Could this be Boris Johnson’s achilles heel?
While his party leader talks about trying to help the poor and looking out for their concerns, London Mayor Boris Johnson unveils crippling 20% fare-rises for London’s commuters.
A year ago Boris did exactly the same: hiking up transport fares across London and trying to blame Ken even though the previous administration left him with a 5% growth in budgets.
That’s two years in a row he has brutally punished London’s commuters – hitting hardest London’s poor who rely on public transport. In some cases, as Tom points out here, fares have risen by a third.
During that time he has sucked to the City and defended the very bankers who caused the recession, been ‘bought off’ by hedge funds, wasted a huge amount of money scrapping bendy buses, and created a financial black-hole by getting rid of the Western Extension Zone and of course described his £250,000 income from writing as “chicken feed”.
He’s creating his own negative narrative.
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Introducing Another Anti-Science Tory
As was amply demonstrated during the debate on the abortion amendments to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, the Conservative Party has more than its fair share of mouth-breathing morons festering away on its backbenches.
But for sheer unadulterated nuttery even Nadine Dorries struggles to live down to the standards of David Tredinnick, the Eton-educated Member of Parliament for Bosworth.
Thus far is his parliamentary career of 22 years, Tredinnick cuts a noteworthy figure only for having been suspended from the House of Commons for 20 days for accepting a payment of £1,000 in return for asking a question in the House of Commons about an entirely fictitious drug – (no, not Cake, unfortunately) – losing his position as a Parliamentary Private Secretary (unpaid bag carrier) in the process; and for having spent a little over £500 of taxpayers money on a piece of Astrology software, and associated training, which he claimed was to help with a parliamentary speech on alternative medicines.
Given that the only previous occasion on which Tredinnick waxed lyrical on the subject of astrology was in 2001, I must assume that the speech in question was the one he gave on Wednesday in the course of an adjournment debate, in which case, and speaking as a taxpayer, I’d very much like my fucking money back.
The Quackometer has already started to pick over some of Tredinnick’s more delusional, and wholly untruthful remarks, although for sheer entertainment value it would be remiss of me not to highlight one particularly spectacular piece of outright lunacy:
I could have referred to radionics, for example, for which a double-blind trial is almost impossible, yet it is very popular because people believe that it gives them the ability to get remote healing. We need to think out of the box here. As with healers who can do remote healing, it is no good people saying that just because we cannot prove something, it does not work. The anecdotal evidence that it does is enormous. I know that the Minister is a forward thinker, and I believe that the Department needs to be very open to the idea of energy transfers and the people who work in that sphere. Will she comment further on that?
Like many, if not most, advocates of woo, the idea that the plural of anecdote isn’t data, let alone evidence, is one that utterly fails to register with Tredinnick, as does the simple proposition that there is absolutely no plausible scientific mechanism within either biology or physics that could account for ‘radionics’ for the simple reason that what he’s actually talking about here is magic – plain old-fashioned pig ignorant witch-doctoring ju-ju.
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Tory: London Mayor is ‘elective dictatorship’
A Conservative London Assembly Member has called the London Mayor post an “elective dictatorship”.
In a comment posted on ConservativeHome, he said:
Abolishing the London Assembly would be a good first step on the road to abolishing the elective dictatorship that is the Mayoralty.
Assembly members do actually work very hard in my experience (this was not my view before getting elected) but they are doing a job that could be performed by the Boroughs or a beefed up London Councils
( http://www.londoncouncils.gov.uk ).
There will be a saving but it won’t be as much as £8m as some of our roles would have to be transferred to the Boroughs.
He was responding to a call by the website to abolish the London Assembly – right now the only body keeping a tab on the London Mayor.
Adam Bienkov at Tory Troll, who picked up the comment, said:
Boff has said openly what I’m sure other Tory Assembly Members would agree with privately, and it’s certainly a principled stance to propose giving yourself the sack.
But if the Mayoralty is such a bad idea for London, then why did he stand for it himself?
Fact-checking Michael Gove on Churchill
Further to my recent blog on Michael Gove and his education policies, there was one other part of Gove’s speech at party conference I found pretty irritating:
The body responsible for writing the curriculum – the QDCA – spends more than one hundred million pounds every year – and after hiring an army of consultants, squadrons of advisers and regiments of bureaucrats they still wrote a syllabus for the Second World War without any place for Winston Churchill.
I guess it’s always possible that he’s right. Maybe there’s some secret document doing the rounds, written by scores of ‘unaccountable quangocrats’ which does indeed remove Winston Churchill from the history curriculum. But it would have to be a secret document, because when you hop over to the QCDA’s website, you’ll actually find quite a few references to Britain’s Greatest Ever Tory.
He’s mentioned here, here and here, in these guidance notes for teachers and, rather inconveniently for Mr Gove, in this rather unwieldy PDF (p22):
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Top 10 Tory ‘out of touch’ gaffes
Because I love lists, here is my list of top 10 pieces of real documentary evidence that the Tory hierarchy by virtue of their privileged upbringing, are incapable of government which takes account of ‘real people’s’ experiences. The top 10 is limited to Tory parliamentarians or wanabee parliamentarians, as it would have to be a top 100 otherwise.
No. 10 Anthony Steen, soon to be ex-MP for Totnes, on his inordinate expense claims:
‘You know what it’s about? Jealousy. I have got a very, very large house. Some people say it looks like Balmoral. It’s the photographs that make it look like Balmoral, but it’s a merchant’s house from the 19th century.’
A fairly obvious one in for starters, only down at No.10 because he’s not going to be an MP.
New website raises leadership challenge rumours
Former home secretary and currently a constant thorn on the Prime Minister’s side charles Clarke has launched a new project: Labour Future. No sniggering there at the back please, Mr Clarke really is going to lead the troops into a serious discussion about the party’s direction.
This comes not long after James Purnell’s own efforts to lead the debate on the state of the left.
Predictably the hacks are spinning it as a leadership coup attempt:
“So this is the latest incarnation of the ‘Brown Must Go’ campaign, is it?” I enquired of one of the gang of ten. “No, no!” my informant spluttered, somewhat unconvincingly. “It’s about setting out our agenda for the future and showing that Labour is not intellectually dead.”
Yeah, right.
Perhaps it is more incredible there are seasoned journalists who still think Charles Clarke could lead a coup.
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Tory MP paid £100k expenses to own company
David Wilshire, a senior Conservative MP, used his House of Commons expenses to pay more than £100,000 of taxpayers’ money to his own company, The Daily Telegraph has disclosed tonight.
Mr Wilshire claimed for more than three years for office assistance provided by “Moorlands Research Services”. Parliamentary expenses rules forbid MPs from entering into arrangements which “may give rise to an accusation” of profiting from public funds.
But on Wednesday night, Mr Wilshire – the MP for Spelthorne in Surrey – admitted that he and his partner, Ann Palmer, were sole owners of the business.
The Telegraph has established that, between 2005 and 2008, Mr Wilshire paid up to £3,250 a month to the business. Extra invoices were also submitted and the total paid to the firm was £105,500. However, there is no official record of the company’s existence and it has never filed public accounts.
Mr Wilshire told the BBC that he had referred himself to the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner as the only way to answer the questions about his expenses.
BBC’s BNP Question Time panel is a travesty
Here is now the final panel: Sayeeda Warsi, Jack Straw, Chris Huhne, Bonnie Greer and Nick Griffin.
The panel is not only shockingly weak, but is very likely to fail to persuade anyone wavering towards the BNP to come back. I’ve tried explaining why before, but let me try again. Nick Griffin may have middle-class origins but he speaks to a very working class constituency who feel deeply disenfranchised from politics, or feel that the middle-class establishment are screwing them over in different economic and social ways.
To undercut that you need people who speak the language of the people Griffin is trying to reach out to, and point out that his is a politics of hatred that will not and cannot deliver any solutions. After all, BNP councillors have shown themselves to be even more incompetent, corrupt and lazy than those of other parties.
Unfortunately, other than Sayeeda Warsi and perhaps Jack Straw – none of the others will be very effective at undercutting that message. Chris Huhne and Bonnie Greer might even reinforce it.
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What might a 21st century Libel Law look like?
I don’t usually do requests, but as libel law reform is a particular interest of mine and a subject I’ve blogged on previous occasions, I’m more than happy to rise to the challenge set by ‘organic cheeseboard’ in comments under Sunder’s commentary on yesterday’s events.
but for god’s sake could SOMEONE writing about this stuff PLEASE offer an idea of what those reforms might actually look like?
Fair enough, lets start with an internet specific reform which, as a blogger, is number one on my own shopping list of reforms, and a measure that we absolutely do want to import from our cousins over the the other side of the Big Pond.
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Acy specifies simply that:
No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.
Under English libel law, at present, web hosting companies may treated as the publisher of, and held liable for, [allegedly] defamatory content published to their servers by a third party despite having had no absolutely part in in, or prior knowledge, of the that material’s publication. Likewise, bloggers and forum operators can be sued over comments, posted to their blog/forum by visitors, over which they will have had no control whatsoever unless they actively pre-moderate all such comments. continue reading… »
Backlash to Royal Mail legal threats
Surreptitiously, and with a “not for publication” notice, the Royal Mail last week succeeded in shutting down a swathe of important community online tools
They range from helping you to find jobs like Job Centre Pro Plus to increasing democracy and political awareness like theStraightChoice with threats of legal action.
There are several posts already popping up from those directly affected, those indirectly affected, and from those supporting the idea of open source and free for not-for-profit use of the postcode “database”.
The question has to be asked, how much longer can the Royal Mail retain “ownership” over postcode information when that very information is, collectively, in the public domain?
Another site affected was PlanningAlerts.com.
They sent an email to supporters yesterday stating:
We are left with the choice of paying the Royal Mail up to £4,000 a year for access to the postcode database and either running a much less accurate and useful service or shutting PlanningAlerts down altogether. If are concerned about this, please consider doing the following:
– Write to your MP –
Tom Watson MP has tabled an Early Day Motion in Parliament calling on the Royal Mail to allow non-profit organisations to use the postcode database for free. Please write to your MP asking them to sign this Early Day Motion (number EDM 2000) and protest at the actions of The Royal Mail.
You can write to your MP here: marples.writetothem.com
They have also set up a petition which has already been signed by nearly 1,200 people.
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» Even by economic standards Hester’s £1m bonus is unworthy
» Revealed: govt to restrict abortion counselling despite Nadine Dorries vote
» Would raising the tax threshold actually help the poorest?
» To win London, Ken Livingstone has to step outside his comfort zone
» This trade agreement with India will destroy thousands of lives
» UK debt hasn’t hit £1 trillion – mostly because of QE
» The benefits of being a “burden” on society
» Today’s economic figures will simply confirm UK’s “lost decade”
» Have Labour realised the election is more than three years away?
» Violence in the office
» Want a more responsible capitalism? Reform how pensions work
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