Boris Johnson - Mayor of London!

So what does this mean? Crumpet price will increase substantially?
 
Hopefully that boy gonna do somethin' 'bout all dem brown people that be stealin' my job.

THEY TOOK OUR JOBS!

THEY TUK UR JUBS!

DURK A DUR!
 
Boris Johnson is a funny, funny nutjob.

Voting Tory will cause your wife to have bigger breasts and increase your chances of owning a BMW M3.
Click to expand...
 
Yes! Yes! Yes!

YES!

I shall wear my Borins Johnson for MP-pin with even more pride now. One step closer.

Boris Jonhson - The man to take Britain into the 17th century.
 
I think Johnson's success is principally just down to the fact that people wanted a change and were sick and tired of Ken Livingstone tbh. A change is as good as a rest, and although Johnson might come across as a bumbling fool, it's as much a persona as anything else.
 
Now all we need is for someone to kill Red Ken so he can never ruin London again, and this shithole might just have a chance of being a half-decent place once more.
 
I think that's a little bit optimistic repiv, it is London after all.
 
It can only help that the city will no longer be run in the style of a Latin American dictatorship, with Ken's favours to his buddies and taxpayer-funded visits to worship tyrants, deceiving and ****ing people over being the only thing he was ever good for. It's just a shame it took people eight years to figure the bastard out. Labour's worst election defeat in 40 years is definitely something to celebrate, though.
Having said that, Boris opening the entire bus lane network up to motorbikes and Ken's ludicrous plan to enforce a London-wide 20mph speed limit with average speed cameras (?!?!) was enough for me to vote for Boris. My life expectancy is now comfortably increased.
 
The question is now whether you are willing to accept the following:

- That London will now be run by a man whose incompetence and slovenly idiocy is feared by his own party, to the extent that he was "bound and gagged for the duration" of his election campaign.

- Similarly, that (if I apprehend it right) Boris is actually going to have a pretty light hand in the way things are run. As el Chi notes elsewhere: "many duties which are supposed to be his will be passed on to as-yet-undisclosed members of his team. When asked by Andrew Marr (a politics correspondent for the BBC) who these people were, Johnson declined to answer the question.
If Johnson wins, London will have a group of, essentially, unelected leaders making decisions for a figurehead who is part devious **** and part laughing stock. And an out-of-touch racist."

- That even though the mayor of London is a huge role with complex responsibilities for thousands of jobs, many billions of pounds and the quality of life of many millions of people, the person who is supposed to be in charge has effectively no practical political experience, save an Oxbridge education, a right-wing magazine and being at the centre of the attempted transformation of politics into C4's Big Brother.

- That a large propaganda victory has now been given to a party that has all the obnoxious, conniving, back-stabbing lack of integrity that Labour displays on a daily basis, but none of the experience and none of the proven competence (not that Labour has a huge amount of that - but it has some) - one that, if there were a British Politics Top Trumps, would beat any other card in terms of 'scandal' hand down - and more than that, one which still retains the moral puritans, the closet racists and the General Rippers that lurk in the wings, and one that will rigorously defend privelege, money and unfair power as much as if not more than Labour did - which is saying a lot.

I'm not trying to argue in favour of Ken, but I mean this is some pretty serious shit.
 
Add on to that a BNP guy got on the London Assembly...

D:
 
He's an absolute scumbag. He abuses his position in order to screw people over that he doesn't like.

The congestion charge serves no practical purpose for London. Traffic congestion within the zone is now 10% higher than it was prior to the introduction of the charge. It doesn't even make much money, because the running costs of the scheme are so huge. So why do people have to pay ?8 a day just to get to work? Because Ken hates cars. Which is also the only explanation for why the charging zone was extended west into posh Kensington and Chelsea, which doesn't have a congestion problem any more than any other part of London does.
?25 a day congestion charge for (cringe) "gas guzzlers" (including most family cars), and no discount for residents of the zone, so they have to pay ?125 a week just to keep their car? Yeah, that'll solve anything. Particularly when it would actually cause more congestion as people would drive more miles to avoid entering the zone. And anyway, since when was it a green tax? It's called the congestion charge.
They also changed the traffic light timings and set up temporary roadworks all over the place to cause congestion so that they could justify the charge, then changed the lights back to how they were and removed the roadworks afterwards so they could claim the charge was a success.

Are these the actions of a rational, trustworthy person? No, they are not. And this is one issue of countless. Most recently he tried to cover up a Transport for London report that showed allowing motorcycles in bus lanes on the trial routes which have been running for the past three years reduced biker casualties by 44%, and cyclist and pedestrian casualties by about a third - because the cyclists don't want to share the bus lanes with bikers, and clearly pleasing the cyclists and the green lobby is more important than saving lives.

Firing squad would be too good for him.
 
Sulkdodds said:
The question is now whether you are willing to accept the following:

- That London will now be run by a man whose incompetence and slovenly idiocy is feared by his own party, to the extent that he was "bound and gagged for the duration" of his election campaign.

- Similarly, that (if I apprehend it right) Boris is actually going to have a pretty light hand in the way things are run. As el Chi notes elsewhere: "many duties which are supposed to be his will be passed on to as-yet-undisclosed members of his team. When asked by Andrew Marr (a politics correspondent for the BBC) who these people were, Johnson declined to answer the question.
If Johnson wins, London will have a group of, essentially, unelected leaders making decisions for a figurehead who is part devious **** and part laughing stock. And an out-of-touch racist."

- That even though the mayor of London is a huge role with complex responsibilities for thousands of jobs, many billions of pounds and the quality of life of many millions of people, the person who is supposed to be in charge has effectively no practical political experience, save an Oxbridge education, a right-wing magazine and being at the centre of the attempted transformation of politics into C4's Big Brother.

- That a large propaganda victory has now been given to a party that has all the obnoxious, conniving, back-stabbing lack of integrity that Labour displays on a daily basis, but none of the experience and none of the proven competence (not that Labour has a huge amount of that - but it has some) - one that, if there were a British Politics Top Trumps, would beat any other card in terms of 'scandal' hand down - and more than that, one which still retains the moral puritans, the closet racists and the General Rippers that lurk in the wings, and one that will rigorously defend privelege, money and unfair power as much as if not more than Labour did - which is saying a lot.

I'm not trying to argue in favour of Ken, but I mean this is some pretty serious shit.
Click to expand...

I despair. Everyone complains about deceitful politicians who talk in PC-speak, have a soundbyte ready for every occassion and never actually answer a question, and at last we have a straight-talking, human politician, who is intelligent and insightful and with a sense of humour to boot. Whose policies are exactly what London is in need of. And he's a "dangerous buffoon". Too much Guardian-reading methinks...

To even suggest that Boris Johnson is the most scandalous politician in existence, in the face of Ken Livingstone, who really is the most scandalous politician around, by a wide margin, is absurd.
 
Boris..straight-talking...he's a feckin half-wit :D
 
I didn't say he was scandallous. I said he was a moron, with frequently stupid opinions, backed by bastards.

This is not a better-the-devil situation. Being an obnoxious unfunny nonce in the guise of "straight talk" should not be the only alternative to deception. Buffoonery might be charming if we weren't being asked to accept it as a serious political strategy.

Also, the article I linked is from the Observer, olol.

EDIT: Sometimes he is funny. Sometimes. Not often enough.

repiV said:
The congestion charge serves no practical purpose for London. Traffic congestion within the zone is now 10% higher than it was prior to the introduction of the charge.
Click to expand...
I don't know enough about the congestion charge to really argue with you but I am wondering about this (which is the primary evidence of your claim that the congestion charge 'isn't working'). The mere fact that congestion has still increased means nothing because the charge was originally intended to stop a rapid rise in choking. If the charge has slowed down the rate of that rise, it has done some good. It may be that without the introduction of the charge, your figure would be 20%, or 30. It may not. But simply quoting the number at us is pretty useless.
 
Now I come to think of it you haven't really addressed - cannot? - the criticism that he has very little experience of the responsibilities involved, and may not have the capacity for them. Again, his own party are scared of him making his own decisions. Really inspires faith!
 
Truly tragic news. :(

Long live ken. That Andrew chap who ran the anti-ken smear campaign in the LES should be shot.
 
Sulkdodds said:
I didn't say he was scandallous. I said he was a moron, with frequently stupid opinions, backed by bastards.

This is not a better-the-devil situation. Being an obnoxious unfunny nonce in the guise of "straight talk" should not be the only alternative to deception. Buffoonery might be charming if we weren't being asked to accept it as a serious political strategy.

Also, the article I linked is from the Observer, olol.

EDIT: Sometimes he is funny. Sometimes. Not often enough.
Click to expand...

He's not a moron, by any stretch of the imagination.

I don't know enough about the congestion charge to really argue with you but I am wondering about this (which is the primary evidence of your claim that the congestion charge 'isn't working'). The mere fact that congestion has still increased means nothing because the charge was originally intended to stop a rapid rise in choking. If the charge has slowed down the rate of that rise, it has done some good. It may be that without the introduction of the charge, your figure would be 20%, or 30. It may not. But simply quoting the number at us is pretty useless.
Click to expand...

It's not useless, because it demonstrates that pricing people off the roads is a false economy. It's not a solution. Congestion will still rise, and people will have to pay a fortune for the privilege. Not to mention the absolutely catastrophic effect on businesses within the zone.
Not to mention that it's pretty fascist, along with the rest of Red Ken's transport policy. Bus lanes are a moronic idea. The A1 in particular, which is one of only three major routes into London from the north, is a four-lane (two in each direction) dual carriageway, but all the way through London 50% of that capacity has been given over to bus lanes. So there is now HALF the space on the road for all these commuters, in order to make bus journeys a bit quicker.
You can't force people onto inappropriate forms of transport, you can only create the best infrastructure possible and allow people to take advantage of it as they see fit. Making the most inefficient, inconvinient, slowest and ironically the most polluting form of transport (buses) more desirable at the expense of everyone else is absolutely intolerable.
And back to the congestion charge - in any case, as a solution, it can only ever be a solution for the rich. They will still pay the charge - everyone else has to suffer by having a huge part of their wage consumed by paying it, or by making the public transport system even more crowded than it already is. That's outright fascist, and typical of the faux-leftism so common in today's politics.
You really ought to believe me when I say it's bullshit, because theoretically I have more to gain from the congestion charge than anyone else. Reduced traffic on the roads I use and I don't have to pay it. In reality, all it is is a way of saying **** you to people who choose/have to use their cars. Need I remind you that Ken has previously said "I hate cars. If I ever get any power again I'll ban the lot of them". Indeed, I have heard from a reliable source that he was planning to extend the congestion charge out into the suburbs, including where I live in zone 5, abolish the congestion charge exemption for "eco-friendly" cars once they become popular, and eventually make using a car on the streets of London illegal unless you have a specific permit to do so.
If they really wanted to reduce congestion, they would engineer the roads properly. As it is, they intentionally design them to cause as much congestion and frustration as possible in order to force people onto public transport.
 
Sounds good.

I think public transport is the future, cars should have no place in an ideal, well designed, future london.
 
Sulkdodds said:
Now I come to think of it you haven't really addressed - cannot? - the criticism that he has very little experience of the responsibilities involved, and may not have the capacity for them. Again, his own party are scared of him making his own decisions. Really inspires faith!
Click to expand...

The same applies to Obama, you still cheer him on.
Most of his policies make perfect sense. He also promises to get rid of the corruption and cronyism that was so typical of Red Ken's regime, and I feel that what you see is what you get with him.
And even in the worst-case scenario, he cannot possibly be worse than Ken. Ken winning yesterday would have driven me out of London, he's that bad. Now I'll wait and see.

Solaris said:
Truly tragic news. :(

Long live ken. That Andrew chap who ran the anti-ken smear campaign in the LES should be shot.
Click to expand...

Ken is a first-degree cock. In his entire eight years, he has not done a single good thing for London. And with his policy of knowingly sacrificing bikers lives in order to make the greenies happy, it's personal. That makes him a murderer.
 
Solaris said:
Sounds good.

I think public transport is the future, cars should have no place in an ideal, well designed, future london.
Click to expand...

You speak from a position of utter ignorance. Your vision is implausible, impractical and also unspeakably arrogant, as you have absolutely no business whatsoever telling people what form of transport they are allowed to use.
Public transport is full to capacity as it is, if people didn't use their cars to get to work then the entire infrastructure would collapse overnight. Not to mention, that public transport is useless for the many people who work in London but live elsewhere, ridiculously unreliable, obscenely expensive, completely unsuitable for disabled people, horribly uncomfortable and is only good for some journeys.
We also require road freight to transport supplies into and around the city, and the congestion charge puts people off coming into the city and also spending. Businesses have suffered greatly as a result.

The world does not revolve around your crazy ideals.
 
reviV, how is any of that stuff you described as fascist, acutally fascist?
 
Evo said:
reviV, how is any of that stuff you described as fascist, acutally fascist?
Click to expand...

Because it provides a very small benefit to the very rich at the vast expense of everyone else. It punishes people just for going about their daily lives, and the only solution offered for these people is to submit to the state and use their shitty public transport system.

If any of you had experienced commuting two and a half hours a day on the tube on a daily basis before then you'd soon change your tune.
 
Offering benefit to the very rich at the expense of everyone else - not a fascist idea.
Punishing people for going about their daily lives - not a fascist idea.

Fascism is about bringing people together as one group while maintaining individualism, be it as a nation (Mussolini) or as a race (Hitler).

If people went about their daily lives as normal in a fascist state then people weren't punished. Things may not have been perfect true, but they weren't punished for doing their day to day things.

And the benefit to the very rich? That sounds like capitalism to me. Fascism was inherantly anti-capitalist and Hitler and Mussolini both looked to the middle-lower classes as key supporters.

Sorry to have a go, but it is annoying when people claim any little thing is fascist nowadays when it is more like the plain and simple idea that power corrupts.
 
I also do not have time, so I will answer (for now) the easiest-possible thing to answer:

repiV said:
The same applies to Obama, you still cheer him on.
Click to expand...
I'm pretty sceptical about Obama, and no, it doesn't apply in the same way. Firstly, Obama is a senator; he's had substantially more responsibility than Boris has. Secondly, the reason I italicised parts of my post was to add emphasis, not to indicate you should ignore them:

Sulkdodds said:
Again, his own party are scared of him making his own decisions.
Click to expand...
This does not apply to Obama. His own party does not spend its time chasing after him to make sure that he does not blunder and wreck the campaign. His goons and backers are not hysterically afraid of what silly things he might do. And he at least appears to be running his own campaign, which is not true of Boris, who appears to be under orders from blue HQ.
 
I thought the Conservatives were more worried about what he might say than what he might do. He's made some pretty far-out statements before.
 
Eejit said:
I thought the Conservatives were more worried about what he might say than what he might do. He's made some pretty far-out statements before.
Click to expand...
Not only that, if we are to believe the article...

Andrew Rawnsley said:
Tellingly, the Tory leader feels it necessary to keep issuing reassurances that Mayor Boris would be swaddled in a protective blanket of expert advisers to keep him out of trouble. In other words, even David Cameron doesn't think his candidate can be trusted to run London.
Click to expand...
 
Evo said:
Offering benefit to the very rich at the expense of everyone else - not a fascist idea.
Punishing people for going about their daily lives - not a fascist idea.

Fascism is about bringing people together as one group while maintaining individualism, be it as a nation (Mussolini) or as a race (Hitler).

If people went about their daily lives as normal in a fascist state then people weren't punished. Things may not have been perfect true, but they weren't punished for doing their day to day things.

And the benefit to the very rich? That sounds like capitalism to me. Fascism was inherantly anti-capitalist and Hitler and Mussolini both looked to the middle-lower classes as key supporters.

Sorry to have a go, but it is annoying when people claim any little thing is fascist nowadays when it is more like the plain and simple idea that power corrupts.
Click to expand...

Well, ok. The congestion charge is certainly not capitalism in action, it's pure and simple victimisation. Capitalism isn't about the benefit of the very rich at the expense of everyone else, it's about the free market and open opportunities. In terms of transport policy, that translates into letting people make their own choices about how they get around.
The congestion charge, most especially this new green bullshit aspect of it, is clearly aimed at screwing over wealthy people who can afford to use their cars, which is abhorrent enough in itself, but worst of all is that the actual effect is to make everyone much poorer, since contrary to popular opinion, a car is not a luxury for most people.
Nobody benefits from the congestion charge - commuters are thousands of pounds worse off, central London retailers struggle or go out of business, the cost of operating a business within the city skyrockets which effects the economy and discourages people from doing business in the city, freight costs are much higher which means we pay higher prices for goods.
It's a tax on mobility. Mobility is crucial to the economy (and a free society, I might add), and the economy cannot thrive under conditions of heavy taxation. Ergo, the congestion charge is very, very bad for London.

Sulkdodds said:
I also do not have time, so I will answer (for now) the easiest-possible thing to answer:

I'm pretty sceptical about Obama, and no, it doesn't apply in the same way. Firstly, Obama is a senator; he's had substantially more responsibility than Boris has. Secondly, the reason I italicised parts of my post was to add emphasis, not to indicate you should ignore them:
Click to expand...

Boris has still been an MP for seven years. Besides which, he actually has a long and distinguished career outside of politics, which if anything is a point in his favour as most of the ****wits that run this country these days have no conception of the world outside politics.

This does not apply to Obama. His own party does not spend its time chasing after him to make sure that he does not blunder and wreck the campaign. His goons and backers are not hysterically afraid of what silly things he might do. And he at least appears to be running his own campaign, which is not true of Boris, who appears to be under orders from blue HQ.
Click to expand...

Seems like idle speculation to me. There are no whys or hows here, only where and what. In all likelihood, they're concerned because in these PC-obsessed times, Boris says what he thinks, and of course is a bit of a joker. Which, IMO, is a good thing.

"Voting Tory will cause your wife to have bigger breasts and increase your chances of owning a BMW M3" - brilliant. :D
It's nice to know he's a normal guy and not a cross between Stalin and a grizzly bear like Gordon Brown.

In any case, it's pretty much impossible to be worse for London than Ken Livingstone, so it's a moot point. FFS, he spends taxpayer money sucking up to communist dictators. I find that absolutely outrageous.
 
He's creepy looking, creepy looking in a baby rapist kinda way. No disrespect.
 
Boris Johnson is an absolute clown. It's a sad state of affairs for london when someone like him is elected as mayor. Though that shouldn't come as a suprise considering who else was running for mayor. The guy can't make any sort of decision without making himself looking like a idiot. The best thing that Boris should've have done was to quit politics and stay as as a permanent presenter for have i got news for you, at least on that show he wouldn't do any real harm unlike now....
 
I don't understand how in any sense of the word dictator, hugo chavez qualifies.

The fact is that he won 10 consecutive elections and then lost one quite recently. He is at the electorates mercy.
 
Gordonsglasses said:
Boris Johnson is an absolute clown. It's a sad state of affairs for london when someone like him is elected as mayor. Though that shouldn't come as a suprise considering who else was running for mayor. The guy can't make any sort of decision without making himself looking like a idiot. The best thing that Boris should've have done was to quit politics and stay as as a permanent presenter for have i got news for you, at least on that show he wouldn't do any real harm unlike now....
Click to expand...

So what harm is he actually going to do then? Really, I'd love to know.
There's a lot of bluster going on here, mostly of the "I just regurgitate the headlines of my favourite leftist rag, but actually have no idea what I'm talking about" variety, but I'm not hearing anything of substance.
 
repiV said:
So what harm is he actually going to do then? Really, I'd love to know.
There's a lot of bluster going on here, mostly of the "I just regurgitate the headlines of my favourite leftist rag, but actually have no idea what I'm talking about" variety, but I'm not hearing anything of substance.
Click to expand...

I'm guessing you're a tory voter? It's not a case of regurgitating old headlines, you just have to see him in interviews and in parliament to know that the guy wouldn't know the real world if it punched him in the face! A prime example of this is when he manged to offened the entire city of Liverpool (a feat not achieved since that moron Kelvin Mckensie) by claiming that it wallowed in a state of victimisation over the kiddnapping and subsiquent murder of Ken Bigley in Iraq. He was told by the then tory leader Michael Howard to go to Liverpool to apologise for the statement. It's that sort of mannerism i was talking about.
 
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