Boris

[Chuffy]

I don't like him or what he stands for. Joy, another feckin' Old Etonian Tory running the country, isn't the 19th, 20th 21st century great?

I'll shut up now...

 

[bobg]

Just heard an interview on the radio and the chap said that Boris was hugely ambitious and this is just his first step towards his ultimate goal........ No.10.............

 

[Fab Foodie]

You don't like Boris much do you Chuffy...

btw. I'd have voted for Ken (and he ain't no saint).
But, I don't think Boris is the end of the world neither.

Politics needed a kick up the arse, last night it got one. This morning the sun rose and the world is still turning. Politics has an awful lot of inertia.

 

[Danny]

One of the many positive things that Ken did do was to make London a much more cycle friendly city by bringing in the congestion charge. And London is also one of the few cities that has seen an increase in public transport use because of Ken's investment in a modern bus network.

Despite Boris's credentials as a "cyclist", I suspect it won't be long before he bows to pressure from the Evening Standard and his suburban Tory constituency and ditches any policies which are seen as "anti-car" or too pro cycling and public transport.

 

[Aperitif]

Calm down Chuffy, and let the man try and work before casting judgement. Mr Livingstone had a poor 'past history' whatever his achievements as Mayor...maybe Mr Johnson will be the same.
Mr Paddick got my vote and I would like him to take a role in the new mayoralty - he has said he will not but time may tell.

Hopefully there will be a direction which benefits all of the pop. in London, along with a discovery of the municipality - so prevalent in French society for example.

Dear Boris, please start your tenure by disguising all the road speed cameras in your control, using cycle police to catch out drivers intent on talking on their mobiles - and, while you're at it, maybe dressing policemen as people - not beleisha beacons. Fair minded folk will have nothing to fear...

 

[Andy in Sig]

Yes, because Ken was such a grey faced Labour yes-man , wasn't he?

The thing that people don't seem to have grasped is that the job of Mayor really is a serious job, it's about actually working, day in day out, to achieve stuff. Talking to all of the different groups, even the ones that you might not like or approve of. Being a blustering thunderf*ck like Boris might be hilarious in terms of having a high profile and getting the plebs laughing at your every utterance but it's not what you need to, you know, actually do the job.

Chuffy,

you need to adopt a more relaxed approach to this or you may blow a gasket. I thought on similar lines when Ken Livingstone got the job because of his loony fascist left background but he didn't do too badly in the end, despite showing some very unsavoury traits. May I suggest that you adopt an open minded enough position to allow the possibility of being pleasantly surprised in a similar way?

 

[simoncc]

I don't like him or what he stands for. Joy, another feckin' Old Etonian Tory running the country, isn't the 19th, 20th 21st century great?

I'll shut up now...

You needn't worry too much. Boris is not going to run the country. He's going to run some aspects of local government in one small part of it, and that's not quite the same thing.

 

[Chuffy]

I thought on similar lines when Ken Livingstone got the job because of his loony fascist left background but he didn't do too badly in the end, despite showing some very unsavoury traits.

True, but don't you think that it's a big ask for Boris to manage what would amount to a complete re-invention? From blustering upper class twit to serious and capable chap in charge. That's a long, long journey...

Politics needed a kick up the arse, last night it got one.

Er, how , exactly? Labour bloke lost, Tory bloke won. That's not even a kinky tickle on the bum. A real kick up the arse would have been for Paddick to have won. That would have shaken things up.

 

[Fab Foodie]

Paddick never had a hope in hell's chance of wining, or even coming second, so he was a non-starter as far as I'm concerned. But somehow London's voters took a chance, as Boris himself said in his acceptance speech, "a lot of voters pencils must have hovered above his name before putting a tick in his box". In his race Boris was the only outsider and probably to his surprise... he won. Surprised me.

 

[tdr1nka]

Just read this on the BBC, made me laugh!

"Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson (he is still known to family members as Al) was born in New York to English parents in 1964 and was, until recently, an American citizen.

He is of Turkish descent. His great-grandfather, Ali Kemal, a Turkish journalist, was briefly interior minister in the government of Ahmed Tevfik Pasha, Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire.

His grandfather Osman Ali settled in the UK in the 1920s and changed his name to Wilfred Johnson."

 

[yenrod]

Looks like he may have won the tories "london", but will he lose them the country...

By the way things are going - the con'servatives will probably win the g.election.

 

[Cycling Naturalist]

Just read this on the BBC, made me laugh!

[II]

His grandfather Osman Ali settled in the UK in the 1920s and changed his name to Wilfred Johnson."

So, basically, Boris is just another immigrant called Ali who's made it. Good luck to him.

 

[PrettyboyTim]

 

[Andy in Sig]

True, but don't you think that it's a big ask for Boris to manage what would amount to a complete re-invention? From blustering upper class twit to serious and capable chap in charge. That's a long, long journey...
That would have shaken things up.

But if you talk to people who know him they all say that he is very sharp, clever and capable. It seems to me that he just enjoys clowning around a bit, like many a "normal" person and most distinctly unlike the dull class of political geek which we normally are served up. As for people repeatedly banging on about him being upper class, that is just snobbery and seems to represent the idea that being upper class is somehow wrong in itself. Being born into wealth is, as far as I can see, not mutually exclusive to having intelligence and ability. Actually one of the more instructive aspects of his candidature has been to show up just how much narrow mindedness and bigotry comes so automatically to the hard left.

 

[simoncc]

We are often told by Londoners that the city is stuffed full of wealth making go-getters who keep the other 52 million of us in food, clothing and housing. It's amazing that a city populated by millions of high income achievers ever had a Labour mayor. A Tory one seems much more appropriate.