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Londoner’s Life 29 – by Phil Ryan

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Londoner’s Life 29 – By Phil Ryan

Boris won. Ken lost. So that’s the Mayoral nonsense out of the way. I popped into my local church and put my cross in the boxes. Curious really, a kind of religious voting experience. But it was probably a futile gesture as nothing much will change. Everything will stay expensive. Nothing will get cheaper. And the weirdo fringe candidates like the BNP and Liberal Democrats attracted hardly any support in the end. So what was the point of them all? It was Boris vs Ken. And think of all the money they both wasted. But hey that’s democracy so I guess I shouldn’t complain. In London we seem to lead the way in fairness and openness. That is unless of course you’re trying to get into the country via Heathrow. Yes London’s premier airport is leading the world now in queues. It’s our Olympic year and London is saying welcome and come on in. You’ve flown for a few hours and now as a welcoming exercise we’d like you to stand in line for three more tedious hours and shuffle along like drugged penguins. Our staff have all been employed only if they are miserable and intolerant. Make any kind of fuss – even slightly raise your voice and miraculously we have loads of staff to escort you to an interrogation room. Hm. And I love our chip and pin type passports with their hi tec machines plus their human components. Last month I flew back from France. Confidently headed for the chipped passport gates but before I got there a very kind lady stopped me and explained how to use them. Hm.

Isn’t the point being that it’s a machine with clear instructions. So I listened to her briefly and her two colleagues who came across to assist her! I didn’t want to seem rude so instead of putting my passport on the reader I politely let them waste five minutes of my time and then I did what I was intending all along. I put my passport on the reader and looked at the camera thing. The gates opened and I ran for the Heathrow Express. Over manning or what? Meanwhile the other queue snaked back out of the corridor. Welcome to London.

My favourite new bit of over hyping Olympic nonsense was the pure London moment when the army went to Bow to put missiles onto the roofs of tower blocks to find many already had them. Just kidding! But seriously the kids are more armed than the army round that way. Pity the terrorist who wanders into Bow, he’s done for. Personally I think it’s a scam by Barratt’s Homes or even the Government. I mean imagine if they do shoot down a plane. Where does it crash exactly? Bow or Canning Town somewhere. It’s a regeneration project essentially dressed up as security. But we lurch closer to the joy of the Olympics with each passing week. My most chilling moment was watching some bland nerk from Transport for London (TFL) colloquially known as Totally ********* London. He stood in front of the front of a station and calmly asserted that there would be 3 million more tube passengers using the system EVERY DAY during the Olympics. What? Have any of them actually been on the tube? It is going to be a nightmare. But then only a London official could make the following statement. He went on to say that today they were launching a poster campaign and get this ‘encouraging Londoner’s to find different ways to get to work’. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaagh. Different ways? What Hot Air balloons, jet packs, levitation. How about roller skates? It’s like they’ve collectively all dropped some acid. They have abandoned any grasp on reality. But hey ho! This is London and TFL and anything is possible apparently. Come the games it’s essentially going to be the world’s largest and sweatiest mobile game of Twister!

But it’s not all bad news. It’s the Queens Diamond Jubilee celebration soon (god bless her). A procession of golden boats and pageantry and an opportunity for street parties. So here in London it’s a chance for another holiday as remember its bank holiday season. Every other week seems to be a holiday. Which on the one hand is great. On the other the train companies calmly make every weekend a train free zone. And from what I see on some of the weekend jubilee celebrations the train companies will do their level best to stop you getting there. No wonder Londoners get so resigned to their travelling fate. However at my local London Overground station when I head for the platform the staff now excitedly tell me we have trains honestly lots of them look go and see! It’s quite touching in a way.

Finally trend news moment. It’s now the complete rise of the east with the Sushi places I’ve mentioned before. But now I see a blossoming undercurrent of new British themed gastro pubs or ‘eating rooms’ as they trendily call themselves. It’s suddenly organic sausages and Kent potatoes and gravy. And whilst I cautiously welcome this type of place (all very 50’s in decor but British 50’s mind you so coooool) again the prices are very scary. I went to a new one plugged in the Evening Standard and paid eighteen pounds for some chops. Not very recession friendly. Conversely I notice most of them are signed up to that Taste Card company (as am I) Discount food seems the only way they can get people in at the start of the week. Remember folks it’s a double dip recession so watch those pennies. And choose carefully. Although is it stopping us going out to these places? Are people baulking at the prices? No not really. It’s a London thing.

The London Mayoral Election – Can You Really Bring Yourself to Vote for Ken? 10 Reasons To Make You Think Before You Do

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It’s now less than a week to go to the London mayoral election and it’s is a two-horse race between the Conservative incumbent, Boris Johnson and the former mayor and Labour candidate, Ken Livingstone.

In the polls, Ken is behind, somewhere between 2 and 10 points behind according to the latest figures. This is surprising when the same polls suggest the Conservatives are 15 points behind in London and set to get hammered in the local elections. This is down to two factors, Boris’s charisma and Ken’s cronyism.

Ken has brushed off Labour supporters voting against him (up to one in five is expected to vote for Boris). ‘They are only voting for Boris because he makes them laugh’, says Ken. This is only partly true. Yes, Boris’s charisma and flair are a factor, but so is Ken. Many voters simply can’t bring themselves to vote for Ken because they don’t trust him and you can’t blame them.

Whatever side of the political spectrum you come from, it’s vital that we hold our politicians to account. In my eyes, Ken has been slippery and divisive at best. A self-confessed political nerd, he is everything which is wrong in modern politics today. He will do or say anything to win. It says a lot that many senior figures in the Labour party not only won’t offer their support for him, but are actively risking their own standing in the party to campaign against him.

“In my opinion he is a driven, power-crazed egomaniac who will do anything to regain the power he once had,” says Lord Sugar.

He is “quite a tricky sort of customer” who has “espoused some disastrous causes,” says another Labour peer, Robert Winston.

Here’s a top 10 of Ken gaffes, cronyism, hypocrisy and champagne socialism:

  • Ken was heavily criticised in February 2005 for remarks made to an Evening Standard reporter. He compared him to a Nazi concentration camp guard, after the Jewish reporter had tried to interview him. Ken refused to apologise or retract the statement after the reporter let it be known he was Jewish.
  • In December 2007, the Evening Standard published news of an investigation into grants worth £2.5 million paid to organisations in which Ken Livingstone’s adviser Lee Jasper was involved. It is confirmed that some of these grants were paid directly by the mayor’s office. An independent report into the affair by auditor Michael Haworth-Maden in July 2009 found no evidence of “misappropriation of funds” but noted “significant” gaps in financial paperwork.
  • Livingstone was criticised following a 21 March 2006 press conference at which he is alleged to have said of David and Simon Reuben — two Indian-born Jewish businessmen involved in a property development project — that “if they’re not happy they can always go back to Iran and see if they can do better under the Ayatollahs.”
  • Following Livingstone’s defeat in the 2008 Mayoral Elections, the Daily Mail reported that “eight ‘cronies’ of Ken were to receive £1.6 million in pay-offs following his defeat in the London mayoral elections.”
  • Livingstone has been criticised for his links to Islamic extremism. He was heavily condemned for inviting Islamic scholar Yusuf al-Qaradawi to a conference. Al-Qaradawi has been accused of supporting “female genital mutilation, wife-beating, and the execution of homosexuals.”
  • In a meeting, Ken is alleged to have said that he did not expect the Jewish community to vote Labour as votes for the left are inversely proportional to wealth levels. He supposedly suggested that as the Jewish community is rich they simply wouldn’t vote for him.
  • Ken has been accused of hypocrisy over his tax affairs. He was very critical of wealthy Londoners who used companies to lower the rate of tax they were paying. It subsequently transpired he was doing exactly the same himself through the company Silveta Ltd.
  • Ken used private healthcare despite claiming to be a strong proponent of the NHS.
  • Ken cried over a campaign film of ‘ordinary Londoners’, arguing why they wanted Ken as mayor. It subsequently transpired the film was scripted and made using paid actors. Both of which Ken knew about.
  • Ken’s trip to Cuba and aborted journey to Venezuela in 2006 cost Londoners £30,000 according to assembly figures. Just one of many wasteful incidents.

The Labour party fearfully nominated Ken as their candidate and it may cost them. They still have bad memories from 2001 when they didn’t give Ken the nomination and he won a stunning victory against them as an independent.

They feared Ken running as an independent again, splitting their vote, and handing Boris an easy victory. Nevertheless, the decision to choose Ken may yet haunt them. One can’t help thinking that any other half-decent candidate would have had a very good chance of beating Boris. Figures like Ken have no place in modern politics. If we vote for them, we get what we deserve.

 

Londoners Life 16 – by Phil Ryan

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I’m sorry but I have to say it. The Olympics are coming to London. And just as an example of how great it’s going to be, I thought I’d tell you my experiences with the ticketing system. Briefly, here’s an overview of how it works. Initially you had to apply for a password and set up an account. Then you found you could only buy London Olympic tickets with a Visa card. Then you found you could only actually ‘bid’ for tickets. Not buy them. Huh? This meant that you had to effectively gamble just like buying a lottery ticket – and try and buy (gamble) thousands of pounds of Olympic tickets to get any chance of getting any.

BUT then you didn’t know exactly what tickets to what events you would be sent (if any), you didn’t exactly when or where you’d be going (if you went at all) and then finally the prices jumped from £20 to £400 in the blink of an eye. So effectively, you could ‘bid’ for £3000 worth of tickets only to find, instead of seats at the Opening ceremony or the 100m final, you’d actually ‘won’ two £95 tickets to the pigeon scaring finals in Kidbrooke!

With me so far?

But then as you entered this baffling surreal world of not knowing what, how much you were paying or where you were going – the website continuously blocked you doing anything at all! Half the time, nothing was available apart from the 100m Female Drag Queen Arguments bronze medal qualifiers from Putney. It seemed all the main events in the Olympic stadium were suddenly mysteriously all unavailable. Apart from if you chose to buy tickets in Germany, for example, where you could buy any tickets you wanted!!!

Naturally I didn’t get offered any tickets. I’m not German.

BUT then came the second gambling round for the ‘unlucky’ ones. So with a sense of foreboding, I entered the site to find even less choice of events at £300 ticket, all nowhere near the Olympic Park. Examples: Olympic FOOTBALL? Olympic TENNIS? What’s that all about? So I gave up. What’s the point? It’s simply a fat cat corporate junket we Londoners are sadly paying for.

To recap – I’m a Londoner so some of my taxes (yes, Londoners are the only people paying Olympic tax) go towards the games and my chances of going are clearly zero. Only London could create such a ticketing system. I’ve decided to not be in London those two weeks. There is no point. Ho hum.

Wimbledon is here. And so unsurprisingly is the rain. But this year they’ve got that roof from Thunderbirds so they’ll be able to presumably play on. However, I noticed they hadn’t used it much – preferring instead to have TV coverage full of Sue Barker talking endlessly to various elderly tennis stars of yesteryear. Weird.

And I love the Londoners’ attitude to Wimbledon. I heard radio coverage of the public’s thoughts. Was it excitement at the thought of days of stunning world-class tennis? No. Mainly the thought of more traffic congestion and less places to park. Apparently, the traffic wardens outnumber the strawberries this year.

We Londoners are hardy folk though. In the face of adversity we just carry on. And yesterday, I saw the brilliant sight of a crowd of tube passengers exiting Baker Street into the pouring rain all lifting their Metro newspapers above their heads at the same time. It looked like a modern dance company. You could have set it to music. Of course it didn’t work, but it was great to see them all copy each other in the who can make the ‘most papiere mache first’ game! Best of all, however, right next to the exit, there was a little smiling Indian bloke flogging umbrellas from a bicycle. He was yelling: “Umbrellas, umbrellas, best in town’. What a star! He’ll probably end up being Mayor. He’s got my vote.

Talking of our glorious Mayor for London, I see the campaigns are now seriously starting. Ken is back and so are the other usual pointless candidates. Most of them so bland that when they stand in front of a beige wall they simply disappear. I saw a Liberal Democrat being interviewed and even the interviewer lost interest. She kept glancing past him – clearly hoping a tourist or a drunk would interrupt.

For those of you unclear about things – the London Mayor and his office are yet another level of bureaucracy we pay through the nose for. They spend much of their time meeting about things that don’t ever happen. And when they do make things happen, we just get a bigger bill. A classic case are the fantastic BLUE cycle highways. Millions of pounds of blue lanes painted onto the road. Very safe for cyclists. Clearly cars can’t cross the blue paint – oops yes they can. Doh! But we do provide employment for Boris and his hangers-on currently, up until he tries to take over the Conservative Party. But right now he’s doing his best to mess about with London. And when he’s not screwing things up we have our local councils.

My favourite current example of London madness at official level is a fantastic new idea for local high streets. London councils are creating pop-up shops to give the illusion that our high streets aren’t dying – although of course they are. These pop up shops are usually local artists flogging their work, which I admit is nice, but on the other hand, after a long day, few Londoners go home thinking’ if only I can get a graphic representation of the Queen as a chimpanzee playing the banjo locally’.

The other madder idea is to put plastic coverings on the empty shop fronts. In other words, either stick ugly advertising for Mcdonald’s or some other corporate monster that destroys high streets (no sense of irony these councillors) or in some cases, pretend shops. Yes really. Pretend shops! They look like a flower shop or a grocery shop, but they’re not real! It’s great to watch bemused locals trying to walk in. Bang. They bounce off the locked door and then realise it’s just a big graphic poster with a 3D effect. Seriously, they are out there! You couldn’t make it up really. But it is the London way. We are innovators.

But seriously. Do we care about being ripped off over the Olympics? Is the Mayor going to make the slightest bit of difference to anything? And will it stop us enjoying the summer? No. It’s just a London thing.