Month: Jun 2008

Mayor Johnson chaired his first Olympic Board meeting today and announced cuts to the GLA programme for the Beijing Olympics. See Standard story here. He aims to save £1.2 million out of the £4.6 million budget for the so-called London House at the Beijing Olympics. Most of this £4.6 million is of little value to Londoners but you need to be careful not to just destroy ventures like this for the sake of it. If much of the money is already committed it is destructive to just chop it. It looks like a practical decision to cut the cost of the London House without just scrapping it outright.

No doubt Gordon Ramsay’s 18 cooks, note not Ramsay himself, will be disappointed not to be going to Beijing. I guess cooking in Beijing in August would be a pretty hot and sticky business so maybe not such a loss.

It is hard to work out where to draw the line. The TfL magic bus to Beijing which was cancelled last month was going to cost £450,000. It was cancelled but £150,000 had already been spent and was thus wasted. The trip would have looked somewhat inappropriate in the face of the Chinese earthquake. The £300K saving looks worthwhile and sensible. On balance another good decision. But, if £350,000 had been committed you might have kept it and perhaps changed the route to avoid earthquake areas.

The best way to save money is not to make these grandiose commitments in the first place. It is easy to make gestures when you are spending other people’s money. Much better that this money is spent closer to home on events that real Londoners can enjoy. Even better if some or all of it is left in our own pockets for our own pleasure.

Today Localis, which is essentially the local government bit of Policy Exchange, published a pamphlet titled “The Million Vote Mandate: The Challenges facing Boris Johnson”.

The Crossrail bit was done by me. They seem to have garbled the end bit somewhat. There are no sub-editors in think tank land.

The interim report of the Mayor’s Forensic Audit Panel, looking into both the LDA and GLA, was published today. It didn’t sound like there will be many new revelations. The most quotable quote from the short document was:

Further work is required to validate the position but it does appear that the London Development Agency has been historically an organisation where success was measured by money [paid] out rather than objectively observed results.

They could be talking about most of the state there.

The Sunday Times covered this story and used the headline “Boris uncovers Ken’s ‘wasted millions’” so you have to figure they were given a stronger briefing by Wheatcroft or someone else.

The most interesting bit is probably the last paragraph:

The GLA makes grants, as does the LDA, sometimes to the same projects. There are many other grant-giving bodies in London. We are looking at the scope for rationalisation.

They seem to be missing the point that the LDA is meant to be doing economic regeneration. Livingstone abused it and turned it into to his piggy bank. It got dipped into to fund any old social project he thought worthy. The LDA needs to refocus on core economic regeneration.

Brian Cooke, Chairman of London TravelWatch, has been sacked by the London Assembly Transport Committee this afternoon at an extraordinary meeting, see here.

In spite of apologising for his “error of judgement” in releasing a statement which was largely in favour of then Mayoral candidate Boris Johnson, but which specifically criticised two of Johnson’s policies, he was summarily dismissed by a vote which saw Labour and LibDem members in vindictive mood. Cooke lost his job in a vote of 4:3. Chief inquisitor Shawcross voted with fellow Labour members Qureshi and new girl McCartney. They were joined by LibDem new girl Pidgeon. The three Conservative members present voted against. The meeting was called at short notice so one of the Conservative members of the committee, Victoria Borwick, was unable to attend.

I often don’t agree with Green member Jenny Jones, but she was fair minded enough to abstain from the vote. She called Cooke’s behaviour an “aberration” and said:

I think on balance if we look at Brian’s previous excellent record we have to perhaps see this as an aberration and I think that while some sort of sanction is desirable, a sacking is not.

His crime was to produce the statement attached to the back of this paper over the weekend before the election. It led to quite widespread coverage, see Evening Standard here.

If you want to see the nakedly political and vindictive Shawcross in action watch the webcast here.

It seems that on the first working day after a few thousand people ran riot on the transport system on Saturday night the committee wants to busy itself with a reprisal on Brian Cooke for having had the temerity to point out the lack of clothes on emperor Livingstone’s transport policies.

According to the Sunday Times there was a lot of disruption last night caused by drunken “revellers” protesting/celebrating the end of drinking on the Tube. No doubt Ealing’s Cllr Ball wasn’t one of the people playing up but he sure did find the wrong cause to back.

In another article the blame was laid at Mayor Boris Johnson’s door. The person doing the blaming was the RMT’s Bob Crow. In the same spirit as the policeman who blames you for not locking your stuff up securely enough when some thief nicks it Bob Crow reckons that the mayhem was all Boris’ fault. In his press release he says:

Johnson should apologise personally to all those who were assaulted and abused last night thanks to a half-baked gimmick designed solely as a publicity stunt and without a moment’s thought for the people told to implement it.

We have made it clear that RMT will support any measure that reduces anti-social behaviour and makes our members’ lives safer, but this ban was imposed in haste without consultation with Tube staff.

We warned that it could put our members at greater risk of assault, but there is no comfort in being proved right when Tube workers have been injured and abused.

It is no good Tube bosses repeating parrot-fashion that they would not expect staff to put themselves in danger when they have been put in danger by the Mayor’s publicity stunt.

RMT’s advice to its members is quite clear: if they believe they are at serious risk they should exercise their right to refuse to work, to take trains out of service or close stations as appropriate, and their union will support them every inch of the way.

Let us hope that the mayor will learn the lesson and start paying heed to the voices of those who actually go out there and try to operate a service.

It is not as if RMT need any excuse to skive off. Noticed the total lack of concern for customers here. As I said yesterday I predict that the ban will be 100% successful and 99% popular.