Month: Apr 2007

It comes to something when even Labour politicians start to point out to the London Mayor that spending large amounts of cash and putting out press releases is not the same as achievement.

The Mayor is getting hot under the collar with Labour Assembly Member John Biggs today because he has pointed out that whilst the Mayor is spending £34.4 million on helping schools to produce somewhat bureaucratic school travel plans his claim that this is being translated into an actual reduction in people using their cars to transport their kids to school is pretty tenuous. See the original report from the London Assembly’s Transport Committee here and BBC coverage here. Interestingly the left-biased BBC cannot bear to include the cost of this scheme in its piece, in spite of the number being highlighted by the Assembly, in case that it inadvertently alerts any citizens to the vast quantities of cash being spent so inefficiently.

All this targetry is pretty dumb. The Government said lets make sure all schools have a plan by 2010. The Mayor, Mr Green football fan, trumped them by suggesting that London should achieve this by 2009. No-one really knows though if all this “planning” will really change anything though. Certainly they are not bothering to measure the output in a systematic way.

The Mayor is going on about Freedom Passes again, see today’s press release, where he is misquoting me for at least the third time now. Guess I will have to get used to it.

The Mayor uses the Freedom Pass issue to pose as the voters friend whilst holding the boroughs to ransom to pay for it all. The notes in his own press release make it all quite clear:

Under the existing ‘reserve scheme’, if the London boroughs have not reached agreement with Transport for London by 31 December before the next financial year then the statutory reserve scheme comes into effect at a cost determined by Transport for London, effectively ensuring that the concession cannot be watered down or under-funded.

Or to put it another way: effectively ensuring that TfL can charge what it likes for the scheme and the boroughs just have to pay up.

TfL can hold the boroughs to ransom and yet it can:

• allow bus costs to rise 8.2% in one year
• waste £78 million on advertising
• spend £22K on two job ads in the Economist
• employ a staggering 821 people who earn more than £50K of whom 76 people earn over £100K
• waste £27K on sponsoring an event and then pull out because of a personal argument between the Mayor and Trevor Phillips

So when the boroughs say abolish the reserve scheme they don’t mean take away Freedom Passes. They mean allow us to negotiate Freedom Passes with the overblown and wasteful TfL as equal negotiating partners without the Mayor holding a gun to our head. The boroughs have real responsibilities for the old and disabled. The Mayor is a poseur.

Back in February I noticed that Livingstone not only flew to Miami in his one man crusade to save the planet from climate change but also that his NFL game in October will encourage 10,000 Americans to fly the Atlantic to see their own game played in London (see previous posting).

I really quite like Americans, heck I even married one, but I don’t really see the point of ferrying a foreign game plus its spectators to London.

10,000 seemed bad enough but this number seems to have jumped to 15,000 now.

Labour assembly member, Murad Qureshi, is in the habit of asking planted questions of the Mayor when Livingstone wants to brag about something or other. In the last round of questions he came up with this easy ball for the Mayor:

Murad Qureshi: What benefits will hosting the NFL in October bring to London?

Ken Livingstone: The economic benefit to London of the visitor spend for the NFL game this October, negotiations for which started with my visit of October 2005 to New York, is estimated at £20 million. An estimated 15,000 American fans are expected to travel to watch the NFL Game in London and spend leisure time here at the same time. The viewing audience will also be swelled by British & European NFL fans travelling from other parts of the UK and Europe and staying in the city, bringing further economic benefit throughout the capital.

All of a sudden it is 15,000 transatlantic flights rather than the 10,000 described in the Mayor’s original press release. I can’t quite work out how this fits in with his London Climate Change Action Plan. The Action Plan suggests that the Mayor and GLA bodies:

lead by example ensuring that all agencies under Mayoral control avoid flights wherever possible and offset their emissions when air travel is the only option.

Unless you are coming to London for a football game. Doh! It seems where the Mayor’s new greenery clashes with his old GLC habits of funding bread and circuses the later will win out.