Boris Johnson will break his promise to keep all ticket offices manned on the London Underground it was announced yesterday.

Up to 800 jobs will go across the network including 450 ticket office positions and 200 other station posts.

TfL admit that this will mean many more unmanned ticket offices across the network, although none will close permanently.

In Boris Johnson’s Transport manifesto he promised to ensure that “there is always a manned ticket office at every station.”

However, the recession, losses from the PPP, and Boris’s own spending commitments means that he will now break that promise.

The Liberal Democrat’s London Transport spokesperson Caroline Pidgeon said today:

“Boris Johnson was elected promising to defend ticket offices and stop any planned closures that the previous Mayor was proposing across the London Underground network. Today’s announcement is a breathtaking breach of that key commitment he made to Londoners. It’s a complete u-turn.”

Labour’s London Transport spokesperson Val Shawcross said:

“This is the latest in a long line of broken Boris Johnson promises. He was elected on a pledge of protecting ticket offices and the staff who keep our stations safe but cuts, especially at outer London stations, will make them less safe and passengers feel less secure.”

Union bosses have also pledged to fight the decision. RMT General Secretary Bob Crow said this afternoon:

“If these cuts to jobs are bulldozed through by TfL it will turn London’s tube stations into a muggers paradise. RMT will fight to protect passenger and staff security on London Underground and in the event of compulsory redundancies and the undermining of tube safety we will have no hesitation in balloting for action.”

London Underground insist that there will be no compulsory redundancies, and point out that more and more people now use pre-paid Oyster Cards.

And with Boris already raising fares year on year, this is a painful but probably necessary pill for us to swallow.

Meet Tess Culnane, former National Front candidate, long-time Neo Nazi, anti head lice campaigner and the new employee of BNP London Assembly member Richard Barnbrook.

Culnane is the latest and most extreme member of the BNP to be employed at the Greater London Authority, since Barnbrook was elected in 2008.

His other appointments have included Simon Darby (now suspended) Emma Colgate, Rod Gordon, Chris Roberts and Tony Avery. All have been, or remain members of the BNP.

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Another day, another disposable deputy wheeled out of the spinning doors at City Hall.

“Ian Clement, Deputy Mayor for Government and External Relations, has resigned from the Greater London Authority (GLA) with immediate effect. He tendered his resignation to the Mayor of London this morning following the discovery of further discrepancies in the use of his corporate credit card. The Mayor has accepted Mr Clement’s resignation. His position will be filled in due course.”

You do have to wonder just what has been going on in Boris Johnson’s administration.

The man walks in dishing out vanity titles to any local big-wig, financial whizz kid, or snake-oil salesman who wants one, and then stands in amazement as they fall down around him. continue reading… »

You may not have noticed, but Richard Barnbrook is now the country’s most electorally successful Nazi politician. I say you may not have noticed, because as far as the press is concerned he no longer seems to exist.

There was a minor outrage after he was elected and an even more minor outrage when he was allowed a blog on the Telegraph Website (clue: everybody is).

But since May there has been nothing, zero, zilch. Type his name into a Google News and you will get very little in return. But in the alternate universe that is the BNP blogosphere, Barnbrook is the stuff of legend. I mean literally. Take this story which has been doing the rounds over there for some weeks:
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Boris Johnson lost yet another top advisor today as his ‘First Deputy Mayor’ Tim Parker made a shock resignation.

Parker, who was appointed by Boris to be ‘Chief Executive of the GLA Group’ as well as Chair Transport for London had previously vigorously defended the extent of his powers.

But in a surprise move, he has now conceded that it is ‘not appropriate’ for him to undertake so much of the Mayor’s role.

“I have concluded…. that it would not be appropriate for an unelected official to chair a body which is responsible for most of the money and a large part of the brief of an elected Mayor. I also agree with the Mayor that my position as adviser does not justify my full time and exclusive commitment to the Greater London Authority, or the title of First Deputy Mayor. We have therefore decided to adjust the management structure and abolish that position.”

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David Cameron yesterday called the latest report from Policy Exchange ‘insane’. As well he might. But for the modern Conservative Party, the only thing insane, was to say this stuff out loud.

Because for the think tank, the ranks of which make up a large chunk of the new Tory establishment, these views are nothing out of the ordinary.

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After two months of bungled appointments, lost salaries, and enforced resignations, the London Assembly have decided to launch a formal investigation into the way Boris Johnson has appointed people at City Hall.

The decision to launch an investigation came after the assembly were told that the current appointment procedures were ‘adequate’ by Boris Johnson’s First Deputy Mayor.

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Last week Boris Johnson called for a two-term limit as part of his fight to “protect Londoner’s from cronyism”.

But as Boris’s own band of ‘forensic’ cronies release their interim report on waste at City Hall, it is worth remembering that it is not just time itself that leads to these problems, but the people who are chosen to set the clocks.

Because when Boris ran for Mayor, he did so off the back of a series of claims from the Evening Standard which centred around Ken Livingstone and his supposedly socialist cabal in City Hall. Boris deliberately never got himself involved with the detail of these claims, but instead positioned himself as the new broom that would sweep the old dirt clean.
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Richard Barnbrook’s surprising description of some BNP members as “knuckle dragging junk” is very similar to Daily Mail columnist Richard Littlejohn’s description of them as “knuckle scraping scum.” However, a recent post on his Telegraph hosted blog shows that the Mail-Heil imitation doesn’t stop there.

Because when Richard Barnbrook wrote that we should ‘blame the immigrants’ there was some suggestion that he had broken the law on inciting racial hatred.
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Rich American Libertarians are planning to live on huge metal platforms out on the ocean. Which is good news. Now if only all of our problems could be got rid of so easily.

Executives from Google and Paypal are financing the creation of new independent ’seastead’ states which will be anchored out in international waters. Once built, anti-social millionaires fed up with those tiresome duties of having to obey laws and pay tax, can sink their millions into the project and rust their days out on the high seas.

Of course founders Patri Friedman and Wayne Gramlich don’t quite put it like that. In their manifesto: Seasteading: A Practical Guide to Homesteading the High Seas they write of new sustainable communities that will serve as models of ‘open source’ government.
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Now that the Tories are dead-certs to get their greasy hands on the rudder, it will be interesting to see which way the right-wing blogosphere will turn.

Because although some like Iain Dale will merge indistinguishably into the new establishment, others especially those on the Libertarian Right will face more of a dilemma.
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When the BNP’s Richard Barnbrook stooped forward to give his victory speech this weekend, both the main candidates and the news channels left the stage. Which was a shame. Because a better demonstration of the real man’s character and party could not have been found.

Now I have always thought that the ‘no-platform’ approach is wrong. To deny the far-right a voice is to give them a status that they do not deserve.
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Boris Johnson brushed clouds of doubt aside yesterday as The Sun newspaper endorsed him for Mayor of London. In a double page spread, Britain’s highest-selling paper told their readers to kick out “Caracas” Ken and vote in “Mayor Race Favourite” Boris.

The London edition of the paper also devoted their entire Sun Says column to the race, urging their readers to pick “a new and fresh Champion for London”. And just in case their readers still didn’t know how to vote the paper included a handy how you can vote section.

Of course The Sun’s endorsement of Boris Johnson should come as little surprise. Boris is in many ways the ideal Sun candidate. Here is a public school toff posing as a friend of the working class. A man who speaks almost entirely in mockney puns without actually saying anything even mildly offensive to Murdoch and his chums.
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