Author: Phil

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.

This time last year the old mayor was grassing up London local authorities to the European Commission. This year the new mayor is announcing that he will work with them to increase recycling rates. Hooray.

The old mayor was interested in garnering power to himself and had ambitions to create a hugely expensive “Waste for London” organisation.

The new mayor seems to be more interested in working with the boroughs and achieving results. Good for him.

Livingstone was so out of order on this one it was painful. Even government minister Ben Bradshaw said in a letter:

Our analysis indicated that a Single Waste Disposal Authority could increase the overall cost of dealing with London’s waste. There would be significant set-up costs and disruption because of transferring staff, assets and contracts from the boroughs to the new body. Even after the initial set up costs, our analysis indicated that it could cost up to £5 million a year more to manage London’s waste through a Single Waste Disposal Authority because of the introduction of an extra tier of management.

Today the Mayor announced that the silly Venezuelan deal put together by his predecessor will not be renewed and that the half price concession for those on income support will be curtailed six months after that, see press release here.

Last September I reported that the ad bill for this ludicrous scheme would be £975K, see here.

The lefty bloggers are all over it and as usual they don’t get the difference between promises and PR and actual delivery. Tory Troll says:

Around a quarter of a million Londoners on low-incomes were expected to benefit from the cheap oil in return for technical advice and assistance given to Venezuela.

The trouble with all of this is that this deal was never going to help 250,000. Transport for London’s original business case assumed that only 160,000 would take up the offer. In his quotes today the ex-Mayor used the number 80,000 and the BBC used the number 56,000 elsewhere. Now you might say that those 56,000 will lose out. But notice that they will start to lose out by the end of the current tax year about the time that Mayor Boris is going to announce his precept for next year. I suspect he will be able to tell them that they will be enjoying a much lower precept than they would have done under the previous mayor.

If the Mayor focuses on streamling the GLA bodies and doing less better those 56,000 and all other Londoners will be better off under Johnson than they were under Livingstone.