the head with hollow point bullets (designed to inflict maximum damage in closed spaces) at pointblank range on a busy London tube carriage without warning, or attempting to arrest, authorities then embarked on a prolonged smear campaign against the victim in collusion with the Independent Police Complaints Commission. Politicians of the left or right were tight-lipped: a left-leaning, former radical mayor of London even praised the police for doing a tough job under hard circumstances.

Another few years trickle by, there is increased concern at heavy-handedness by the police. Welcome to 2009: a newspaper seller gets caught up in a protest against the G20 meeting in London. Smashed into the pavement by police officers entirely unprovoked, he has the temerity to die. Police lie brazenly about what happened; the Independent Police Complaints Commission backs them with all the independence of an Egyptian slave. Not a single senior politician speaks out against the police behaviour. Nobody is charged with murder or even manslaughter.

This is the history of the past few years. It is fecund ground for a revolution frankly, let alone riots; this being England people sigh with weary resignation and wait for elections to come around so they can vote in an even more establishment-friendly right-wing party of plutocrats whose policy platform revolves around massive cuts in public services. (Those who have been abused often turn their rage inwards, self-harming in despair at their impotence and shame…)

Absent a public inquiry (or a revolution), conspiracies flourish like mushrooms in the dark; the government, after all, has handed their farmers an awful lot of shit with which to grow them.

________________________________________________________________________________________

For more on the July 7th attacks, please check out the lucid and level-headed call by the apparently non-tinfoil-hat-wearing folks at the July Seventh Truth Campaign for a public inquiry.

For a small but necessary step to be taken in reforming the thoroughly rotten political system in the UK, go to Vote for a Change.

And for some proper old skool conspiracy theorising and muck-raking (you know you want to) this is a good start.

It's a public inquiry or conspiracies, HMG.

Been doing a lot of work for Hep C campaign gettested recently.

We got Ken in a tee shirt which was designed by Bella Freud.

In una cosa l’Italia è stata all’avanguardia: nel riuscire con metodicità a sgretolare,  nell’arco di circa un ventennio, la sinistra.  Tutta la sinistra. E sistematicamente: nella sua accezione socialdemocratica e riformista e in quella comunista. Tabula rasa. Kaputt. Zero.

Adesso la stessa sindrome pare diffondersi negli altri schieramenti della famiglia del movimento socialista internazionale. Il PS francese tenta un’ardua rincorsa all’Eliseo cercando un po’ confusamente di ricomporre delle divisioni che vanno ben al di là della rivalità tra le due ultime protagoniste della recente pasticciata elezione del segretario del partito. Oggi, a sorpresa (ma a pensarci bene mica poi tanto), si iscrive al “Club dell’effetto domino” anche il partito laburista britannico.

A lanciare il sasso nello stagno è Ken Livingston, Ken “il rosso”, ex (vulcanico) sindaco di Londra. “Il New Labour è finito“, scrive senza mezzi termini sul Guardian di oggi. Non si tratta di una questione di tasse o di scelte politiche. I vecchi dogmi sono finiti – scrive – e il mondo è cambiato.

Avanti un altro. Il Club dell’effetto domino attende nuovi iscritti.

]]> http://righteousrants.wordpress.com/2008/11/21/train-fare-increase/ Fri, 21 Nov 2008 21:34:45 +0000 righteousrants http://righteousrants.wordpress.com/2008/11/21/train-fare-increase/

It was announced today that National Rail fares will raise by an average of 6% from January 2009 with some networks raising fares by as much as 11%.

Train fares rise in time of financial crises

These rises come at a time when the country is at financial boiling point with people already struggling to pay outgoings they currently have.  Many companies are already freezing its staff’s wages due to the economic crises which is thought to get worse before getting better.  I don’t understand where us commuters are supposed to find the extra cash for these fare rises and it is disheartening that we must struggle to pay more for an already expensive service that doesn’t seem to be getting any better. 

TFL have had numerous campaigns in the past few years encouraging people to walk, ride or even get the bus to work which is fine if you live within, lets say 5 miles of the office, but for people who live further afield riding a bike to work is not an option.  It is people like this that rail chiefs are targeting as they know no matter how expensive rail fares get there will always be the commuter demographic who will have to continue paying the extortionate rates and adding to the rail chiefs already deep pockets.

Transport for London have not yet announced their fare rises but it is thought there will be an average of 10% rises.  Earlier this year London Mayor Boris Jonsson announced that fares would have to rise by a substantial amount to cover Ken Livingston’s failure to raise fares for 2008.  

Former London Mayor Ken Livingston

The lack of fare rises this year is thought to have been a bid by Ken to sweeten voters and secure another term as London Mayor…  Well we all know how that turned out, thanks for nothing Ken!

A group of demonstrators interrupted today’s (15/10/2008) Mayor’s Question Time twice to highlight the poor working conditions cleaners are facing at Transport for London.

The activists, who sat in the public gallery were equipped with banners and accused the mayor, Boris Johnson, of not sticking to his promise and allowing underground cleaners to be exploited.

The first outburst came just minutes into the formal proceedings at City Hall and one of the campaigners described the unfit working environment as “modern day slavery”.

The mayor refused to give a statement to any allegations that were brought forward and turned his back on the frustrated demonstrators.

The meeting was adjourned until the intruders were removed.

Round two

But their fight was far from over with another three jumping up in the ranks trying to shout their messages across.

One heard that workers on the Piccadilly line are being paid under national standard and that their wages are simply not enough to afford a decent life. And that workers demand holiday and sick pay, like customary in other companies.

The most serious of allegations, though, was that they are being victimised due to their status of immigration, race and that people are being deported to their country of origin.

A comment made by on of the assembly members telling the protestors to get a life caused an un colourful counter attack.

“We will come back until you do something” was the last thing heard by the group before they were dragged out of the conference room for good.
The police was later called to the scene, but the intruders had already been escorted off the premises by security guards.

Johnson trying to dodge the question again

More drama

This was not the only incident of the day former mayor, Ken Livingston, who had witnessed all the proceedings and seemed rather amused by the spectacle, was later verbally attacked on his way out.

Livingstone’s incident, though, was not linked to the previous one and the gentleman who hailed the attack was later seen shouting “liar, liar, liar” outside City Hall.

The confrontations of the day did not take away from the fact that Mr Johnson was intensively quizzed by the assembly members and was in some cases lost for words or simply refused to answer the questions.

One assembly member expressed her views by saying: “Mayor Johnson you don’t seemed to be on top of your chairs (Metropolitan Police and Transport for London)”.

And at one point Mayor Johnson seemed more concerned with his mobile phone than giving satisfactory answerers, when asked by an assembly member to put his phone down he apologised in the friendliest way possible.

Who ever said politics was boring- has never attended Mayor’s Question Time at City Hall.

• Home

UPDATE: Chinese complaints about Our Boris – “rude, arrogant & disrespectful”

• All Contents of Site – Index
• China View’s “glorious success” story
• Olympics! Our Winners and the Winning Politician – Tony Blair
• What’s the Myra Hindley photo all about? A major error and NOT by the official organisers

[Boris's sense of humour to the rescue ... he warned the Chinese - 'Ping-pong's coming home'. Click here to watch video of Boris]

If you are not British – this is what he was harking back to – good ol’ British self-deprecation a la Blair

Comment at end

24th August, 2008

BORIS LOOKED LIKE AN UNMADE BED!

PLEASE MR MAYOR – TIDY YOURSELF UP!

What an embarrassment London’s mayor was at the handover of the Olympic flag from Beijing to London.

Now, before I prattle on, can I say that I quite like Boris. Yes I know he’s a bit of a buffoon, with a foot lodged semi-permanently in his mouth. But he’s, well … a character.  Straight out of our unkempt aristocratic past maybe, but a character nonetheless.  And I must say I found him quite endearing when I caught a snippet of “Who Do You Think You Are” the other day, and saw him finding out who he actually was descended from. He took his relationships to various royal families, including ours, more or less in his shuffling stride.

BUT – at the Olympics closing extravaganza – and it WAS superlative – he was a DISGRACE.

Unbuttoned, ill-fitting jacket, trousers sagging at the ankles, hands in pockets, stooped shoulders, shambling and scuffling along as though he was at a Tory party Sunday fundraiser. Thank the powers that be that he didn’t have to speak!

I kept thinking – (yes I would, wouldn’t I?) – I kept thinking that if only it had been Tony Blair out there taking the flag from Beijing. I understand it is the London Mayor’s privilege and not that of the Prime Minister, and of course Ken Livingstone was hardly straight out of Saville Row. But wouldn’t it have made us much more proud to have had someone with a bit of style, a decent shape, and a buttoned up jacket to take the flag on our behalf?

It would also have been courteous. Boris – you should be thoroughly ashamed of yourself.

Just for comparison take a look at our former prime minister in Beijing recently. Even in casual sightseeing attire he has that certain je ne sais quoi, don’t you think? It helps, perhaps, that Mr Blair has lost some weight in the last year. But even carrying a few extra pounds, Blair knew when to button up his jacket. He never put his hands in his pockets on formal occasions and always looked the part. Boris, in the handover of the Olympic flag, in front of a billion people, looked like a bit part in Tracey Emin’s latest production.

BLAIR WON THE OLYMPICS FOR BRITAIN – NEVER FORGET

I suppose my thoughts also kept returning to Tony Blair because I recall that it was HE who almost single-handedly secured the London Olympics for us, announced just a day before the 7/7 London bombings.

Yes, politics is a cruel sport, but I DO hope some of our newspapers will recall Mr Blair’s input as attention now moves to us and our Olympic opportunity in four years time.  It’d be a welcome change if he got some credit from our press for SOMEthing. He got the Olympics for us, it is generally agreed, with much last-minute lobbying. Then, the day following the announcement of London’s success, whilst attending the Gleneagles G8 summit, he had to deal with the worst terrorist attack we had ever seen in mainland Britain (7th July 2005).  From jubilant winner of the Olympics doing a jig in exhilaration like many of us, he changed to solemn, angry and determined leader of the nation.

What did that old song say? You’ve either got or you haven’t got … style … class …

Oh how I miss it now.

Keep searching Mr Mayor. Perhaps you’ll find it by 2012. Though I doubt it somehow.

And Mr Johnson, it is rumoured, is after Mr Cameron’s job as Tory leader. Well, even though today’s papers are full of none too flattering pictures of the leader of the Conservatives on holiday, showing the pounds his cycling hasn’t yet removed, I … er … I don’t think so, Boris. Shirtless, at a guess, you’d make Dave look like Adonis! And we’ve got used to good looking bodies, more or less, on our good looking, more or less, leaders. That’s showbiz … politics.

The Independent has coverage of the Olympics closing with pictures, and a couple of similar comments to mine.

WIKIPEDIA AND THE REAL TRUTH

I don’t know if you have ever thought of editing any of Wikipedia’s pages.

I just went there to link to their 7/7 information and found this:

Carried out by British Islamist extremists, the suicide bombings were motivated by Britain’s involvement in the Iraq War and other conflicts.^[1]

I promptly altered it as below, my bolding on the words I altered. I wonder who exactly submitted the earlier version? I could take a guess at where their sympathies lie. Anyway, I think it is fairer now, don’t you? I’ll have to remember to check back there to see if it is altered again.

My version:

Carried out by British Islamist extremists, the suicide bombings were said by some to have been motivated by Britain’s involvement in the Iraq War and other conflicts.^[1]

You see what I mean about being vigilant? No wonder so many people have made up their minds about issues of which they are half-ignorant. They read this kind of report from an authoritative source and think it must be right!

BORIS VIDEO – “PING-PONG’S COMING HOME”

HERE’S THE LONGER VERSION

To watch his reference to “ping -pong is coming home” fast-forward to 3:08

Amazing how Boris can invoke Churchillian intonation and even inspiration, over ping-pong!

A LOAD OF BRITISH WHIFF-WHAFF?

Well, Boris seems to be right about the history of ping-pong.

‘The game has its origins in England as an after-dinner amusement for upper-class Victorians in the 1880s. Mimicking the game of tennis in an indoor environment, everyday objects were originally enlisted to act as the equipment. A line of books would be the net, a rounded top of a Champagne cork or knot of string as the ball, and a cigar box lid as the racket^[2].

Table tennis evolved into the modern game in Europe, the United States and Japan.^[3]‘

See history of ping-pong/whiff-whaff here

BACK TO TOP OF PAGE

FOOTBALL … PING-PONG’S COMING HOME

But some, including Caledonian Comment, are still naysayers on the London Olympics

“I didn’t sleep too good last night.”  I was telling a friend on the phone.

The last thing I did before bed was check the result of the London Mayoral election.  I watched Boris Johnson’s acceptance speech and Ken Livingston resign himself to defeat.

Today I can only describe myself is disheartened.  Don’t get me wrong I haven’t judged Boris on his image of “Buffoonery”.  I actually listened to the debates to see what he had to offer by way of policy.  No seriously, I did…

What concerns me is his distinct lack of real policy and direction.  What does someone without policies do when they take office?  I suspect he’ll surround himself with advisors and think tank policies.  What worries me isn’t how will Boris run London, but how will his unelected advisors.

You can say what you like about Ken, you knew where you stood with him policy wise.  Ken will do pretty much what he says he’s going to do.  With the odd consultation so that *ahem* it doesn’t look like he’s being a dictator.  But you knew where you stood and I don’t know anybody who doesn’t believe his heart was in the right place; whether they agreed with his policies or not.

So it’s with a feeling of nervous anticipation I go into the next four years.  I hope Boris proves me wrong.

Picture by lewishamdreamer, from flickr

For once, I am speechless. Boris Johnson has been elected Mayor of London as of yesterday night. I am really disappointed in the Londoners who voted for him. In the past, he referred to black people as ‘picannies’ and having ‘watermelon smiles’. According to this site, Ken Livingston, the ex-Mayor won £79 million pounds of funding for youth centres. Yet, fucking Boris has been chosen!!! This man has proven that he is a racist. How can he then be in charge of probably one of the most cosmolipolitan and diverse cities in the world ?

I am so furious right now. All the people who abstained should be ashamed of themselves. This loser is now the mayor of London. The gloomy time has begun…

Nearly three years ago, when I was posting on Liberal Street Fighter, I did three posts in one day about the events of 7th July 2007, and a followup post the next day. (Hint: the post that refers to “my wife Hope” – is not me. I do not have a wife.)

It probably is time Ken Livingstone quit being Mayor of London, splendid though his record’s been: eight years is long enough.

Brian Paddick would have been a better choice, though. Anyone would have been a better choice than Boris Johnson. There’s a PDF here – a report from Compass – that shows the real Boris Johnson, not the clown who is quite funny on Have I Got News For You, not the floppy-haired buffoon, but the hard right-winger.

There’s a thumbnail sketch of his politics after the LJ-cut, but more to the point: Boris Johnson won the election as a George W. Bush clone – as a good bloke who means well and is a bit thick, does it matter? A lot of people also probably voted for him because they would have voted for any Tory: some may have voted for him because they’re homophobic (Brian Paddick is gay: Ken Livingstone is strongly supportive of equality for LGBT people).

Boris Johnson’s qualifications for being Mayor of London are his past experience being an MP and running a weekly magazine. Oh, and he does well on talk shows.

Ken Livingstone was a great Mayor. The best anyone can hope for Boris Johnson is that no disaster happens while he’s in office, and that he is not able to put his political goals into practice while running London.

International and overall politics
* Fanatical support for the Iraq war
* Supporting both the election of George W Bush in 2000 and his re-election in 2004
* Opposed the Kyoto treaty on climate change
* Is an evangelist for nuclear power – and opposes wind farms
* Is a fanatical Thatcherite
* Considers Liberal Democrats have ‘a characteristic human psychological deformity’

Economic Policies
* Opposed the introduction of the national minimum wage
* Opposition to full pension rights for part-time workers
* Believes trouble comes from ‘too zealous’ attempts to tackle inequality
* Calls for large scale sacking of public sector workers as good ‘for themselves’
* Defends privatisation of the railways

Social and Environmental Policies
* Attacks the welfare state as ‘excessive disbursements that warp honest people’
* Wants to introduce the private sector into the NHS and believes patients should pay more
* Is opposed to the Social Chapter of the EU and also against its provision on paternity leave
* Supports grammar schools and public schools
* Does not support affordable housing
* Opposition to the congestion charge
* Is in favour of not only fox but stag hunting
* Opposes the ban on smoking in restaurants and public places

Attitude to black people, women, gay rights, the Chinese and others
* Refers to black people as ‘picaninnies’ and ‘with watermelon smiles’
* Attitudes to the black community and calls the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry ‘Orwellian’
* Believes in South Africa there is the ‘majority tyranny of black rule.’
* On Africans and ‘instant carbohydrate gratification’
* Believes Chinese culture is merely imitative
* Sexism
* Labour’s ‘appalling agenda’ of ‘the teaching of homosexuality in schools’

Political morality
* Considers Edward Kennedy faced a dilemma on whether to ‘come clean’ on Chappaquiddick
* Supports Silvio Berlusconi

Other positions
* Opposes devolution for Scotland and Wales
* Insults New Guinea
* Insults Liverpool
* Insults Portsmouth
* Insults the Dutch
* Believes ‘former crypto communists’ run the BBC
* Is prepared to discuss how seriously a journalist should be beaten up and whether to supply his address

Conservative Boris Johnson is the new mayor of London – ending Ken Livingstone’s eight-year reign at City Hall. Boris was unavailable today for comments after his victory as his PR confirmed he was busy trying to remember where London actually is.

“Red Ken” Livingston was just ousted as mayor of London. As his nickname “Red Ken” (I wasn’t the one who came up with it, everyone knows him as that) suggests, he was a hardcore leftist and any time someone like that loses, all of us should celebrate. Overall this was an excellent election day for both the Conservative Party and the BNP.

With final votes in for the 159 local councils in which seats were being contested, Labor lost 331 seats overall, and the Conservative opposition gained 256. The Labor Party took an estimated 24 percent of the overall vote, placing it a woeful third behind the Conservatives, with 44 percent, and the Liberal Democrats, with 25 percent.

But it was the mayoral race, in which Mr. Johnson, 43, defeated the experienced Labor incumbent, Ken Livingstone, 62, by 1,168,738 votes to 1,028,966 votes, that was the biggest shock — a sure sign of a deep national weariness with the Labor government. London has been resolutely Labor in recent years, and its loss is a bitter blow to the national party.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/03/world/europe/03britain.html?em&ex=1209873600&en=fcff5b5a3e8d9482&ei=5087%0A

Ken and Len’s commitments for a new term:

• Continue investing to transform London’s transport system – continue improving bus services, modernise the Tube, build Crossrail and improve London rail services through London Overground to raise service and safety standards, while holding down fares
• Continue the six per cent reduction in crime each year – add a further 1,000 police over the next year to London’s existing record police numbers and maintain a dedicated police team in every neighbourhood
• Safeguard the policy that 50 per cent of new homes should be cheaper homes to buy and homes at affordable rents; build a minimum fifty thousand new affordable homes in the next three years
• Introduce 24 hour operation of the Freedom Pass – giving older and disabled Londoners free travel before 9am and throughout the day
• Extend the student travel discount to Oyster One Day Travelcards; maintain free travel for under-18s on the buses
• A £25 a day charge for high carbon-emitting gas guzzlers to enter the central London congestion zone and no charge for the greenest cars, with a London-wide Low Emission Zone to keep the worst polluting lorries out of London
• Maintain good community relations – continue to reduce racist attacks, down more than fifty per cent over eight years
• Youth centres for our young people – a £78m programme to set up youth centres and improve youth services throughout London to provide safe facilities outside school hours

More detail on Ken’s site, and more about Len here.

Dave Hill – of London Mayor and More fame – comes up with the ten reasons he’ll be voting Ken.

This is great.

I’ve been struck how many independently produced videos I’ve seen about the Mayoral election over the last few weeks (most of them warning against a Johnson mayoralty), Alex Hilton’s gathered some of them – along with a few Ken videos – on the London Election Cinema.