Posts in the ‘Telegraph’ category

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! :)

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 »

Tories’ enemy’s enemy is also their enemy

Wednesday, 30 April 2008, 19.40 by Mr. Stop Boris

guardian.co.uk has coverage of the fallout from the Telegraph article we blogged about last night, in which Simon Heffer tore Boris to shreds.

Sir Peregrine Worsthorne has also attacked Boris, so Boris-backers are quite annoyed with them both for daring to reveal the truth about their naked golden boy.

It’s also interesting to see a bit more gaffophobia creeping in on the last day of the campaign:

Johnson has been accused of attempting to avoid press scrutiny by BBC Radio 2’s Jeremy Vine.

"Have any listeners seen a tall man with yellow hair in a blue suit?" the presenter asked his audience after the Conservative candidate failed to appear on his lunchtime show. "He’s called Boris Johnson. Because if we don’t hear from him in one minute we’re doing a mayoral debate without him."

He added: "It’s very odd that noone can find Boris a day before the mayoral election. Has he just walked past that cafe you’re sitting in? Call us if you spot him."

It’s pathetic that even at this late stage he still doesn’t feel sufficiently on top of his brief to bother turning up to things like this. Let’s hope enough people reach the realisation that he ‘has no clothes’ before they put their crosses in boxes tomorrow.

Posted in Conservatives, Gaffophobia, Guardian, Media, Telegraph | No Comments »

Simon Heffer wants to stop Boris too!

Wednesday, 30 April 2008, 0.50 by Mr. Stop Boris

And he says so in the Telegraph too.

OK, he starts by saying Ken and Brian are rubbish as well, and ends up encouraging mass abstention, which is pretty poor advice since the politicians always ignore abstention (they call it "apathy" and pretend it doesn’t mean anything).

But goodness me, he really doesn’t think Mayor Boris is a good idea, and nor does he mince his words (not that he’s renowned for doing so).

There’s no point in me adding anything more to this post apart from quotes directly from the Heffer’s mouth:

[Boris’s buffoon act] conceals two things: a blinding lack of attention to detail, and (though this might seem to sit ill with the first point) a ruthless ambition.

Mr Johnson is the most ambitious person I have ever met. That ought to be a commendation for high office, since ambitious people normally understand they will go further only by doing their present job well. Mr Johnson’s scattergun approach to life will not allow this.

… What is there in Mr Johnson’s past to suggest that his mayoralty would be anything but [a comic spectacle]? Where is the evidence of his adroitness in administration, his sense of responsibility, his ethic of public service?

As [biographer of Boris, Andrew Gimson] makes clear, one of Mr Johnson’s failings is a belief that the public is there to serve him, not vice versa. He has given much pleasure to millions over the years, but will that cause the Underground to work better, the Metropolitan Police to catch more criminals, or business to thrive in London? Or would a Johnson mayoralty be yet one more chapter in an epic of charlatanry - perhaps, since it is so serious a job with potentially no hiding place, the last chapter?

… The guiding theme of his life is the charm of doing nothing properly. …

He is pushy, he is thoughtless, he is indiscreet about his private life. None of this matters much to anyone these days, which is why he has gone so far in spite of them, and tomorrow may go further still.

Lynton Crosby, the Australian public relations genius who has kept Mr Johnson out of trouble during his campaign, returns home after it.

Then what? Who will guide the unguided missile? Who will support the figurehead? Who will ensure he turns up on time, or at all? How will they be accountable?

All good stuff, all true, all valid reasons why tomorrow we really must all do our bit to stop Boris.

Posted in Incompetence, Media, Telegraph | No Comments »

Sunday leaders

Sunday, 27 April 2008, 1.00 by Mr. Stop Boris

The Sunday Times follows its sister paper by endorsing "time for a change" Boris, without providing a single positive reason why. In fact, again, they provide instead some reasons why he should not be trusted with the job:

Many have doubts about whether he is the right man for the job. His campaign has shown that the qualities that have endeared him to voters as a political clown do not translate easily into being a powerful executive mayor. […]

Mr Johnson knows that this is his last shot at demonstrating that he can be a serious politician after many false starts.

"Many" occasions when Boris has completely messed up being "a serious politician", and a failure to translate his undoubted clowning abilities into executive abilities, are not reasons to give him four years’ major power.

Indeed, as the Observer (which, like the Guardian yesterday isn’t exactly glowing about any of the candidates) puts it:

The unavoidable choice is between an incumbent whose record and character are familiar from many years in office and a challenger whose image and beliefs have been cynically manufactured for the campaign.

London is not a focus group for national parties to test their tactics, it is a city in need of a competent mayor. The only way to guarantee it has one is to cast a [second preference] vote for Ken.

The Observer is the only paper I’ve seen offering a full recommendation for the use of both preference votes: they encourage readers to put Siân first, and Ken second, making them a ‘number 2′ type in our tactical voting advice.

Ah, the Sunday Telegraph’s leader has just appeared online and, in stark contrast to yesterday’s Daily Telegraph’s leader, does explicitly (and at great length) endorse Boris. In fact it reads like some sort of party election broadcast for Boris. The only hint that he might be an incompetent, risky candidate – a doubt which I have yet to see anyone independent seriously dispute (that is, say that he definitely isn’t risky) – is the tiny phrase:

In all modesty we cannot claim that his past as a journalist was the ideal preparation for political responsibility.

That’s certainly a "modest" way to describe the huge risk inherent in electing a clown to manage an £11bn budget!

Does Boris have particularly good friends in particularly high places at the Sunday Telegraph? Following their meticulously calculated bit of front-page electioneering on his behalf three weeks ago, to find them publishing a lengthy leader apparently written on an extremely rose-tinted computer screen does make me wonder if this ‘newspaper’ might be trying to be even more pro-Boris than the Evening Standard, which would certainly take some doing.

So, now we know where nearly all the newspapers stand. (I guess one or two more may be saving their leaders for polling day itself, or shortly before.)

A defeat for Boris would be a defeat for the most reactionary and cynical instincts of the Murdoch, Mail and Telegraph press. Yet another reason to vote against Boris on Thursday!

Posted in Guardian, Media, Telegraph, The Times, Voting | No Comments »

Weak leadership

Saturday, 26 April 2008, 11.25 by Mr. Stop Boris

Have you ever attended an amateur debate, in which people have been given things to argue in support of which they don’t really believe themselves? They’ll give it their best shot, but underneath their rhetoric, it’s plain that they don’t really believe in the argument they’re putting across.

Which brings me to today’s newspaper leader columns.

The Times

The Times spends some time highlighting Ken Livingstone’s achievements in office, then bizarrely talks about him offering "more of the same" (which surely doesn’t sound too bad in the light of his achievements?).

They gloss over Brian Paddick as an acceptable alternative, without really explaining why: "He has at no second offered compelling reasons why he should be in the mayor’s chair", a statement which could equally describe the overwhelmingly negative campaign of Boris Johnson.

Then they alight on Boris.

There is plainly an element of risk in backing Mr Johnson. Newspapers have fretted about endorsing him precisely because journalists know Mr Johnson, a fellow journalist, so well and they know he has a history of letting people down.

That a sentence like that can appear in a leader called Boris Johnson for London is extremely revealing about how little their heart is in this recommendation.

They say that "the thrust" of Boris’s "policy suggestions" (it’s true, they aren’t fleshed-out enough to be called policies!) is sensible, and that he is "alive to Londoners’ … concerns about drugs, stabbings and gangs", which is hardly the same thing as being the right person to do anything about them.

Most breathtakingly, their final paragraph even admits that electing him would be an "experiment", and that "if it fails", "London and the country will have learnt something of immense value". Too right: not to trust the Times’s leader column ever again.

In fact, this whole column is so weak in its support for Boris, readers could be forgiven for thinking that an edict was issued from Murdoch Towers that the editor was to print a leader column backing Boris, then left to come up with the arguments himself, despite not believing Boris capable of the job. But surely that would never happen, would it?

Daily Mail

As the Evening Standard’s sister paper, not to mention the bible of the right, it was always inconceivable that they would back anyone but Boris, and so it proves, but as with the Times their support is in extremely measured terms.

Again, a surprising measure of praise for the incumbent is present, given his nemesis status at Daily Mail group HQ:

Ever since he became Labour’s leader in London he has outfoxed opponents, including those in his own party.

In office, he has proved a rather more substantial figure than his critics predicted. Love it or loathe it, his congestion charge is now being studied by cities all over the world.

He was commendably steady after the terrorist attacks on London. And he has proved more friendly to business than you might expect, given his rabidly hard Left past.

Of course they then dwell on some criticisms in the less substantive areas which their Standard cohorts have beaten Londoners around the head with for the past nine months. For instance, apparently the £25 gas guzzler charge is "class spite", which seems strange when there are cars of every size which don’t have to pay it and actually the more wealthy you are, the easier it will be to trade in your luxury car for a less polluting model.

We also learn that Ken’s politics are divisive, which isn’t reflected in the level of racially aggravated crime, which has fallen hugely in London in recent years, while rising outside it; and besides, it’s hard to think of a more divisive politician than Boris Johnson anyway, with his numerous gaffes over the past few years offending everyone from races to cities to entire countries. I suppose at that rate he could soon unite the entire world, against him!

The Mail are keen to point out that Boris "has some highly competent people behind him". It’s interesting that they’re so confident about this, when he has repeatedly refused to name any of them so we have no evidence of this whatsoever.

He "seems genuinely concerned to do something about London’s broken society". Ahh, the old Mail favourite, the "broken society". But if crime is highest and society at its most "broken" in the most deprived areas, which are broadly located in inner London, and Boris is the man to sort this out, why is Boris so unrecoverably far behind Ken in the polls in these areas? Could it be because the people with the biggest fear of a "broken society" are actually those who read the Mail’s baseless ranting but live in the relative safety of the outer boroughs, so can gamble on Boris’s police cutbacks and removal of crime reduction targets without fearing for their own security?

So let’s put our cards on the table. We believe London and Britain would be best served by a vote for Boris - and not simply because the Mail is instinctively conservative.

Yes, I’m sure you gave a great deal of consideration to backing Red Ken!

Indeed, one of the attractive aspects of Mr Johnson’s campaign is his promise to put London first, even if it means disagreeing with national policies.

And this is certainly not something that could be had elsewhere, perhaps from a Mayor who opposed the Iraq war and the abolition of the 10p income tax rate…

We support Boris because he offers change. … Eight years of Ken Livingstone haven’t solved London’s problems. A new, serious Johnson should be given a chance.

"given a chance"? What do they think this is, some sort of game? There’s no such thing as "a chance" in this job: you have to hit the ground running from day one and work flat out for four solid years, showing competence and abilities which are far beyond the reach of even the newest, most serious Johnson imaginable. And don’t forget, this "new, serious Johnson" is an illusion created for the duration of the election campaign only, through a ban on alcohol and minders paid in inverse proportion to the number of gaffes Boris commits.

So with even the Mail’s best arguments for voting in Boris being so weak and couched in expectation-lowering terms, can anyone be left in any doubt as to how little trust there is in his abilities among newspaper journalists?

Daily Telegraph

If you are in any doubt, let Boris’s own colleagues at the Telegraph remove it.

The journalists and editors at the newspaper where Boris has worked for two decades can’t actually bring themselves to back Boris!

Instead, they spent half their column building up London as the most important place in the world, and the other half ruthlessly attacking Ken Livingstone. The only mention of any success whatever is, in full, "the Oyster card, better buses".

Essentially this leading article adopts the Boris campaign tactic of attacking Ken Livingstone while not drawing too any attention to Boris’s own hopeless manifesto of police cuts and impossible promises, but at least Boris has learnt a few short lines about his (to use the Times’s terminology) "policy suggestions". The Telegraph appear to be so nervous of endorsing this buffoon that they can’t even bring themselves to print his name!

In conclusion

With supporters like this mealy-mouthed bunch of leader-writers, who needs opponents? The Guardian have a more sensible line on things, although their endorsement for Ken is not a great deal more ringing than the others’ for Boris, although they are able to point to Ken’s strong record in various areas, which is certainly more than anyone examining Boris’s hopeless record of gaffes, incompetence, lies and sackings could do. Their verdict on Boris is as follows:

The Conservatives have fought a strategic campaign and benefited from Mr Livingstone’s weaknesses. That is not the same as setting out a solid case for office. Mr Johnson has offered celebrity and noise, but nothing very substantial, or even all that brave, his policies in many instances being modified versions of ones pursued by Mr Livingstone. … he has not shown himself equal to the mayor’s strengths. At the end of the campaign Mr Johnson still looks an accidental candidate who has stumbled into his position and is making the best of it, but might not make very much of being mayor. He promises better buses, less crime and a greener city, but cannot explain how he would bring these about.

That sounds about right to us.

What all this highlights is that here in the Stop Boris camp we are certainly up against it. We have the might of Murdoch and the Mail against us, as well as the Evening Standard and Telegraph, although all their support for Boris is half-hearted at best.

What we mustn’t do is become disheartened by this media onslaught. In a democracy, it is we the people who have the final say on polling day. We must not allow sections of the media with vested interests to bully and coerce us into electing another who has no proven abilities at all and would damage London’s reputation around the world as well as managing its huge budget with the incompetence for which he is so well known among everyone he’s ever worked with.

We need a final push this week, Boris-stoppers. E-mail all your friends to warn them about the mendacious campaign Boris has been fighting, and the huge risk this inept clown would pose to the serious business of running London. Get into arguments and discussions about it with anyone you speak to. Convince them to vote tactically to keep Boris out.

We can do this, with all your help. Good luck, everyone.

Posted in Daily Mail, Guardian, Media, Telegraph, The Times | No Comments »

How the media works

Friday, 25 April 2008, 18.32 by Mr. Stop Boris

A few weeks ago, the Telegraph ran its appalling Boris campaign puff piece masquerading as front-page news, in which we learned, amid sentences worded carefully under the watchful eyes of lawyers, that Boris had been the victim of ‘dirty tricks’ and his e-mail system had been hacked. (No further details or evidence of the hacking were provided, nor do they report that the police were called in, despite this being a criminal offence if true, which makes you wonder if it even happened.)

They mixed phrases about the ‘dirty tricks’ and ‘hacking’ with phrases about Ken’s campaign, implying that he had been involved in one or both of these things without ever actually saying as much.

The overriding message of the article was that poor, innocent Boris had been the victim of evil hacking and other skulduggery at the hands of brutal, law-breaking Ken.

Now, let’s see, what happened last night? Harriet Harman’s web site was hacked, and publicly plastered with Back Boris logos. There’s no doubting that this happened – that article has the screenshot to illustrate it – and there’s equally no doubt what the motivation of the hackers was. So how is this reported in that article by The First Post?

"It is unbelievable that her digital security is so weak," says a Westminster source. "I mean if they can hack the deputy PM they can hang anyone, even Gordon Brown."

Brilliant - if Boris claims he’s been hacked, it’s basically Ken’s fault, but if a Boris supporter hacks someone in Ken’s party, it’s her own fault.

If Boris wins this election – and I still firmly believe he need not do so if we sustain our campaigning efforts, Boris-stoppers – it will be as a result of one of the most flagrant abuses of media power (primarily that of the Evening Standard and their mendacious advertising boards) ever involved in getting anyone elected in this country. Thanks, Lynton Crosby.

Posted in Crime, Lynton Crosby, Media, Telegraph | No Comments »

Dirty tricks in the Telegraph

Sunday, 6 April 2008, 12.20 by Mr. Stop Boris

As I tried to get to sleep last night, the penny dropped about just how calculated today’s Sunday Telegraph front page and accompanying interview really are.

These are no ordinary articles. To call them journalism would be insulting to reporters up and down the country who spend their days trying to get to the truth.

What these articles give is a carefully calculated platform in which to rebut – sometimes subtly, sometimes obviously – all the most serious allegations raised by campaigns like ours at StopBoris.org over the past few weeks and months.

Once you start analysing it, it’s clear that the writing of this article was not approached as an opportunity by a journalist to profile honestly a candidate their newspaper’s readers might have been thinking of voting for. This article was approached with a checklist of points to rebut and suggestions of how to rebut them.

Can this really be true, I hear you cry. Yes, it can: Lynton Crosby leaves no stone unturned in his campaigns and will manipulate every last detail of his candidates’ media coverage, if the media let him. Of course, Boris worked for the Telegraph for 20 years so there’s no doubt he’d be able to call in a favour or two there if he wanted to. On today’s evidence, he wants to.

So let’s have a look at a likely checklist of things the article needed to rebut, and some quotes from the article which by an amazing coincidence address those points perfectly.

Allegation against Boris Rebuttal in this article

Boris is being nannied/muzzled.

Does he mean Mr Livingstone is looking weary? "I think so," he says and then asks his aide: "Am I allowed to say that?" "Say what you like," she laughs.

Boris’s campaign is trying to focus a negative spotlight on Ken rather than a positive one on Boris’s own policies.

Boris Johnson falls uncharacteristically silent when asked what he really thinks of Ken Livingstone.

The normally exuberant Tory mayoral candidate shakes his head and makes a gesture with his hands as if to say "do not ask". […]

Mr Johnson appears more comfortable when talking about his own agenda.

Boris has no proper grasp of facts, figures and statistics.

Mr Johnson, who is often taunted for being light on detail, constantly reels off statistics as he talks.

He relays that there are 8,000 buses in London, 32,000 black cabs, 34,000 licensed mini cabs; that drivers have paid £330 million in congestion charge fines; that the amount of garden space lost to building would cover 22 Hyde Parks; and that there is a traffic light in Trafalgar Square that is red for one minute 45 seconds and green for just 12 seconds.

Boris has less appeal to ethnic minority candidates.

At least half the people who stop to talk to him are black or Asian, which would seem to disprove Mr Livingstone’s claims that he does not appeal to ethnic communities.

All the countless inappropriate things he has written or said in the past and now wishes to bury, which we (and other opponents of Boris) are highlighting to reveal the truly nasty politician behind the mask.

"There’s been lots of sub-radar stuff. They’ve read every column I’ve ever written to see if they can find something to turn into a smear about a position I don’t hold.

"I was quite surprised by the complete intellectual dishonesty in some of the ways they’ve tried to misrepresent me. I feel determined not to let them get away with it and we won’t."

Boris is far less keen on anti-car measures than his rival candidates, having opposed the congestion charge and generally pandered to pro-car feeling.

Risking the wrath of critics who say he is anti-car, Mr Johnson does not shrink from admonishing motorists who drive into London. "I’m a passionate cyclist. I don’t feel it is sensible to drive a car to work in the centre of London. I think, on the whole, it would be better if people found other means of doing it.

"I feel very strongly that it is crazy that we all drive our cars to schools over such short distances. It’s absolutely nuts. Try getting in a car at eight in the morning - what is going on? We are mad."

Boris’s campaign is so out of touch with ordinary Londoners it thinks revelations about Ken Livingstone having successfully kept some of his children private from the media are in some way damaging.

Mr Johnson has so far steadfastly refused to get personal. There would be plenty of ammunition if he wanted to.

Revelations this week about Mr Livingstone’s three secret love children only underline his vulnerability on personal issues.

(And of course we all believe that Boris didn’t want them to bring that up.)

This week’s Guardian/ICM poll suggests the election is much closer than previously thought so Boris should be worried that it might not be ‘in the bag’.

If the reaction of people on the streets of Bexleyheath in south-east London is anything to go by, Mr Johnson does not have to worry about the smears.

(That’s Bexleyheath, in the heart of a borough with 52 Conservative councillors and 9 Labour ones. I wonder why they claim to have met only one person who wouldn’t be voting for Boris.)

Finally, just to make sure anything else that might come up against him is pre-emptively rubbished…

"Well, I think he [Ken Livingstone] will fight dirty. They are already doing blatant misrepresentations of our positions, just absolutely ruthless, going around lying about what we are offering. We are offering free travel for the elderly. They are literally going round houses, knocking on the door and lying. […]

"They [Labour] will say absolute codswallop, don’t take any notice of the lies they will tell," he warns the gathering.

"Can I say lies?" he asks nobody in particular, before continuing: "Yes, lies."

The right-hand column of the above table contains about 75% of the main interview article.

And of course, don’t overlook how little truth the Telegraph’s lawyers think they have any evidence of there being in these allegations of "dirty tricks" and "lies". Having given the nod to the article being published, in which the clear implication in e.g. the last quote above is that Ken Livingstone is personally involved in lying, they then insisted on the following being tossed into the mix in the summary article on the front page:

There was no suggestion that Mr Livingstone was in any way involved in the dirty tricks campaign.

Apart from the suggestions throughout the rest of their coverage, of course.

As I wrote last night, this article represents a huge step up in the level of media manipulation and cynical electioneering by the Boris campaign. Don’t fall for it. Look for yourself at the things Boris has written in the past, the positions he has consistently held on things like the environment and the Stephen Lawrence inquiry, and the racist articles he paid Taki for and published in the Spectator.

And I have no idea if Ken’s campaigners are lying on the doorstep, but Boris’s were certainly lying on the doorstep of the Time Out hustings. Strangely, the Telegraph have overlooked that.

Posted in Getting an easy ride, Lies, Lynton Crosby, Media, Telegraph | 7 Comments »

The pot calls the kettle a piccaninny

Sunday, 6 April 2008, 1.29 by Mr. Stop Boris

I’m gobsmacked by what I believe is now today’s Sunday Telegraph front page article, Boris Johnson: I’m the victim of dirty tricks in London Mayor race.

The amount of cheek present in anyone whose campaign is being run by Lynton Crosby accusing anyone else of dirty tricks is staggering.

The Telegraph even states as a matter of fact (without offering any evidence) that Boris’s opponents have used "push polling", which is a well known favourite technique of Mr. Crosby himself.

Boris also accuses his opponents of "sub-radar stuff", despite it being well documented that Crosby’s own strategy for Boris is specifically known as an "under-the-radar" campaign.

He continues:

They’ve read every column I’ve ever written to see if they can find something to turn into a smear about a position I don’t hold.

It’s extraordinary that Boris would suggest that simply by highlighting things that he himself has written, we opponents of his (I assume StopBoris.org counts as an opponent, even though we don’t have our own Mayoral candidate) are somehow misrepresenting him. If we mention that he thinks gay marriage is in some way comparable to a union between "three men and a dog", or that he spent column after column repeatedly attacking the Stephen Lawrence inquiry as unnecessary and "Orwellian", it’s unbelievable that his response is to say we are smearing him, and that he doesn’t hold positions that he himself has written that he does hold.

This is the man who was happy to employ and publish outrageous articles by out-and-out racist Taki; the man who’s taken six years to appreciate that "piccaninnies" might be an offensive word to ethnic minorities; the man who supported George W. Bush’s election and re-election; the man who strongly opposed the repealing of Section 28 because he thought it would lead to enforced "homosexual instruction" in the classroom; the man who promised to help an old fraudster friend track down and beat up a journalist; the man who is in the tiny minority of politicians in the developed world who still opposes the Kyoto protocol to tackle climate change (Bush being the only remaining developed world leader not to sign up to it); the man who opposed the National Minimum Wage; the man who claims he did or didn’t snort cocaine based on who’s listening at the time, and did or didn’t have an affair based on what evidence has so far emerged.

With so much evidence that Boris is an untrustworthy charlatan at odds with the vast majority of Londoners’ views, why would anyone need to make anything up to ’smear’ him?

And meanwhile, a single recent appearance of the Back Boris team involved them issuing outright lies on crime and likening Ken Livingstone to mass-murdering dictator Robert Mugabe. Do these things not count as ‘dirty tricks’?

The Sunday Telegraph’s front page article represents a desperate escalation of tactics by Lynton Crosby, attempting to deflect attention away from his own campaigns lies, smears and deceptions by screaming blue murder about vastly exaggerated ‘dirty tricks’ being used against him.

As Boris-stoppers we must do all we can to help our fellow Londoners cut through this thick layer of meta-lies, and see Boris’s campaign for the cynical charade it really is, yet again trying to keep the spotlight off Boris by pushing it back towards his opponents, and raising the dishonesty and bluster levels higher than ever.

Posted in Campaign, Diversity, Ethnic minorities, Getting an easy ride, Homosexuality, Lies, Lynton Crosby, Media, Other candidates, Stop Boris, Telegraph | 2 Comments »

Et tu, Tele?

Saturday, 5 April 2008, 0.40 by Mr. Stop Boris

According to a quick item on the BBC News 24 newspaper preview just now, tomorrow’s (well, today’s now) Telegraph has a lengthy profile of Boris which doesn’t sound like it’s the glowing praise-athon you might expect from his former employer.

It’s not online yet, but what I could glean from the television was that part of its headline was “Running for Mayor… and running from the Press?”, which is a nice gaffophobia reference, illustrated by a photo of a journalist (the author of the piece?) trying to grab him as he walks away.

Apparently the piece also focusses on some of his gaffes and some of the racist articles published in the Spectator when he was editor of it – which he issued another apology for this week, having previously only apologised for the things he’d written himself, rather than the out-and-out racism from the pen of Taki, which he waved through to the newsstand countless times during his editorship.

I don’t suppose even a StopBoris.org-worthy hatchet job would change some Telegraph readers’ minds about the columnist they lapped up for two decades until last year – and however surprisingly negative this article might be, it’s probably not that harsh – but you never know, it might just make some of their readers think twice about backing him.

We look forward to seeing the article when it appears online.

Update: It appeared while I was writing that! I’m a bit confused because although I think this must be the article they were referring to, I can’t see any references to the Spectator racism in it. Indeed, it’s one of the milder articles I’ve read - exactly as one would expect from his former employer.

It’s not without its revelations, though. Did you wonder what the underlying motivation for Boris to become Mayor was? What incident had propelled him to do all he could to get into City Hall? Was it his passion for the city’s diverse population? Perhaps his desire to dream up exciting policy plans to improve the city? Or some overarching vision for the greatest capital on Earth? Er, no. It all dates back to one brief encounter on his bike:

I was almost killed by a bendy bus and can remember pulling over, shaking, to the kerb and thinking, ‘Who did this? It must have been Livingstone, it must have been that man.’ And I remember thinking I would do anything I could to secure his removal from office.

Knowing that that was the real motivator explains rather a lot about his ridiculous campaign, actually.

Posted in BBC, Buses, Cycling, Diversity, Ethnic minorities, Gaffophobia, Media, Telegraph, Transport | No Comments »