08 Aug 2011
Why Boris Johnson should stay on his sun lounger
Kids are rioting, homes and businesses are being burned down, the police are rudderless and yet Boris Johnson still doesn’t think he should get off his sun lounger to help clear up the mess.
The Metro reports that Boris has “total trust in the police’s ability to cope without him” and so won’t be coming back early from his holiday.
Boris broke the news, which will be a relief to some, and an outrage to others, down the phone to the BBC over the weekend.
The effect of Boris’s reassuring phone call was somewhat muted by his inability to get Mark Duggan’s name right, but his message was clear. The police were doing a “very, very good job” and he was staying put.
A second night of rioting didn’t seem to give the Mayor any cause to wobble either and his Deputy Kit Malthouse, claimed on the Today programme that relations between the police and the black community were in a state of “continuous improvement.”
Now it’s hard to imagine what set of circumstances would convince Kit and Boris that the police are not in a continuous state of improvement, but if two senior Met resignations and widespread rioting won’t do it then perhaps nothing will.
However, whilst it’s easy to criticise Boris for fiddling whilst London burns, it’s much harder to think of how Boris would have actually helped the situation if he had have come home.
For the past three years Boris has had his hands on the tiller of the Met, and for the past three years it has continued to lurch from one crisis to the next.
The problems at the Met are deep and rather than try to solve them, Boris has simply pretended that they don’t exist.
Whether it’s his dismissal of the phone hacking investigation, his defence of the policing of the G20 protests, or his attitude to the recent riots, Boris has never been slow to dismiss public concern about the police.
So whilst it would have been good PR for Boris to jet back to City Hall yesterday, it wouldn’t have solved the problems that even now, he’s unwilling to face up to.
And until he does face up to them, he may as well stay on that sun lounger a little longer.
08 Aug 2011
The revolution will be tweeted, because Tottenham sure wasn't televised
The inability, or unwillingness, of conventional news media to accurately report on public order situations has become abundantly clear during the past nine months.
07 Aug 2011
Jonah Non Grata
Jonah Non Grata is a series of meaningful non sequiturs giving the impression of leading somewhere momentous before wandering off with a fish on its shoulder. Shunt writer/performer Simon Kane has the curious power to convince an audience to follow him into the wilderness and leave them all blindfolded there, each holding a playing card and waiting for the rest of a magic trick. Several hundred years ago he might have led a popular Crusade into the ocean and exhorted the pilgrims to make love to dolphins.
07 Aug 2011
Bronagh's Big Weekend
O’Brien tells the tale of young Bronagh, a 13-year-old girl competing in the regional dance championships on the day her brother (cousin?) Sean is getting married. Booze, puke, fist-fights, and the police all come into play (Sigh. Ireland. Bless.)
07 Aug 2011
Snapshots
Sarah Robertson’s poems are more like very short stories, often coming across as fan fiction as she imagines hanging out with her favourite celebrities.
07 Aug 2011
Permission to Cry
Upright, uptight, disdainful, utterly correct and transparent junior minister Julia Gibbon is harbouring a secret, a devastating one, if only to a conservative politician. So it’s no surprise that a young, ambitious reporter starts digging away at her dubious moral foundation and hidden life.
07 Aug 2011
Four Women, Nine Tits
The tiny back room at the Sheephaven Bay was packed on a hot summer’s evening with young, beautiful, heavily perspiring people. And one dirty old man in a fleece jumper who appeared to have decided the promise in the Fringe programme blurb of “very little nudity” was still enough for him.
07 Aug 2011
Hamster Town
Darren’s ex-wife thinks he is a bad influence on their young daughter and has denied his visiting rights. She’s taking the girl away to America, leaving Darren feeling abandoned by his own life. On a whim he buys a hamster, and gradually falls into a new, somewhat disturbing existence as the King of Hamster Town.
07 Aug 2011
The Shoemaker's Wonderful Wife
The wife is young and beautiful and knows her charms are wasted on her husband, an older, monkish and romantically hapless shoemaker. The neighbours, nosy and grotesque, circle round her smelling blood and scandal.
05 Aug 2011
Snipe Highlights
Some popular articles from past years
- Hope and despair in Woolwich town centre
- London has chosen its mayor, but why can’t it choose its own media?
- A unique collection of photos of Edwardian Londoners
- Margaret Thatcher statue rejected by public
- Summer Camp: Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days
- Peter Bayley has worked for 50 years as a cinema projectionist in East Finchley
- 9 poems about London: one for each of your moods
- The best church names in London, and where they come from
- The five best places in London to have an epiphany
- The five spookiest abandoned London hospitals
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