Stop Boris blog » Environment

Why we must stop Boris at the polls today

Thursday, 1 May 2008, 1.26 by Mr. Stop Boris

The Tory Troll earlier posted a summing-up at the end of a 50-post campaign against Boris, which has been one of the best-researched and most strident on the web.

Here at the Stop Boris campaign, we have also been blogging for some time now, as a way of spreading the word about why we need to vote against Boris Johnson today.

Our campaign started in July last year, when it was first announced that Boris Johnson was going to put himself forward for the Conservative Mayoral candidacy. While most people dismissed him as a joke, it was clear to us that in modern politics, in a personality-driven campaign, there was a very real threat that Boris could be elected.

The Stop Boris group on Facebook was set up, and its Posted Items and Wall remained the focus of the campaign until March this year, when the idea of stepping things up with campaign posters first dawned.

Somewhere to host the posters was needed, and before we knew it we’d had the StopBoris.org domain and a nice chunk of web space donated to us, so it seemed rude not to set up a web site too.

Mrs. Stop Boris suggested she should create an accompanying application for Facebook users, which she did with aplomb, and tonight sees its user base on the verge of hitting 1,000.

A static web site proved, within just a few days of launch, inadequate for tracking a fast-moving campaign, rich in developments and arguments against Boris, so that’s where the Stop Boris blog came in, and it’s on researching and writing for this I’ve spent nearly every free moment for the past six weeks.

So I’m now able to look back over the 183 posts prior to this one that I’ve written on this blog, and bring you a summary of the compelling case against electing the woefully unsuitable Boris Johnson as Mayor of London, divided into 15 headings which seemed vaguely appropriate at the time…

Some links to posts are in bold/larger type, indicating some sort of relative importance in their subject area. I don’t pretend it’s been done in a scientific way, though.

The people who know Boris know he’s completely inappropriate to be Mayor

Of course, only those who aren’t desperate to get him elected are admitting it publicly. Even plenty of people who are in or support his own party are worried about the damage he’ll do to the Conservative brand if he becomes the most powerful Tory politician in Britain.

He holds offensive views that make him unsuitable to lead a diverse city

For years he filled his writing with outrageous statements, many of which he has refused to apologise for. Even when he has said sorry for things, it’s been a grudging apology riddled with caveats. Issues include homophobia and pandering to racists. No wonder the BNP have called on their voters to give him their second preferences.

His flagship policy is a complete and utter mess

The main policy associated with Boris for many months was his plan to replace bendy-buses with a "new Routemaster". It’s been discredited on so many grounds it’s extraordinary he’s still persisting with it.

He is by far the weakest candidate on tackling crime; his Mayoralty will see more deaths

He’s the only main candidate with no pledged target on cutting crime (he just whips up fear about it without being able to tackle it), and his Freudian slip shows this is because he knows his planned budget cuts will mean they can’t cut crime at all.

And while crime may well rise under Boris, so will pedestrian deaths on the roads as he reverse the progress that has been made in making London more pedestrian-friendly over the past few years.

He is atrocious on the environment

There’s a general consensus among environmentalists that Boris, a climate change denier and anti-Kyoto campaigner, would be a disaster on green issues the world over.

His entire campaign has been fake and micromanaged by Lynton Crosby, and he has never focused on the issues

He just knows a few focus-group tested lines but has no substance behind any of the sentences he’s learnt and certainly has no concrete policies to back them up. When asked about his own policies he instead turns everything into a tenuously linked and generally unfounded attack against Ken Livingstone.

Most of his policies are the stuff of cloud cuckoo land

He promises a no-strike deal with the RMT union. The RMT say they would never, ever, ever sign such a deal. It’s almost certain that they will go on strike if he tries to impose one, in fact. And that’s just one of his policies: the majority of the others are also fanciful. Or just rubbish.

He can’t be taken seriously

He’s built his entire career on being a buffoon, an idiot, a fool, a clown. He simply can’t be taken seriously. Imagine him trying to address the city after a terrorist attack? "How many are dead? Oh, cripes!"

He simply isn’t up to the job

He has a track record of incompetence, gaffes, sackings and not being able to take anything seriously or dedicate himself to anything for a prolonged period of time. And he’s barely managed to find anyone who’s willing to join his administration so who knows who’d end up doing any of the real work?

He only entered into this contest for a bit of self-publicity – he never actually wanted the job, but now he’s in too deep…

People have been underestimating his chances

Many anti-Boris people think he’s just a joke and there’s no serious chance of him getting the job. These people are complacent and might not get out and vote. They need to be alerted to the danger urgently and dragged to the polling stations!

Ruin your friends’ evenings

He claims to support ‘zero tolerance’ but has broken the law a number of times himself

Evidently he thinks the law only applies to the little people, not VIPs like himself.

His campaign is riddled with outright dishonesty

His campaign team have been paying people to comment on blogs such as ours and The Tory Troll’s, pretending to be normal members of the public. Fortunately we exposed them and they then left us largely in peace.

Aside from that, the team have also been spreading various lies and half-truths to scare people into voting for Boris, who has let a number of lies slip himself.

His media cronies have run half his campaign for him

Certain nasty parts of the media have made no attempt at balanced coverage of this election, instead doing everything they can to discredit the current Mayor and promote Boris, despite there being no case for doing so. Just about all the newspaper leaders endorsing Boris failed to give a single positive reason to vote for him.

The Evening Standard’s own journalistic team even tore Boris’s manifesto to shreds while managing to pick only modest holes in Ken’s, yet their billboards and pages have teemed with anti-Ken, pro-Boris propaganda for months.

He doesn’t care about ordinary Londoners

He has no real roots here and is completely out of touch with the concerns and lives of everyday Londoners.

Campaign videos

Sometimes 25 pictures a second are worth 25,000 words a second, or something.

Campaign posters

They still hold true, seven weeks on from creating them.

How to stop Boris

So, all that said, here’s how to vote most effectively to stop Boris.

Good luck, Boris-stoppers.

This election is going to be extremely close. We need to get Boris-stoppers and Boris-sceptics to the polling stations in their millions.

Do whatever you can to encourage people to vote today and we can stop Boris.

A grassroots campaign taking on the might of the Standard and the Sun. Are you up for the fight? Let’s do it.

Posted in Blog, Blogs, Buses, Campaign, Channel 4, Conservatives, Crime, Cycling, Daily Mail, Diversity, Driving, Environment, Ethnic minorities, Evening Standard, Facebook, Gaffophobia, Getting an easy ride, Homosexuality, Housing, Incompetence, Lies, London Lite, Lynton Crosby, Manipulation, Media, Other candidates, Party Election Broadcasts, Personal life, Policies, Posters, Radio, Recycling, Satire, Stop Boris, Team, Telegraph, The Times, Transport, Underground, Voting, Web site, YouTube | 5 Comments »

Ken gets down on his knees in front of the Lib Dems

Sunday, 27 April 2008, 22.07 by Mr. Stop Boris

If you’re a Lib Dem who isn’t yet convinced that you should be a number 2 (or 3 or 4, which amount to the same vote for you!) in our tactical voting against Boris guide, I recommend Ken’s appeal to you today, particularly the well researched and clearly presented listing of policies on which the Liberal Democrats hold positions in agreement with him, while Boris has stated positions and views against them. For instance:

Cutting emissions from air travel

Ken’s policy: Oppose new runway at Heathrow, Stansted, or Gatwick.

Lib Dem policy: "Liberal Democrats believe that for the foreseeable future, and at least until 2030, limits on air flight capacity in the South East in particular should be set by limiting the amount of runway space to a level that is roughly equivalent to what is currently available. This is why we have opposed a second runway at Stansted and the third (and short) runway at Heathrow." A Soft Landing: Creating a Sustainable Market in Aviation, 21 December 2005

Boris Johnson’s policy: Hoodwinked environmentalists by winning plaudits for coming out against Heathrow and then immediately announcing plan for new airport in the Thames Estuary, which he now calls his ‘big idea’ for London.

Civil Partnerships

Ken’s policy: Ken introduced the first civil partnerships register, which was opened in 2001. This paved the way for the 2004 Civil Partnerships Act.

Lib Dem policy: Supported civil partnerships register

Boris Johnson’s policy: Compared to gay marriage to the right to "the union between three men and a dog".

You get the idea.

Ken’s open letter to Lib Dem supporters is here. Thanks to Dave Hill for drawing it to my attention through his blog.

Posted in Blogs, Diversity, Environment, Homosexuality, Other candidates, Voting | No Comments »

Evening Standard lays in to Boris’s rubbish manifesto

Friday, 25 April 2008, 22.30 by Mr. Stop Boris

I bet you think there’ll be some clever twist in this post which will mean that the heading is completely the opposite of the truth – a bit like an Evening Standard advertising board.

Think again!

The Standard have given their team of reporters – the ones who haven’t come out on BBC News as self-proclaimed "Boris Johnson supporter[s]" (Andrew Gilligan on Question Time Extra last night, in case we weren’t sure) – the three leading candidates’ manifestos and asked them to pass judgement on their pledges.

In fact, they have largely interpreted their brief to be to pick as many holes as possible in the manifestos, but it’s interesting how easy a job they’ve had doing this with Boris’s.

The article opens well, pointing out that he is completely hopeless on the Tube:

there’s no chance of Aslef or the RMT signing up to a no-strike deal ("it will immediately lead to a strike" if he suggests one!);
his air-conditioning plans just amount to what is already being done or isn’t really possible; and
they question whether he’s really understood the Metronet contracts.

The piece goes on to criticise him on a further fourteen separate issues:

his bus costing;
his lack of detail on "reform" of the Congestion Charge;
the difficulties of his proposals to fine utility companies who dig up the roads;
his possible optimism about how far he could stretch money saved on advertising;
the "major headache" of enforcing his Tube alcohol ban (which "will not necessarily help" with cutting crime anyway);
his return to the days of stop and search;
his crime mapping potentially creating crime-ridden ghettos;
his pathetically low number of pledged tree-plantings;
his complete ignoring (ignorance?!) of climate change;
his hypocritical position on airport expansion which "would dramatically increase emissions from air travel and damage local wildlife";
the risk of his house-building policy letting "poor performing councils off the hook";
the fact that his supposedly ‘affordable’ housing scheme would require a household income of £60,000, which apparently puts it out of reach to 80% of London households!;
his complete misunderstanding of the empty homes situation – empty homes are at their lowest in 30 years and the majority may only have been empty for weeks: "the housing market can’t operate without a reasonable degree of turnover".

As well as all that, and particularly interestingly, they have this – we’ll call it no. 17 – to say about his promise to chair the Metropolitan Police Authority:

His pledge to run the MPA, and hold the Commissioner to account, is well intentioned but can he cope with being chairman of the body which oversees the biggest force in the country? Previous holders put aside three days a week.

Given that most people doubt Boris’s ability to run an alcohol-based event in a brewery, and certainly can’t imagine how he’ll cope with trying to run London, the idea that he could take all that on and cope with the burden of a chairmanship which would require as much as three days a week of his time is stretching credibility to breaking point.

Of course, given how little is left in his manifesto that the Standard haven’t exposed as fundamentally or seriously flawed in this article, one has to wonder why on earth they’re so keen to get him elected as Mayor. Nothing to do with a petty squabble with a certain incumbent, is it? As it happens, Ken’s manifesto comes off comparatively well under their scrutiny. (They even admit his crime reduction target is "realistic" and that "latest figures show crime fell by six per cent last year"!) No wonder they’re trying to distract voters from the actual issues in their more high-profile day-to-day election coverage!

Posted in Buses, Crime, Environment, Evening Standard, Housing, Incompetence, Media, Policies, Transport, Underground | 2 Comments »

The whole world in our hands

Thursday, 10 April 2008, 23.29 by Mr. Stop Boris

Whenever the national media covers the London Mayoral election, a handful of complaints from people outside London arrive to protest that “it doesn’t affect 90% of the UK” (not strictly true, when about one in every six people in the UK lives or works in London).

The media respond along Westminster-focused lines, about this election setting the scene for future General Elections, and so forth, but are they missing a trick? Could it actually be that the outcome of this election would have a serious impact on not just London, and not just the UK, but the very future environmental sustainability of the entire world?

It’s an argument that is gaining ground among environmentalists at the moment, and it runs like this.

Setting aside whether or not you like Ken Livingstone, and whether or not you agree with any of his other policies, no serious environmentalist disputes the fact that – at least in comparison with the vast majority of other politicians in positions of genuine power – the current Mayor of London has a good record on the environment.

London is now recognised around the world as the city that has gone furthest to address climate change, and Livingstone’s manifesto plays on his record. It is the only major world city, he says, to shift from private car use to public transport; it is setting standards in the UK on renewable energy; it has led the way on the congestion charge; it is forcing all buses, heavy lorries and cabs to improve air quality, and he claims an 83% increase in cycling.

Livingstone promises new green-belt protection and a £25-a-day congestion-zone charge on gas guzzlers, and offers a £500m set of bike corridors, a bike rental scheme with 6,000 machines and free passage for the greenest cars, with a London-wide low-emission zone to keep the worst polluting lorries out. “As for tree planting, we already plant more than Boris promises and we will plant more,” he says.

The Guardian’s John Vidal

Of course, some of the details can be argued about, but on the big issues – a firm, environmental lobby-approved target for reducing London’s CO₂ emissions, for instance – it is broadly agreed that the current Mayor is heading in the right direction, more so than pretty much anywhere else in the world.

Boris, on the other hand, has still not withdrawn his support for President George W. Bush over the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. In other words, Boris agrees with Bush that we should not be doing everything we can to curb our emissions and so prevent catastrophic climate change causing death and destruction the world over. In the emotive terms I’ve arguably slipped into, Boris is a climate change denier.

Johnson effectively passes on climate change. He opposes the CO₂ charge on gas guzzlers within the congestion zone and calls the new low-emission zone “the most punitive, draconian fining regime in the whole of Europe”, and aims to scrap it. Instead, he says he would “work towards” the 60% cut in the city’s emissions that Livingstone has pledged to reach by 2025 by incorporating the Tory party’s plans for more microgeneration and decentralisation of electricity, combined heat and power plants and energy saving. His critics point out that he is one of the few people in the developed world who still oppose the existing Kyoto climate change agreement and question his commitment to tackling climate change.

The Guardian’s John Vidal

In political terms there is a big difference between a firm commitment to 60% cuts in emissions and agreeing to “work towards” it. Essentially, the latter is the way you cancel the former in a political climate [no pun intended] in which an explicit commitment to cancel it would not go down well with the majority of the electorate. Boris knows that Londoners are too committed to tackling climate change to elect someone who admits he wants to do nothing about it, so instead he conceals his true intentions with that meaningless phrase: “work towards”.

The argument you hear against a city like London taking a lead on climate change is that it’s like creating a no smoking area in an open-plan room. If London stopped emitting overnight, climate change would not suddenly be averted. Of course, this argument is true, but only if taken at its literal face value.

The key thing overlooked by those making this point is London’s international influence.

In October 2005, representatives of 18 leading world cities met in London to discuss joining forces to tackle global warming and climate change.

The representatives saw the need for action and cooperation on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and pledged to work together towards achieving that goal.

At the end of the conference, a communiqué was signed which recognised the need for cities to take action and to cooperate on reducing climate emissions.

C40 Cities web site

The Mayor of London is Chair of C40 Cities – Climate Leadership Group, and it’s pretty clear from the Londoncentricity of their News page that London is leading the way within this group.

The result of this is that around the world, London is known as a world leader in pushing ahead with policies to address climate change. And as policies become proven in our city, other places around the world begin to gain in confidence to implement them there too.

It’s here that we return to Boris. If Boris, a renowned opponent of Kyoto, is elected Mayor of London, by the time George W. Bush leaves office in January Boris will be the most powerful, highest-profile climate change denier in the English-speaking world.

And within C40 Cities, and in the wider world generally, politicians will see that the electorate in trailblazing London, previously thought to be years ahead of the rest of the world on dealing with climate change, have thrown out of office the man largely responsible for that work, in favour of someone elected on a platform of undoing and freezing what’s been done.

“Aha,” worldwide politicians will cry in unison. “Here we have hard proof that the electorate simply isn’t ready for the policies needed to tackle climate change. If we put our heads above the parapet with anti-emissions policies, we’ll be the next to lose an election to someone whose only nod to the environment is a few ‘green-lite’ gesture policies from the 1980s about parks and dog muck.”

The work of the Greens, of Ken, of the Stern report and of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will be discarded, as will the planet’s prospects for long-term sustainability, as the idea that green policies can be an election-winner is sent straight to landfill.

This isn’t – or, re-reading it, isn’t just – a puff piece for Mr. Livingstone’s environmental policies. The real point here is that replacing Ken with Boris would send the worst possible message to the rest of the world. For instance, there’s a good case to be made that the Liberal Democrats are a greener party than the Labour party on a national basis, and I’ve no reason to suppose that Mayor Brian would damage the green cause to anything like the extent Mayor Boris would. And clearly if the environment is your number one concern, a certain Ms. Berry might be hoping for your first preference vote, and in the unlikely event she can overturn the polls in the coming weeks, Mayor Siân would presumably boost London’s environmental credentials still further.

The key thing to remember next time someone claims the result of this election doesn’t affect them as they live outside the capital is that this election has the potential to affect everyone outside the capital. A Boris victory would be a disaster for the planet.

In the Stop Boris inbox today…

Friday, 4 April 2008, 22.24 by Mr. Stop Boris

A couple of good e-mails have come in from readers this evening - thanks!

First up, someone chasing us up on the homophobia-highlighting poster I said we’d have to sort out some time ago. I think that might just have to be put onto this weekend’s to-do list.

The same person wants to see the web site and blog getting more promotion on other blogs and web sites. So do we, so if you run anything you can put a link to us on, please do!

In the second e-mail, journalist David Wearing points out an article about Boris he wrote last July, when his potential candidacy was first announced, and the general consensus was that he was nothing to worry about; David’s article clearly shows he was a rare dissenting voice.

(Without wanting to blow our own trumpet too much, July last year is actually also when the Stop Boris campaign kicked off too, over on Facebook - great minds think alike! Oh, and in collecting the Facebook link I discovered that the group there has passed the 1,000-member mark today - it’s really shot up in the past couple of days, from about 860 mid-week.)

Anyway, David’s article is an excellent analysis of so many of the underlying reasons why Boris shouldn’t be Mayor of London. It would be impossible to edit it down into a few select quotes so instead I shall link to the whole article, The Liberties of Boris Johnson, but spoil it slightly by cutting straight to his concluding remarks:

In 2008, London may find itself, as a city comprising hundreds of ethnic groups and nationalities, run by a Mayor who displays, at best, an unthinking attitude to race relations. It may find itself, as a city which will both effect and suffer from the effects of climate change to a serious extent, run by a Mayor who fails to grasp environmental issues at even the most basic level. It may find itself, as a city of over 7 million people, run by a Mayor whose stunted view of politics contains little room for the legitimate rights and needs of others. At that point, Johnson the Libertarian, Johnson the character, may, for some at least, lose a good deal of his entertainment value.

Got anything to point out to us? Campaign ideas? Events you think we should try to be at? Get in touch!

Posted in Blog, Campaign, Diversity, Environment, Ethnic minorities, Posters, Stop Boris | 4 Comments »

Boris “stuck in the 80s” on the environment

Friday, 4 April 2008, 20.33 by Mr. Stop Boris

So thinks Mark Lynas of the New Statesman:

The Tory candidate is still waffling on about recycling and planting trees, suggesting he is stuck back in the light-green era of the 1980s, despite his much-trumpeted credentials as a cyclist. Though he says he will “make London the greenest city in the world”, this turns out to be more about parks than emissions. Johnson’s manifesto says that he will keep Ken Livingstone’s climate-change targets - but there is a lack of both consistency and enthusiasm running through his statements. While both Ken and Boris oppose a third runway at Heathrow - today’s litmus test for climate-change credentials - Boris supports the construction of an entirely new airport somewhere in the Thames Estuary, on the grounds that “London’s airport capacity has to expand”. That doesn’t sound very climate- or environment-friendly to me.

He concludes:

Let’s keep Boris in the TV studios by all means - he’s a gifted entertainer - but let’s keep him out of City Hall.

Posted in Environment, Policies | No Comments »

Jonathon Porritt

Monday, 31 March 2008, 23.31 by Mr. Stop Boris

Even a fellow old Etonian and Oxford alumnus has turned firmly against Boris in a blog post today. But then, this is Jonathon Porritt, leading environmentalist. He’s pretty clear about what he thinks of Boris:

The prospect of Boris as Mayor of London is just so scary. Either he is a genuine, out-and-out buffoon, in which case London becomes a laughing stock alongside its Mayor, or he is a pseudo-buffoon, in which case his true ideological nastiness will soon be revealed. The prospect of Boris taking over London’s Climate Change Action Plan is even scarier. He may have learnt not to reveal his full contrarian bigotry on climate change, but he really doesn’t get it, and would rapidly scale back or completely get rid of the ambitious targets in the Action Plan. And that would be a massive set back.

Posted in Blogs, Environment | 3 Comments »

Boris’s next enviro-pledge: encourage more waste and energy use

Thursday, 27 March 2008, 22.31 by Mr. Stop Boris

Boris has really surpassed himself with the naïvité of today’s policy announcement: give people vouchers in return for their recycling.

Sounds great, doesn’t it? On the surface of it, perhaps it does. But if you stop and think about it for longer than he evidently has, guess what? It turns out to be an illogical idea with a negative environmental impact.

The mantra of environmental experts when it comes to waste has long been Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

The point of this list is that they are in priority order. You should reduce your consumption of the planet’s resources as a top priority: if you never consume a resource, no environmental harm is done. You should reuse an item if at all possible - by refilling that water bottle you bought with tap water, you don’t need to buy another one, so although the initial purchase had an impact, that impact won’t be repeated as often.

Only after these two have been done as much as possible should you move on to actually disposing of something, by recycling it. Recycling takes energy, machinery, perhaps some extra materials, and of course big trucks driving around picking it all up. While it’s obviously preferable to landfill or incineration, it’s not a way to save the planet in and of itself, any more than eating two low-calorie ‘Diet’ chocolate bars is healthier than eating one. (Disappointing, I know.)

Boris’s plan is to weigh people’s recycling, and the heavier it is, the more vouchers they get given. This is rewarding people for breaking the first two rules as much as possible - the more you consume and then the less of it you reuse before recycling it, the more vouchers you will get! This is green politics for idiots - perhaps unsurprising when a prize idiot without the first clue about the environment is spearheading it.

I could go on longer about this but I won’t - instead I’ll point out another problem with this so-called policy.

The Mayor of London doesn’t actually have any powers over recycling. To call this a policy is therefore a bit rich - it’s more of an aspiration.

Boris reckons he’d get the London Boroughs on side, but that seems unlikely in most cases. Most boroughs have already chosen their path to encouraging recycling, and in many cases they’ve done so in ways that are fundamentally difficult to reconcile with this idea.

For instance, in response to media scare stories about charging people for waste collection by weight, several councils have made a point of publicising the fact that none of their bins or recycling receptacles contain microchips to enable this to happen, so their residents can sleep easy. Boris’s plan would therefore require a wholesale replacement of all those bins and boxes, to allow the weighed boxes to be traced back to the households in order to issue the vouchers.

Will the cash-strapped councils be expected to pay for all these new bins and any new technology? Or is Boris stumping up the money? Either way, it’ll be taxpayers’ money, which he’s usually pretty keen on saving. Oh and what are all these replacement plastic bins made from? Oh yes, oil. Good green policy, this.

If this policy is intended to save on waste going to landfill, as he claims, then the only way to do this is to do something based on the weight of waste going to landfill, but of course that would be more difficult to do as an incentive rather than a punishment.

Boris has long been an outspoken critic of anything with a whiff of punishment for polluting behaviour - e.g. describing the Low Emission Zone as “the most punitive, draconian fining regime in the whole of Europe” - so he only wants to adopt incentives, not punishments. But then, one person’s incentive is another’s punishment - if the vouchers are all being funded out of tax, and some people get more of them than others, aren’t the ones receiving fewer vouchers effectively being punished?

So in summary, this policy is illogical, back-to-front and near-impossible to implement. No wonder Boris doesn’t want to discuss the issues.

Posted in Environment, Policies, Recycling | 4 Comments »

Boris’s environmental pledge: plant far fewer trees

Wednesday, 26 March 2008, 22.16 by Mr. Stop Boris

Boris has been grabbing the headlines today by pledging to plant 10,000 trees around London over his first four years as Mayor.

But in 2002, the current Mayor launched the Million Trees Campaign, which aims to plant - surprisingly - a million trees around London by 2012. By the end of the 2006/7 planting season, the fifth year of the campaign, a total of 425,000 new trees had been planted in London.

By comparison with this total of nearly 100,000 per year, Boris’s 10,000 trees in four years looks utterly pathetic.

Of course, that hasn’t stopped the media lauding the plan as some kind of eco-revolution. Get serious, please - this is the man who wholeheartedly supports George W. Bush’s policy of boycotting the Kyoto agreement to combat climate change. (The USA under Bush is the only developed country in the world not to sign up to this, in case you thought this might not be a particularly extreme stance to take.)

Everyone knows Boris hasn’t a green bone in his body, and offering to plant a handful of trees over a long period of time goes no way whatsoever towards demonstrating otherwise.

P.S. To pay for the trees, Boris has pledged to scrap the Mayor’s newspaper, The Londoner, which is basically his equivalent of those newsletters/magazines that most local authorities send out from time to time to update their residents on what they’ve been up to - and, of course, to put their own spin on things. You know the sort of thing: the local media are up in arms about library closures, then you receive the Borough News which tells you how the council are consolidating some of their library resources into one much better library which will save you Council Tax, and so forth.

So The Londoner is biased, of course. But goodness me, to read some of the things Boris has been saying about it, you would think it was literally nothing but outright lies from the front cover to the back. In a city where the only city-wide paid-for newspaper and two out of the three freesheets are produced by the Daily Mail group, between whom and the Mayor there is little love lost, it’s not surprising he might want to point out a few falling crime figures or other things the Standard and its offshoots may ‘overlook’.

And of course, Mayor Boris wouldn’t need the Londoner anyway. Why invest time and money putting together a newspaper that looks like the Evening Standard but talks up your achievements instead of knocking them, when you can just let the Evening Standard do the work for you?

Posted in Environment, Evening Standard, Getting an easy ride, Media, Other candidates, Policies | 7 Comments »

Anti-Boris pact

Wednesday, 19 March 2008, 22.40 by Mr. Stop Boris

Interesting to see that the Green Party and Ken Livingstone have joined forces to oppose Boris Johnson.

In a joint statement they said: “Tackling climate change and creating a fairer London must be at the top of any serious mayor’s agenda. Boris Johnson, who supported George W Bush in opposing the Kyoto treaty and would scrap the CO2 charge on gas-guzzlers, cannot be trusted with London’s environment.”

A cross-party pact opposing the election of Boris, eh? If only there was some sort of snappy name for such a campaign, and perhaps a web site, logo and posters…

Posted in Environment, Other candidates | 2 Comments »

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