Boris Johnson as Mayor - what are the implications for London's development?

[Bezben]

Originally Posted by spindrift

Boris equated gay marriage with dogs marrying, you've just repeated the comparison, can you really not see how offensive that is? I'm not even sure if Boris is homophobic, went to Eton after all, which is worse when you think about it because he's pandering to prejudice to make money.

Oh ok so if he went Eton then that MUST mean he's Homophobic, just like David Cameron (who said he is for gay marriage)

[spindrift]

Originally Posted by Bezben

Oh ok so if he went Eton then that MUST mean he's Homophobic, just like David Cameron (who said he is for gay marriage)

Err, no, I implied the opposite. See, where I said I don't think he's homophobic? I think he just makes homophobic remarks to promote his column and make money, which is worse, in my opinion, like saying black people are monkeys or jews are rats or whatever. It's troubling that you're having difficulty following this, it's the classic dehumanisation of a section of society, if done by an unintelligent, disenfranchised racist it's depressing, if done by an intelligent person to make money it's outrageous.

[Octoman]

So David Cameron is pushing hard for gay marriage (and provoking a fight with a core voter base in the church in the process) and Boris Johnson has come out and publicly supported it. This is something that the nauseatingly righteous left never achieved in their decade of power and yet Cameron and Johnson are homophobes?

[spindrift]

Originally Posted by Octoman

yet Cameron and Johnson are homophobes?

Once again, that's not what I said.

Anyhoo, remember the Standard story about MASSIVE ELECTORAL FRAUD in LBTH, just two days before London's mayoral election?

Isabella Freeman



Tower Hamlets
15 August 2012

On 2 May we reported allegations that Isabella Freeman, the Assistant Chief Executive (Legal Services) and Monitoring Officer of Tower Hamlets, had shown a lack of care about alleged voter fraud in Tower Hamlets and, on the contrary, was involved in a deliberate cover-up.

We accept that those allegations were untrue and any suggestion that Isabella Freeman had not overseen the correct procedures was wrong.

She has, in fact, taken steps so that the council has the most robust systems and processes permitted within electoral law to ensure the integrity of the electoral register and identify any malpractice.

Tower Hamlets electronically scans 100 per cent of postal votes and rejects any that have non-matching signatures. The article also incorrectly stated that Ms Freeman had blamed Muslim voters for the claims by others of voter fraud in Tower Hamlets.

We apologise to Ms Freeman.

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/londo...n-8049773.html

Fancy that, Boris's mate Sarah Sands printing damaging stories that are damaging to Ken just before the election, and the story turns out to be a load of old trousers, what a staggering coincidence.

[wjfox]

Yet another inflation-busting fares hike. Shame on you Boris.

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/trans...e-8293591.html

[DarJoLe]

It was well advertised this would happen and will continue to happen for the next fifteen years and Londoners voted for Boris so have no cause to complain.

[DarJoLe]

Originally Posted by wjfox

Yet another inflation-busting fares hike.]

If you can't afford it then work harder or move your entire life out of London, as the Tories would say.

[potto]

it is such a short-termist ideology though, hiking the point of use price to maintain current investment, very US style, but easy to sell to those who dont like to invest in the city they live off.

Why isnt the congestion charge rising by the same level? Very poor Mayoral management of a city.

[potto]

Originally Posted by DarJoLe

It was well advertised this would happen and will continue to happen for the next fifteen years and Londoners voted for Boris so have no cause to complain.

well something like 20% did

[wjfox]

Originally Posted by potto

Why isnt the congestion charge rising by the same level?

Because that would be socialist and/or "eco-Nazism".

[DarJoLe]

Originally Posted by potto

Why isnt the congestion charge rising by the same level?.

Because those elderly mothers need to get to their French lessons in Mayfair?

[potto]

oh yes and the farmers taking organic carrots to borough market, silly me

[.Adam]

Don't forget those all important trips to the V&A

[pricemazda]

Originally Posted by Octoman

So David Cameron is pushing hard for gay marriage (and provoking a fight with a core voter base in the church in the process) and Boris Johnson has come out and publicly supported it. This is something that the nauseatingly righteous left never achieved in their decade of power and yet Cameron and Johnson are homophobes?

I feel the need to tell you to shoo off. I too wish that Labour had grown a pair of balls and rammed it all through. They had a huge numbers of members willing to take it behind the Speaker's Chair and one by one waited their turn to force it right through the lobbies.

I think you'll find Labour has done far more for gay equality than the Tories.

Decriminalisation of homosexual acts 1967
Age of consent
Gays in the military
Civil Partnerships
Employment protection
Scrapping the openly homophobic Section 28

Oh and marriage equality is being pushed by the Lib Dems and used by Cameron to claim he isn't a typical nasty bastard cutting everything Tory.

[Rational Plan]

I sometimes wonder if anyone is paying attention to the size of the deficit. The structural deficit according to the IMF was £76 billion pounds prior to economic bust. We were living on borrowed time. The reality is whoever is in power is going to have to make cuts and raise taxes.

The choice for the next decade when it comes to public transport is either to cut spending or make the users of that service pay more through higher fares. London has billions from central government to support the running of TFL. No where else gets such a sweet deal. Other regions might find it even more galling that central government spending is effectively subsidising TFL generous and various expensive travel concessions. No where has free travel for children in other areas over 60's can only use the bus and then after 9.30.

TFL would run an operating surplus if it was not for these concessions.

I'm not arguing against these concessions but they have to funded from somewhere. It's either going to be council taxes or fares. I'm sure if you put forward a candidate who promised much higher taxes for lower fares they'd sink like a stone. Not even Ken did that, he just promised to raid the capital budge to subsidise the operating one.

[DarJoLe]

All this means nothing, if there's no money then Boris shouldn't be splashing out on non essentials such as cable cars and faux-Routemaster buses.

[Langur]

The reason we have no money is because of the Labour Party's reckless spending binge. Boris reigned in Ken's wasteful spending from the moment he took office.

Meanwhile the cable car pays for itself (unlike every other form of public transport), and the Boris bus costs no more than any other model.

[dom]

The travel concessions are over generous. Over 60s is far too generous - a large portion of the 60+ demographic in London are arguably some of the most asset rich people in the world, sitting on properties worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.

It seems perverse that students who've been clobbered with a 300% (!) inflation in their tuition fee costs (albeit no longer upfront) and 20 something Londoners who've had no benefit from lower mortgage costs that many of the working population nor benefited from the spritely jobs market from 1997-2006 are those who are paying for this overly generous free travel!

I would reclassify the free travel to over 70s or 75s.

Re our deficit, part of it is structural and part of it is from a downturn in the economic cycle. Problem is large amounts of our tax take were from City of London 'froth' derived from financial services boom and spending increased faster than this by Brown post 2003 hence we've got the mother of all deficits. City employment has reduced from 350k down to 250k-ish and will take a fair old time to recover, prob not late in the 2010s. These figures exclude growth in the insurance/reinsurance industry e.g. AON relocation etc.

The UK deficit is currently around 8-9%, down from 12% but still substantial. Not so long ago deficits of 5-6% were banana republic territory! Peeps in the UK are simply going to have to get used to being poorer, paying slightly more tax and paying more for their public services or more for things that were previously 'free.'

We'll also become relatively less rich compared to the rest of world. It all sounds a tad depressing.

We could cut a 1-2% of the deficit by getting rid of the absurd notion that the UK needs to contribute 0.7% of GDP in aid, spending of which will rise to 12 billion p/a by the end of parliament.

Also our welfare bill is massive, something like £200 billion, NHS spending over 100 billion. Welfare looks fairly easy to go for in terms of cuts as it has increased by so much over the past 12 years... people were hardly starving back in 2000 were they?!

We've got something like £120 billion as our yearly deficit so a fair old way to go. In the interim our interest payments will increase as the debt is racking up by ~120 billion a year.

I firmly believe that the government should focus on cutting the 'running costs' of government and reinvest large portions in revenue and non-revenue generating infrastructure...

Anyway, on a positive note...

UK gilt yields are ridiculously low, the UK can borrow for only 1.8% over 10 years (!!) so at least the interest rate that the UK can borrow has dropped massively since the coalition go in...

It'll be fascinating to see what happens in the next 10 years or so re all the deficits, Euro, dollar, yuan (floating or not?) and whether the BRICS live up to their hype....

[kerouac1848]

Free travel for over 60s is nothing to do with Tfl, it's paid for by local councils (For 2012/13 London boroughs are paying in total £317m)

Concessions are a factor but they're overplayed. Last time i checked the tube funded about 95% of its costs. The bus network does have a larger black hole, a 9-figure sum iirc, but it's not enough to explain the huge fare increases over the past decade (There has been a 55% increase since 2008 alone for buses). That's mostly to pay the debt Tfl have taken on for upgrade works, crossrail and so on. Imo this is a fucking stupid way to pay for infrastructure improvements and something very few other developed cities would do because it projects a poor image and narrows the spread of the costs. Most places would use a combination of ridership increases and a time-limited tax - or taxes - to spread the costs around. Tfl would also likely get lower repayment costs by replacing their different sources of funding with a long-term bond(s).

One suggestion put out was in exchange for central government grants to give the Mayor income from business rates which currently go to boroughs. It would more than cover most of the upgrade payments. More radically a new levy on business to replace Rates could be an option. Either way business is likely to prefer paying to a single authority which is more transparent and gains more media coverage compared to seeing cash disappear into the wilderness of borough budgets.

[Rational Plan]

Originally Posted by kerouac1848

Free travel for over 60s is nothing to do with Tfl, it's paid for by local councils (For 2012/13 London boroughs are paying in total £317m)

Concessions are a factor but they're overplayed. Last time i checked the tube funded about 95% of its costs. The bus network does have a larger black hole, a 9-figure sum iirc, but it's not enough to explain the huge fare increases over the past decade (There has been a 55% increase since 2008 alone for buses). That's mostly to pay the debt Tfl have taken on for upgrade works, crossrail and so on. Imo this is a fucking stupid way to pay for infrastructure improvements and something very few other developed cities would do because it projects a poor image and narrows the spread of the costs. Most places would use a combination of ridership increases and a time-limited tax - or taxes - to spread the costs around. Tfl would also likely get lower repayment costs by replacing their different sources of funding with a long-term bond(s).

One suggestion put out was in exchange for central government grants to give the Mayor income from business rates which currently go to boroughs. It would more than cover most of the upgrade payments. More radically a new levy on business to replace Rates could be an option. Either way business is likely to prefer paying to a single authority which is more transparent and gains more media coverage compared to seeing cash disappear into the wilderness of borough budgets.

I think you need to look at New York which is drowning in payments to Bonds it borrowed to pay for network upgrades that it could not raise from fare increases or local taxes. In fact lots of transit authorities around the world are burdened with lots of debt because that was a way to raise money without taxing people or increasing fares.

As for business rates, where do you think that money goes now? It's not sitting in some bank account. You'd have to take money from someone else.

Busineses's may moan about rates, but they'd not be keen about local control again. The problem is that local companies don't vote, so there is always the temptation to tax them more heavily than residential occupiers.

You'd think that local authorities would control this to prevent business fleeing, but it is always tempting to raise those taxes to avoid having to control spending elsewhere. I few extra percent this year can't hurt that much can it? Except of course it's never for just this year it's every year, until suddenly the local tax base starts to collapse as everyone who can flee does.

This was the reason central control was brought in, in the first place.