Poor Boris. This has been a busy week for his detractors, what with the particularly unflattering documentary about his policies and the criticism about how he dealt with the snow earlier this year. Now, with the Mail deciding that it’s the right time to run a full (and not entirely unbiased) look at the Darius Guppy Phonecall, it seems like the week isn’t going to be improving for Boris any time soon.
Now, we could take the opportunity to shore up on Boris’s side here. We could write about him defending the skyline of the city by voicing his discontent over a planned skyscraper that the Government want to place on the South Bank. Similarly, we could look at Boris’s catchy new ‘Only in London’ tourism campain that’s hit the headlines this week. Frankly, though, we’re terrified of angering whatever gods have decided to smite Boris this week — a week this bad must have some kind of supernatural cause — and so here’s a picture of a cute kitten instead.
Hopefully this sacrifice will appease whatever higher being has decided Boris deserves such a bad run of it recently, and things can get back to normal. Hopefully.
But it’s all such tosh if you look at it all. The snow fall was heavy and unexpected (“It is not within my competence to get in a helicopter and repel the snow” said the Mayor, I am still laughing), the DISPATCHES programme, although inititally annoying, was so biased that it was just silly, and to drag up the 20 year old Darius Guppy conversation smacked of desperation. I was very surprised to see it in the Mail and a double page spread no less.
“They” (whatever dark forces are at work) are worried about the Mayor’s vast popularity so they are attacking him hoping to distort the public’s perception and undermine some of that popularity.
I would forget about sacrificing the kitten, because I don’t think any of the above has had the slightest effect on the Mayor’s image. The good news also, is that it all seems a bit desperate.
It is pretty obvious that there are going to be more attacks and more distortions, but if whoever is doing it hopes to dent Boris’s reputation in any way at all, they are going to have to do a hell of a lot better than that.
I totally agree with the above post. You talk about sacrifices – I bet that sacrifices are being made daily to whatever dark gods these people worship that (a) the Mayor is caught in a compromising situation (b) he is found ingesting illegal substances (c) he drops some huge booboo they can blame him for, (d) they can prove he is a cross dresser, or (e) (they are practically levitating at the idea of this last) he misappropriates public money. NO CHANCE GUYS.
If (a), (c) or (d) occurred, the Mayor is popular enough for the public to understand anyway.
I agree with Andriana the attacks are bound to continue, but I doubt very much they can find find much else! Boris is so honest about his own shortcomings, it sort of takes the wind out of the sales.
The fact that people are trying to make something of the Guppy conversation shows how little they have in their arsenal. To get anything at all they are going to have to descend to stitchups and they are already trying to stitch him up because of the lack of anything concrete.
Boris did meet the Queen last week at the G20 summit and she looked pretty delighted to see him! So the week wasn’t a total washout.
Don’t worry Mr. Boriswatch! tonight a programme is on BBC2 which will put matters in perspective and justify the people who defend Boris in the above posts.
At 7.50 pm. a programme is on BBC2 called YES WE CAN, THE LOST ART OF ORATORY. Oratorical styles of political figures are compared and examined and who comes out on top, yes Mr. Boris Johnson!
Apparently the Mayor knows his anaphora (using the same phrase at the beginning of a sentence) from his captatio benevolentiae (appealing to the good in an audience) and is master of the Praeteritio (talking about something by pretending you are talking about something else. This last bit is my undoing, often I am confused as to exactly what the Mayor IS ruddy talking about, because this blooming praetritio is doing my head in and I am finding it confusing.
However, it is his mastery of the capitatio benevolentiae that really won me over. Some of the Mayor’s speeches are so noble in concept, so philisophical, so visionary and so inspiring, that my thinking has been radically altered.. As a firm believer in the idea that we all have good and evil within us and we must look for the good inside ourselves, his speeches could not fail to strike a massive chord.
President Obama is an inspirational speaker, he also has total mastery of the capitatio benevolentiae, but may i dare to say, he does not have the Mayor’s wit and comic turn of phrase. I worship the Prez. but would also dare to say our Mayor is a tiny bit more intelligent.
This is why the Mayor sometimes gets impatient at the petty carping and small mindedness of people like Keith Vaz, so much so that he will explode in righteous anger like Zeus.
WATCH THIS PROGRAMME and feel proud we have a Mayor like this.
Yes, when Boris finally explodes, it is like Zeus throwing thunderbolts at the Titans.
Boris met President Obama who thanked him for organising the good weather….. people DO believe Boris is Zeus!
Of course Boris organised the good weather, thats why he has a Mayoral chopper!
And to finish up a perfect week, Boris blows budget on bankrupt Icelandic banks.
Oratorify your way out of that one.
Boris’s instability is showing more and more. This latest tantrum in parliament is just another example of the seething intolerance of anyone who questions his authority, which he has been reared to take for granted. If I was a bookie, I would give 5-1 on him blowing up before the next mayoral election.
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It is such a waste of time and in poor taste to be grilling Boris on this rare occurrence of heavy snow in London. It absolutely would be a waste of funds to invest in plows and snow removal teams. I have only lived in London briefly, but how often would you say you get 2 or more inches of snow? It can’t be that often.
I live near Boston, and there was an ice storm that knocked the power out for a few days. Everyone is calling for local governments to build shelters in the event that this will happen again, which it will. But it happens once every few years. The funds for building and maintaining shelters do not justify the cost of an ice storm every ten years. This is directly paralleled to buying plows in London; the costs simply do not add up.
And I would love to be a fly on the wall, Dave, to see Obama and Boris in a discussion.
It’s always a waste of time asking Johnson anything because he never answers, and generally storms off in an infantile tantrum. What gets him is the temerity of anyone not educated at public school and Oxbridge presuming to question his classically trained judgement and taste and natural superiority.
This is why he is always having to apologise to ordinary decent people, and why he cannot keep a team together and why, sooner or later, he will snap, and London’s administration will be left in tatters.
What is the procedure when the mayor has to resign, by the way? Who takes over?
Tories and kittens. It’s an old story, actually:
http://raincoaster.com/2006/08/03/tories-develop-stunning-new-pr-technology/
But the Liberals have learned to fight back:
http://raincoaster.com/2006/08/03/liberals-develop-counterstrike-to-tory-pr-tech/
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Its actually a waste of time trying to score petty points off of Boris for something completely out his control. Look at how the Select Committee “questioned” him about the problems London faced. The MPs just seemed more interested in trying to pin the entire blame for the epic snowfall on him and him alone. Pathetic.
And to be honest, every local authority in the UK has some kind of investment in Icelandic banks and have had such investments and savings in these institutions for years. The GLA you may find to your surprise had savings with the Icelandic banks before Boris came to power.
What I want to know is who will take over from the hypocrites who are so desperate to see Boris (and by extension London) fail when Boris is still here three years down the line 😉
So now Boris IS London. Hail Boris!
Boris controlled transport, and made no preparations when the weather was predicted. And when he was asked what preparations he had made, he threw his jelly on the fire as he did over the David Ross affair.
(“La La La I can’t hear you..La la la”)
Boris also continued to blow Londoners’ money on Iceland when others had smelt the coffee.
It is a waste of time asking Boris questions. He doesn’t feel obliged to answer them. But as the Supreme Ruler and physical embodiment of London, why should he?
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I’m a bit disturbed that you seem to hate Boris and yet think that “Boris IS London” 😉 Isn’t “being London” part of Ken’s remit? 😀
Simple matter is that if you’re praying for London to burn just so Boris can resign and you can have your Ken back then how can voters in London take you and your Rush Limbaugh-esque ranting seriously?
How about you put the spin and the party one-liners down and answer that question?
Boris made the same level of preparations that any other Mayor would have done. You still haven’t admitted that the conditions were the worst for the best part of 20 years. Do you realise how much money it would have cost to be properly prepared? The amount of snowploughs that would be needed, the amount of grit to be shipped in and the length of preparation that would have taken to plan all of this? It would have taken months and a large (not to mention indefensible if you’re planning this in the middle of September) amount of money to prepare such a response to extreme snow.
You’re moaning about money wasted on Icelandic savings yet you’re hysterically crying out for the next mayor to have a fleet of snow ploughs and half the earth’s supply of grit prepped and ready in case theres a few more inches of snow than normal! One eye’ed? Yup! Contradicting yourself? You bet! Biased? Definitely! Looking for something, anything to poke the Mayor with? Of course!
The bottom line is that he could have been out there spreading the grit himself from 9pm the previous evening all the way through to 10am that morning but it wouldn’t have made a damn bit of difference. Get over it. The snow was extreme, it created ice that was extreme and if you really want to put buses out there to slide around and kill people (probably so you can post a screaming headline on your blog saying “BORIS MURDERS PEOPLE”) then I have to ask once again: how can voters in London take you seriously? 😀
Also, again, to be fair, many other local authorities continued to blow money on Iceland. Haven’t you read any of the reports? Oh, no, obviously it wasn’t the previous administrations fault for getting London into Iceland and it wasn’t the fault of the financial institutions to advise local authorities and charities to invest (and continue to advise that even when as you said the coffee was being prepped and presented) but it was Boris’s fault because he just happened to be in power when the whole thing went titsup. You’re so one eye’ed you’d give Cyclops out of the X-Men a run for his money!
But when you equate people who disagree with you with people who think that “Boris IS London” then what is the point? I bow to you, o’mighty blogger and the mountains and seas ALL cede alleigance to your mighty web 2.0 powers regardless of the obvious issues of bias, integrity and dubious sources! 😀
You can’t read your own posts now?
“What I want to know is who will take over from the hypocrites who are so desperate to see Boris (and by extension London) fail when Boris is still here three years down the line”
In other words, Boris IS London.
Clearly, your adulation has got the better of you.
‘Fleets of snowploughs’?
A few hundredweight of grit outside bus garages would have been a start, but we’ll never know what Bojo would have done if he had a brain, because he won’t tell. That fact is, he can’t handle the job. 20 years ago the buses ran fine in London, what was the problem this time? Wrong kind of Mayor.
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You may be saying that “Boris IS London” but certainly didn’t. What I did say was that the only way that Boris is going to fail is if something happens to London. He is Mayor of London you know 😉 Like I said, if you’re that desperate to see Boris fall then how can Londonders take you seriously?
And guess what? “A few hundredweight” of grit was spread outside of bus garages, and the main roads and across London but lets not let the facts get in the way of your ranting, raving and blatant self promotion at the end of your posts, eh mate? 😀
The bottom line is that if you lay down grit, then snow, then grit, then snow and then grit and then more snow then the grit won’t make a blind bit of difference. Any guy experienced in this will tell you that.
Gritting isn’t the answer to everything. For snowfall that heavy you need snowploughs and teams of guys shovelling snow. You’re seriously suggesting that London keeps a fleet of snowploughs and teams of men with snowshovels prepped every winter? Shouldn’t Ken have done that if he was so fantastic a Mayor?
Get over yourself mate. Stop whinging and ranting and actually start putting some solutions forward! Until then you’re good to whinge some more for our entertainment! 😀
You don’t know what you said. aparently. Si I’ll remind you.
“What I want to know is who will take over from the hypocrites who are so desperate to see Boris (and by extension London) fail”
If Boris fails, by extension, London fails.
L’Etat c’est Boris!
Where is your evidence that bus garages were gritted? All reports from the time, and video footage, showed otherwise. And if garages were prepared, why didn’t Bojo mention it when asked to list any preparations he had made? Instead of storning out like a big fat baby?
In London, you don’t need snowploughs, as the famous snows of 20 years ago showed, when the buses ran.
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