Can anyone say that Londoners are better off now than they were four years ago?
Nobody ever really had high hopes for a Boris Johnson mayoralty, not even his own supporters. The manifesto he ran on was generic. It may have had his name on the front cover, but it contained the same list of policies most other Tory mayoral contenders had run with for years.
‘Just get some of that through, cheer us up, and try not to make too much of a mess of things’ was their modest hope.
There were exceptions however. Andrew Gilligan at the Evening Standard, predicted that Boris’s election would be an ”essential revolutionary moment” when “selected victims are led out to the firing squad. It will be politically correct London’s equivalent of the credit crunch and, with any luck, it will be goodbye to the groundbreaking cycling-for-the-blind initiatives, farewell to the gay Bengali workplace sustainability forums.”
Sadly for Andrew, the revolution never came and Ken’s international embassies, multicultural festivals and even some of his key appointments are now championed by the very man he thought would remove them. And if Ken Livingstone wins the election in May he will return to a City Hall largely untouched since he left it.
I saw this clearly on my last visit for Mayor’s Question Time. After the meeting a Tory Assembly Member asked Boris and his colleagues to join him for a discussion with the ‘International Union of Sex Workers.’
I half expected Boris to drag his comrade out to a firing squad, but no he just quietly walked out. Whether or not Boris met with the sex workers I don’t know, but later on I saw him walking towards the communal canteen in a Transport for London beanie hat, bright pink ‘London and Partners’ rucksack, and an old anorak that looked like it had been dragged out of lost property. As he shuffled apologetically past a demonstration of wheelchair basketball, I realised that this is not a man who has taken control of City Hall. City Hall has taken control of him.
And where he’s failed in City Hall, he’s failed in London too. Without a grand vision for the capital, Boris has instead spent his time on a series of micro-projects, many of which have barely lasted longer than the time it took to write their press release.
A scheme to turn the Thames into “a new tube line” resulted in just enough passengers for a bus route and his “war” on knife crime resulted in knife crime actually going up. His electric vehicle scheme, ended up with more charging points than members and a series of Boris-led guided cycle rides were cancelled, after one week when just five people turned up.
Hundreds of millions were spent on a bike hire scheme that just 1% of Londoners say they use, and hundreds of millions more were spent on blue cycle lanes, now most closely associated with a spate of fatal cycle accidents. And after all this the proportion of Londoners cycling has hardly changed. In 2007/08 1.9% of trips undertaken by Londoners were by bike. Three years later that figure has risen to just 2.2%.
Boris’s other great revolutionary project was to eradicate the allegedly disgraceful waste at City Hall. But after four years of “ruthless” cost cutting, Boris has managed to give London households a tax cut worth just £3 a year. And while Ken Livingstone is standing on a promise to give Londoners more money back in fare cuts, it is Boris who now argues that we should give Transport for London even more of our own money to spend.
Boris’s transformation from a Conservative heavyweight into a ‘Ken-lite’ figure is complete. But after four years in the job, it is far less clear what if anything he has done to transform London for the rest of us.
08 Mar 2012
School of Seven Bells @ The Garage
School of Seven Bells is Benjamin Curtis and Alejandra Deheza. As befitting any musical enterprise linked to an ex-member of Texan prog-rockers Secret Machines (Curtis), this New York based duo make scarily massive music, albeit with a fundamentally pop heart, as recent singles The Night and Lafaye prove. Their unabashedly ambitious approach to making music feels curiously refreshing in 2012 and those attending the Garage tonight should be prepared to be schooled in the art of icy guitar blitzkrieg. Third long-player Ghostory is out now on Full Time Hobby.
08 Mar 2012
London agenda for Thursday 8 March
1. View a short ‘study of three young men devoted to their shared passion for smart dressing, rare soul music, and socialising’ with The New Faces by Dean Chalkley [Le Cool]
2. Celebrate women’s day at the BFI [Run RIot]
3. Hear the hidden gems and special records of Bushwacka! at The Roots [Don’t Panic]
4. Learn to stuff and mount a pigeon at An Introduction to Taxidermy [Ian Visits]
5. Sit in St George’s Square [Tired of London]
08 Mar 2012
New venue alert: The Waiting Room in Stoke Newington
From the press release:
“The Three Crowns and The Waiting Room have been taken over by 586 Ltd, the team behind the Lock Tavern and the Shacklewell Arms, heralding a new era for the 120 capacity basement venue formerly known as The Drop. They will be making use of the 4am weekend licence to introduce an exciting programme of events and gigs each week.”
And for you decor snobs:
“…with aesthetic modifications to include walls clad in scaffolding slates, and full-wall visual projections. And there’s no cause for concern to aficionados of the venue, as the vintage tiling will be left just as it is.”
Here’s the Facebook page.
08 Mar 2012
Gimi Saki by Decibels
This five-piece synth brigade led by Stuart Bruce have been making all the right noises of late. Debut single The Lesser is released March 26th and they’ve also secured a slot on a forthcoming Warp Records ‘Bleep’ compilation. Today’s MPFree is the glitchy electro of Gimi Saki. They play The Wheelbarrow, Camden, March 21st.
07 Mar 2012
New website, same old Standard?
Sarah Sands, acting editor of the Standard, comes up with a new way of describing Boris Johnson in a column which also excuses his failure to return to London during last summer’s riots on the grounds that he is in possession of a petite wife. The whole thing is really quite something. Toff bashing is boring, but to suggest in response that Johnson is some sort of rags to riches success story is wretch-inducing.
In other Standard news – they have a new website. It’s better than the old website. They’re also looking for a new editor, and it might not be going Sarah’s way.
Sarah Sands at the Evening Standard – Boris is better at his job than fighting elections
Evening Standard – New website
Guido Fawkes – New Standard Editor runners and riders
07 Mar 2012
London agenda for Wednesday 7 March
1. Round up the usual suspects to watch Casablanca at the Brick Lane Pop-Up Cinema [Le Cool]
2. Discover how to make a difference thanks to the School of Life [Run Riot]
3. Watch Dry the River at new Queen of Hoxton night, Simply Rad [Flavorpill]
4. Listen to The Olivia Tremor Control at Cargo [Don’t Panic]
5. Finally, a full and frank discussion on graphite [Ian Visits]
6. See the flowering of the English baroque memorial [Tired of London]
07 Mar 2012
Heartbreaker by No Ceremony
Manchester’s mysterious No Ceremony first featured on these pages back in August. Check out the squelchy techno of new single Heartbreaker, out April 30th, below.
06 Mar 2012
Who is doing negative campaigning better, Ken Livingstone or Boris Johnson?
This campaign will end up as clean and positive as a Haye/Chisora boxing brawl. Both major candidates are going negative with some of their material, because it works and they want to win. But judging by their latest offerings, who is doing it best?
Boris Johnson’s latest negative campaigning
Here’s a poster from NotKenAgain, the evil twin website of the sickeningly positive BackBoris2012.
From a list of six things which Ken “wants” to bring back, four are nebulous references to long-forgotten political scuffles. If you’re a nerd you can no doubt reel off the specific charges that “cronies, broken promises, scandals and waste” refer to. For the voter on the Clapham Omnibus, these are words without context and so without meaning.
“Council tax rises and Bob Crow”, however. Now the voter knows where they stand. Boo to both of those, I imagine. So expect a relentless focus on these two issues, the rest is just mood music.
Ken Livingstone’s latest negative campaigning
First of all, is showing a Boris Johnson lookalike riding peacefully and safely through the streets of London on a Boris bike, one of the few concrete achievements of Mayor Johnson’s time in office, a useful image for the Ken campaign to spread?
I’d suggest that NO! Of course it isn’t.
The message about two jobs Johnson has the potential to resonate, but the problem with casting Mayor Johnson as a satirically sympathetic figure is that many voters view him as an actually sympathetic figure. We’ve been here before with the poster campaign depicting Johnson as a cheeky pickpocket.
Ken’s team is consistently portraying Boris Johnson according to Boris’s own self-image.
That’s a problem, because the whole point of nasty campaigning is to tear down a candidate’s facade. Johnson’s team aren’t doing that brilliantly, but they’re doing it a damn sight better than Livingstone’s.
See also:
Ken Livingstone’s pickpocket poster plays into Mayor Johnson’s hands
06 Mar 2012
London agenda for Tuesday 6 March
1. See Swedish electro-pop singer Karin Park at Madame Jojo’s new night, White Heat [Le Cool]
2. Hear an old timey radio show live, Edinburgh fringe style, at the Fitzrovia Radio Hour [Run Riot]
3. Watch Band of Skulls at the Roundhouse [Don’t Panic]
4. Get the folk on with Washington DC-based Vandaveer at the Slaughtered Lamb [Flavorpill]
5. Get a definitive history of The City from historian David Kynaston [Ian Visits]
6. See the Map Room at the Charles Lamb [Tired of London]
06 Mar 2012
Snipe Highlights
Some popular articles from past years
- The five best places in London to have an epiphany
- Random Interview: Eileen Conn, co-ordinator of Peckham Vision
- An interview with Desiree Akhavan
- Punk brewery just as sexist and homophobic as the industry they rail against
- London has chosen its mayor, but why can’t it choose its own media?
- Silencing the Brick Lane curry touts could be fatal for the city's self-esteem
- Nice Interactive timeline lets you follow Londoners' historic fight against racism
- Nice map of London's fruit trees shows you where to pick free food
- Diary of the shy Londoner
- Only 16 commuters touch in to Emirates Air Line, figures reveal
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