Surreal Metronet coverage
Tonight’s London news programmes’ election coverage was centred on Gordon Brown’s unsurprising endorsement of Ken Livingstone, what with him being in the same party and all. (They have ‘history’, of course, but some of the coverage would make you think Brown would seriously have refused to endorse him, which hardly seems likely.)
Both ITV and the BBC made reference to Metronet (which will bring me to Boris shortly, don’t worry). One of the most ill-informed questions I’ve seen on the news in recent memory was put to Brown by Alistair Stewart, whom I think I’ve mentioned my dislike for before, but really, this was just amateur. He said, “Do you really think Londoners can trust Ken Livingstone with a £5bn budget [don’t know where he got that figure from - I’ve always heard of it being £9-11bn] after the Metronet fiasco?”
Seriously. A supposedly respected veteran news broadcaster asking Gordon Brown whether Ken Livingstone could be trusted with big budgets after Metronet!
(For anyone as unenlightened as Stewart appeared to be, Brown forced the Metronet Tube deal on Livingstone against his loudly publicised wishes - and against a legal challenge Ken brought against the government in the courts to try to prevent them pushing it through.)
Anyway, this site is called Stop Boris, not Stop ITV’s London Tonight Being So Atrocious, so you’ll be pleased to hear that when I switched over to BBC London I was soon presented with The Blond himself, putting across a point about Metronet so convoluted that it must have taken quite some time for his campaign team to dream it up.
Apparently the current Mayor is indeed to blame for wasting money in relation to Metronet. Boris declares that Ken wasted the money he spent taking the government to court in the early days of his tenure to try to prevent the whole Metronet debacle from ever happening!
Now, StopBoris.org is already under enough suspicion of being a front for the Ken campaign (a commenter on PoliticalBetting reckons we’re Ken’s £100k-salaried ‘cronies’ - not a figure I’m ever likely to see on my payslip!) without me doing too much defending of Ken, but honestly! Boris has come out with some rubbish in this campaign, and this can certainly join the heap of nonsense. Had Ken been successful in the courts, he’d've saved many times over the money he’d spent on legal fees. And perhaps if he hadn’t opposed it, Gordon Brown wouldn’t have coughed up the £2bn to bail out Metronet from central government funds quite so readily, risking Londoners having to bear the whole bill themselves instead.
More evidence that Boris will say anything, no matter how illogical or downright nonsensical, if he thinks it will add to his chances of winning.
Needless to say, by the way, his point wasn’t challenged by anyone on BBC London. This is becoming a regular and worrying feature of the election coverage in all media. (Except StopBoris.org, obviously.)
March 21st, 2008 at 13.41
Here’s another fabulous Boris policy for you, apparently he wants to shorten the time given for pedestrians to cross the road at traffic lights so that it will reduce congestion. Brilliant. Never mind the old ladies and young children being run over when the lights change as they’re in the middle of the road, no, let’s pander to the middle class motorist with his Chelsea tractor who can’t wait 10 more seconds to dash off and do something extremely important. Yes, I think this gem has changed my mind entirely, it’s Boris all the way for me now!
http://driving.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/driving/article3478456.ece
March 21st, 2008 at 14.47
Thanks Clare, that’s a good article and a topic we haven’t touched on enough in our campaign, I think.
March 25th, 2008 at 14.44
Clare, please point me to the bit that says he wants to shorten the phase given to pedestrians, or see old ladies and children run over. It seems that what he’s proposing is to leave signals on green for longer, putting an end to the absurd situation where the front car has hardly got into gear before the lights turn red again. It makes perfect sense if you’re not blinkered by woolly thinking and class hatred.
March 25th, 2008 at 18.12
Leaving the signals on green for longer? It doesn’t matter how you phrase it, the idea is to tip the balance even further into the favour of the big dangerous chunks of metal damaging the environment and away from the individuals helping the environment and their own health by walking. Why should someone walking have to wait longer to cross the road? It just makes walking a less attractive option and driving a more attractive option. It’s hardly going to continue the trend away from cars that has seen London become the only big city in the world to experience a move away from cars and onto public transport over the past few years.
And regardless of what that article may or may not go into detail about, I’ve heard elsewhere (no, I don’t recall where, so ignore this hearsay if you want - everything I said above stands) that the thrust of this idea is that in general there is a set time period which the green man is on display for at nearly all crossings in Britain, but there have for some time been hundreds (thousands?) in London with a shorter time period. Over the past few years a substantial proportion of these these have been brought up to the standards seen elsewhere in Britain, and there are plans to continue this work by bringing all the others into line too. Boris wants to stop that work, and undo the work done elsewhere, so he does want to reduce the time pedestrians have to cross the road.
It strikes me that the only woolly thinking around here is being done by someone who thinks it’s a good idea to encourage more car use in London and discourage walking. Why on earth would anyone want to do that?
March 25th, 2008 at 22.30
Sorry, Mr Stop, I cannot for the life of me see how giving traffic a few more seconds to get moving is going to generate one single extra pedestrian. People who take cars and lorries into London do so either because they have to or because their journey is too far to walk.
You could equally argue that allowing traffic to move more freely might generate more pedestrians because it will clear quicker. Just imagine that; snarl-ups dispersed by 6.30pm instead of 7pm. An extra half hour for walking without having to dodge stinking traffic jams.
March 25th, 2008 at 22.56
I’m sure five or ten years ago you would have said the same thing about people only taking cars and lorries into London because they had to, yet people have shifted from cars to public transport/cycling/walking since then as these other methods have been made more attractive. Are you saying we have suddenly just now reached the limit of that shift from cars to other methods of transport? Do you have any evidence to support this suggestion?
As for the idea that favouring cars over pedestrians would make walking more pleasant, that’s laughable. If the changes proposed did actually lead to the freer movement of traffic you suggest, so that the current traffic had cleared by 6.30, do you not think word might get around to people who’ve participated in the shift away from cars, and that they might not just shift back to take advantage of the clearer roads, ensuring they were still snarled up, but with even more pollution and ‘stinking’ from the larger number of vehicles?