London's New Mayor

[ashley]

Ken Livingstone apparently rides the tube...




But really I bet he rides this one...

[deamonds]

We got a Green Party flyer through the door the other day.

Amusingly, it seemed to be printed on that shiny paper you can't recycle

amusing, have you seen the bird running for it aswell, a real drip...

even more so than my co-worker

[wub]

good political reasons to vote soemone in-to power

It's as much about the person as the party. Blair got my vote because, at the time, he seemed a pretty decent bloke (plus the Conservatives had kinda lost it)

Gordon Brown, on the other hand, is the first prime minister we've had in ages that no-one actually voted for. Sure, he was the new leader of the currently ruling party, but I think a big factor in winning an election is whether you think the party leader is a fucking twat or not.

[deamonds]

LOL, Ashley you fucker, i bet your right aswell!!!!

[oddfellow]

good political reasons to vote soemone in-to power

It's as much about the person as the party. Blair got my vote because, at the time, he seemed a pretty decent bloke (plus the Conservatives had kinda lost it)

Gordon Brown, on the other hand, is the first prime minister we've had in ages that no-one actually voted for. Sure, he was the new leader of the currently ruling party, but I think a big factor in winning an election is whether you think the party leader is a fucking twat or not.

Its why there shouldnt be a 'leader' for each party. Causes horrendous amounts of problems and forces people to vote for someone based on personality, which is stupid because if your going for that job then your clearly a twat anyway, why else would you want that job?

Anyone who votes for a smile and a handshake over polices needs a swift beating imo.

[deamonds]

Anyone who votes for a smile and a handshake over polices needs a swift beating imo.

A sad reality to most fuckwits who someone has been stupid enough to give the vote...

[wub]

good political reasons to vote soemone in-to power

It's as much about the person as the party. Blair got my vote because, at the time, he seemed a pretty decent bloke (plus the Conservatives had kinda lost it)

Gordon Brown, on the other hand, is the first prime minister we've had in ages that no-one actually voted for. Sure, he was the new leader of the currently ruling party, but I think a big factor in winning an election is whether you think the party leader is a fucking twat or not.

Its why there shouldnt be a 'leader' for each party. Causes horrendous amounts of problems and forces people to vote for someone based on personality, which is stupid because if your going for that job then your clearly a twat anyway, why else would you want that job?

Anyone who votes for a smile and a handshake over polices needs a swift beating imo.

Policies play a part, don't get me wrong. But if there were equally balance on policies, like some I agreed with and some I didn't, whoever was the least twat like representative would probably swing it.

[oddfellow]

^^ Exactly the reason why there shouldnt be a set leader of a party. It will always come down to the individual at the end of the day. One person shouldnt have that resposibility.

[*decibella~~]

Have you seen the green parties stand on drugs? ....

DRUGS
Much crime in the UK is to feed a drug habit. Green policies aim to reduce the harm to society from drug-related crime and to minimise the harm to those who use drugs. They would move cannabis dealers off the streets into licensed premises with clear rules. This would deprive criminals of profits from cannabis, and separate out the supply of heroin and crack cocaine.

The Green approach includes:
Regulation and control over the sale of cannabis, with a local tax on cannabis sale.
Licensed cannabis supply based on the Dutch coffee shop model.
Decriminalising some recreational drugs such as ecstasy.
Improving information and health education relating to all drugs.
A ban on advertising and sponsorship of tobacco, cannabis or other currently illegal drugs.



also ....
A living wage of at least £7.20 for the poorest paid.
More affordable housing - 60% of all new homes.
20p off all bus and off-peak tube fares.
Tube PPPs and rail services in London brought back into public control.
Public transport and bikes before new roads.

[wub]

also ....
A living wage of at least £7.20 for the poorest paid.
More affordable housing - 60% of all new homes.
20p off all bus and off-peak tube fares.
Tube PPPs and rail services in London brought back into public control.
Public transport and bikes before new roads.

That is all fucking quality, though it does sound a lot like they're just trying to turn London into Amsterdam, with a cheaper more integrated transport system and further cannabis declassification.

[oddfellow]

Have you seen the green parties stand on drugs? ....

DRUGS
Much crime in the UK is to feed a drug habit. Green policies aim to reduce the harm to society from drug-related crime and to minimise the harm to those who use drugs. They would move cannabis dealers off the streets into licensed premises with clear rules. This would deprive criminals of profits from cannabis, and separate out the supply of heroin and crack cocaine.

The Green approach includes:
Regulation and control over the sale of cannabis, with a local tax on cannabis sale.
Licensed cannabis supply based on the Dutch coffee shop model.
Decriminalising some recreational drugs such as ecstasy.
Improving information and health education relating to all drugs.
A ban on advertising and sponsorship of tobacco, cannabis or other currently illegal drugs.



also ....
A living wage of at least £7.20 for the poorest paid.
More affordable housing - 60% of all new homes.
20p off all bus and off-peak tube fares.
Tube PPPs and rail services in London brought back into public control.
Public transport and bikes before new roads.

Sounds alright to me. Its common sence to anyone who indulges, unforunately I'm not convinced thats the majority of peeps so it may go against them...

The minimum wage thing is definately a priority. How there can be a present minimum wage that creates poverty is madness.

[deamonds]

That is all fucking quality, though it does sound a lot like they're just trying to turn London into Amsterdam, with a cheaper more integrated transport system and further cannabis declassification.

Doesnt sound like too much of a bad idea tbh, but i swear a de-classification has to be nationwide??

[pk-]

and doesn't a minimum wage have to be nationwide too?

[thomas]

Serious, who wants to support this fuckwit?



He just looks like he needs a couple slaps.

[wub]

That is all fucking quality, though it does sound a lot like they're just trying to turn London into Amsterdam, with a cheaper more integrated transport system and further cannabis declassification.

Doesnt sound like too much of a bad idea tbh, but i swear a de-classification has to be nationwide??

Not necessarily. Look at the Netherlands. Amsterdam allows smoking cafes, but only if they're licensed and in a certain area of the red light district. But that doesn't extend to the whole country.

[spooKs]

he really does have no clue does he..

on a good note though he is campaigning to get smoking back in pubs & clubs providing they apply for a license...

whether we'd ever see it is another story

boris johnson appeals to the shallow vote, stuff like that is the only 'good' things he represents.

[spooKs]

We got a Green Party flyer through the door the other day.

Amusingly, it seemed to be printed on that shiny paper you can't recycle

highly unlikely lol

[spooKs]

This year I am BNP.

Ken Livingstone is a tnuc.

And the BNP are?

CHEAPER transport.

fuck mate, you've got it easy in london! way cheaper there!!!!

[shonky]

and doesn't a minimum wage have to be nationwide too?

There was a group campaigning for a minimum wage in London of about £7 ph a few years back. Think they got drowned out by loads of CBI self-interest though, cause it stops them being competetive.

And to be honest, I get the feeling that the economy is going to stall with or without the contribution of immigrants pretty soon. Noticed in todays paper that 5 building projects in Brighton have been called off due to fears that they won't be able to make quite as much money as they wanted off them due to the credit crunch

[dubluke]

something good off mugbook


1) THE CURRENT SITUATION
The mayor of London is a big role with complex responsibilities for many thousands of jobs, a yearly budget of £11 billion, and the quality of life of millions of people. The city will soon host the Olympic Games, which will put it under a global spotlight just as China is right now.

Unfortunately, Boris Johnson currently looks as likely as anyone else to be elected to this vital position, despite being arguably one of the worst things that could happen to London because of his woeful incompetence, terrible policies, and horrible views which offend many Londoners as well as many others. He may be funny on TV comedy shows, but he would be a terrible mayor: as Paul Merton joked, “Boris Johnson is the person to lead the country back into the 17th century!”

Johnson has had a very easy ride in the press so far – all the main London newspapers are owned by two companies who are both sympathetic to his ideas, and the main journalist covering the election for the Evening Standard, Andrew Gilligan, is personally in debt to Boris after he saved his career by giving him a job on the Spectator after he was sacked by the BBC. They have unsurprisingly presented Johnson in a very positive light, with no real meaningful analysis, while painting Ken Livingstone (inaccurately and unfairly) as a pantomime villain after having failed to find any dirt on him personally, resorting instead to investigating his employees to create a swarm of smears which are impossible to fend off individually, and deliberately misinterpreting comments of his. Boris' words, on the other hand, do not need to be taken out of context to be seen as offensive.

One example of Boris’ easy ride so far is the situation with his and Ken’s private lives. While this may otherwise have been (and still should be) a fairly irrelevant issue, the revelation that Ken has five children – not secret, merely kept away from the press – has made the headlines, but the fact that Boris Johnson was sacked from a high position in the Conservative Party for having an extra-marital affair and then lying about it has been largely ignored.

Because the media have been doing such a good job for him, Boris hasn’t had to tell more lies to keep himself in the race, as he did when at Oxford he pretended to support a completely different party in order to get elected as Union president, before immediately saying he was a Tory again. There are many issues about Boris Johnson that the Evening Standard and its contemporaries have not covered adequately, but which make him completely unfit to be our city’s representative.

*Association with thugs
-Boris Johnson was recorded in a telephone conversation with Darius Guppy (convicted of firearms offences relating to a robbery of gemstones in New York as well as defrauding London’s insurance market) agreeing to help find the address of a journalist investigating Guppy’s affairs, so that the reporter could be attacked.
-At Oxford, Boris was a member of the Bullingdon Club, an expensive, elitist, invitation-only society for those from exclusive backgrounds who booked restaurants using fake names, smashed them up, then threw money at the owners (David Cameron was also a member).

*Racism
-Boris Johnson has said that “racism is ‘natural’”.
-He cannot understand why “the law might be changed to allow prosecution for racist language or behaviour other than in a public place”.
-He talks of Africans as “picaninnies”, saying that when the prime minister visits Africa, “the pangas will stop their hacking of human flesh, and the tribal warriors will all break out in big watermelon smiles to see the big white chief touch down in his big white British taxpayer-funded bird”.
-Similarly, on a visit to Uganda, he told Rod Liddle, some Swedish Unicef workers and their black driver: “Let's go and look at some more picaninnies.”
-He declared that in Africa, "if left to their own devices, the natives would rely on nothing but the instant carbohydrate gratification of the plantain".
-He criticised South Africa under Nelson Mandela as being “majority tyranny of black rule”.
-Boris left Papua New Guinea’s High Commissioner in London “shocked and appalled” by talking of “Papua New Guinea-style orgies of cannibalism and chief-killing”.
-Johnson declared that “Chinese cultural influence is virtually nil, and unlikely to increase”.
-He said that Islamophobia is a “natural reaction” and that "Islam is the problem".
These are hardly views suitable for a man wanting to lead one of the most ethnically-diverse cities in the world; indeed it is hardly surprising that the BNP have urged their supporters to back Boris as their second preference.

*Homophobia
-Boris Johnson supported Section 28 – which made it illegal for teachers to even mention homosexuality in schools.
-He likened civil partnerships to “three men and a dog”.

*Support for George W. Bush in the elections of both 2000 and 2004
-'George W. Boris' boasted that "not only did I want Bush to win, but we threw the entire weight of The Spectator behind him”, encouraging Bush to “tell all those pointy-headed liberals where to get off”.

*Fanatical support for the Iraq war
-Boris Johnson claimed that only 150 Iraqis had died in the Iraq war.
-He commented that “America’s performance in Iraq was formidable, and made Europe look ridiculous”.
-He celebrated the devastating force of American bombs when looking at “fist-sized fragments of house”.

*A potential catastrophe for the environment
-Boris Johnson would represent a huge step backwards for the environment.
-He opposed the Kyoto Protocol (which every developed country except Bush’s USA has now signed up to) for stopping climate change.
-He opposed the congestion charge when it was first introduced.
-His environmental policies (which I’ll get to later!) are desperately old-fashioned.

*Economic views
-I don’t want to bore you here by going into too much detail, but as with his apparent indifference towards climate change, Boris Johnson’s opposition to the minimum wage and affordable housing might be of particular concern to young people.

*Sleaze
-Boris Johnson has been given his campaign headquarters for free by a controversial Japanese company that Ken Livingstone refused planning permission because it would have involved building on designated open spaces. In 2000, the company offered to give Livingstone free office space to run his independent campaign but he rejected the offer, fearing that this might cause a conflict of interest. Boris apparently sees no such problem.

*INCOMPETENCE!
While Boris Johnson may be more intelligent than how he presents himself, there is no denying the fact that he is hopelessly incompetent. He has been sacked several times, and his appointment as editor of a magazine was compared to “putting a mentally defective monkey in charge of a Ming vase” – think how much more dangerous it would be to put him in charge of a city of many millions of people! It is impossible to imagine how Boris could react successfully to a serious crisis, such as another 7/7. The Times comments that “the man is chaotic. The notion that a Boris administration will, as his website promises every few lines, subject London’s finances and procedures to the most rigorous of scrutinies, is beyond parody.” As an MP, Boris has been too lazy to even turn up for 50% of votes in Parliament.

*Policies
Boris’ shortcomings are shockingly exposed by his manifesto policies, which state what he would do if elected mayor:
• Crime – Boris Johnson has tried to make this a central issue in his campaign, but Brian Paddick (a former senior officer in the Met. Police) says Boris “is clueless on crime and how policing works”. Crime in London has actually now fallen for five years in a row, murder is down 28%. Johnson’s refusal to accept statistics and strategy to use people’s perceptions instead reeks of scaremongering, sensationalisation and shameless opportunism.
• Transport – Boris Johnson plans to scrap ‘bendy buses’, saying they are less safe than other types – this is simply not true. He plans to replace them with old-fashioned Routemaster buses with conductors, estimating the cost at £8m. However, independent analysis puts the cost of Johnson’s plans at £114m – almost fifteen times as much money as Boris says he’ll budget for.
• Environment – Boris Johnson has pledged to plant 10,000 trees around London in his first four years as mayor. This may sound impressive, but not when you consider that in 2002 Ken Livingstone launched a project to plant a million trees around London by 2012, and by the end of last year 425,000 new trees had been planted. Boris also wants to build another airport somewhere around the Thames Estuary.

If Boris Johnson is elected Mayor of London, it will cause great damage to the environment, our public transport system, and our reputation abroad. Foreign politicians will observe, as Arnold Schwarzenegger (now respected Governor of California) has, that Boris is “fumbling all over the place”.

2) WHAT YOU CAN DO ABOUT THIS
Boris Johnson, then, is not fit to be Mayor of London because of his woeful incompetence, his terrible policies, and his repulsive views which offend many Londoners as well as others – do we really want the ambassador for our city to be someone who has already insulted the cities of Liverpool (talking of their "sense of shared tribal grievance about the rest of society" and their "deeply unattractive psyche") and Portsmouth (calling it "depressed" and "too full of "drugs, obesity, underachievement and Labour MPs") and the countries of Holland (questioning their food) and Papua New Guinea ("orgies of cannibalism and chief-killing", as mentioned above)? How can we guess who his next target will be? And, most importantly, how can you stop Boris Johnson from becoming mayor?

You have to vote in the Mayoral and London Assembly elections on 1st May – recent opinion polls show that it will be very close, so each single vote could count!

To do this, you need to have registered to vote by Wednesday 16th April – in TWO DAYS TIME! All you need to do to register is fill in and sign a simple form. The information you need is here: http://www.londonelects.org.uk/registering_to_vote.aspx

Simple information about the voting system is here: http://www.londonelects.org.uk/how_to_vote.aspx

Any UK, EU or Commonwealth citizen over 18 living in Greater London can vote in these local elections, and as long as you do live in London any other registrations don’t stop you from voting in this election.

For example, if you’re a student, studying elsewhere and living in London outside term-time, you can be registered to vote in both places.

If you can’t make it to the polling station of 1st May, you can still vote, either by proxy (where someone else who you trust votes for you) or by a postal vote, but this must be arranged before the Wednesday 16th April deadline.

OTHER CANDIDATES
There are a total of 10 candidates standing for Mayor of London, with four decent options. However, there are only two candidates that have a realistic chance of stopping Boris: Ken Livingstone and Brian Paddick.

-Ken Livingstone
Ken Livingstone has by far the best chance of stopping Boris Johnson – and Ken has been endorsed by Green Party leader Siân Berry as the other candidate that she wants her supporters to put as their second preference vote (a strong contrast to Boris Johnson’s backers, the BNP). As I’ve already shown, Ken has been treated grossly unfairly by large parts of the media, and in terms of competence he has around 40 years of experience of working in local government in London, with the practical knowledge and administrative skills that this entails (as opposed to Boris Johnson’s 7 years as an MP for Henley in Oxfordshire). The best advertisement for Ken Livingstone is perhaps a list of his successes so far as mayor:
• His brave congestion charge reduced traffic around the city and provided money to invest in public transport
• Under Ken, London is the only major city in the world to have seen a shift from car use to public transport, and with large-scale investment in bike lanes, cycling has increased by 83%
• Ken has helped co-ordinate and lead international responses to climate change
• Ken has put in place targets to reduce CO2 emissions by 60% by 2025, targets which would go most of the way towards solving the global warming problem if adopted internationally
• Ken has cut air pollution by making London the largest Low Emission Zone in the world
• Ken has fought for equal rights and opportunities for all disadvantaged and minority Londoners
• Ken has helped ensure in the aftermath of the 7/7 bombings that what could have been a violently divisive event was a unifying one
• Ken has helped to win London the Olympics, and used them to get valuable regeneration money for East London

-Brian Paddick
Brian Paddick, the Liberal Democrat candidate for mayor, was considered to be a better candidate than Boris Johnson when he was unsuccessfully wooed by the Conservative Party before they turned to Boris. A former senior officer in the Met. Police, Paddick certainly knows how London’s policing could be dealt with, and would make a decent mayor. However, perhaps because of his almost non-existent press coverage, Paddick is currently some way behind both Boris Johnson and Ken Livingstone in the polls, so if you do plan to vote for Brian Paddick as your first preference, make sure you vote for Livingstone as your second preference, so as not to risk wasting your vote.

3) ALSO STOP THE BNP!
As well as electing a Mayor, on 1st May Londoners will be electing members to the London Assembly – the other part of the Greater London Authority. These members receive taxpayers’ money to fund their activities for the next four years, as well as an office and staff.

Last time around the BNP got 4.9% of the votes – just 0.1% less than the percentage needed to win a seat.

For more information on how to stop this happening, see here: http://stopboris.org/bnp.html

In case you need any further incentive to stop the BNP on top of their abhorrent views on race (among many other things), one of the candidates, Nick Eriksen, was recently revealed to have said that rape was a “myth” and “a woman would be more inconvenienced by having her handbag snatched”, and that “some women are like gongs – they need to be struck regularly”.