At the 2000 London Assembly elections, UKIP attracted just under 2% of the London-wide ‘list’ vote. Four years later, when City Hall elections coincided with the Euro elections, they gained a further 6% and two seats on the Assembly. Their time on the Assembly was short lived as I’ve recounted before, but their election proved […]
City Hall redefines ‘sharing’ to mean being efficient
Assembly Members have long been sceptical about Boris Johnson’s promises of delivering huge savings by sharing back office services within the Greater London Authority Group. The promise is to make “savings of £450m over two years from the sharing of services and collaborative procurement” in order to protect frontline services. Mayoral advisor Nick Griffin wrote […]
Borrowing Boris has maxed out City Hall’s credit card and we’re going to pay
Boris Johnson loves to paint himself as a financially responsible politician, freezing his share of the council tax while driving down costs to avoid the sort of financial “black hole” he accuses his predecessor of leaving behind. Coalition austerity measures have allowed Boris to come out against cuts to London’s budgets without the wider media […]
London won’t be plastic bag free city for Olympics
I thought it was a welcome move when Boris Johnson, The Mayor of London criticised the previous government for their ‘extremely cautious’ approach to tackling plastic bags and declared that ‘we will push for stronger measures’ (in his 2008 Mayoral election manifesto). Once elected he reinforced this with news headlines reporting his intentions of a […]
TfL spins as Boris delivers a funding shortfall and another tacky logo
More sensitive types at Transport for London may want to look away now. I’m on record as being broadly supportive of the cable car scheme but the fact remains that the Mayor repeatedly promised it would not cost the taxpayer any money to build. That promise soon evaporated and TfL has instead found millions of […]
