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News from a few days ago, don't know if we have done it.
The water cannons bought and refurbished at a cost to London's taxpayers of £320, 000 having never received a licence to be used have just been scrapped for £11,000. Apparently £1000 was spent on new radios and CD players?
I can just imagine a trigger happy, blood thirsty Boris staring through the cannon sights, blasting EU Remainer protesters along the street, as Ride of the Valkyries blares from the cockpit.
What would Alan Sugar say about that terrific piece of business?
That's 300k we can't give to the NHS
What about next week's £300k though?
They were bought in the aftermath of the London riots, where they would have made a difference. Remember the Met were hopelessly lost tactically, having not anticipated mobile phones, and were barely clinging on with officers working 30 hour shifts.
Theresa May's refusal to license them may have been more of a political decision and a desire to embarrass Borris.
London may well come to regret selling them. Riots seem to be periodic, we're due the next round in 2021.
I was gutted to hear this, could have had one for the price of my ebike. Imagine the fun.
They were bought in the aftermath of the London riots, where they would have made a difference.
How do you know that?
Riots seem to be periodic, we’re due the next round in 2021.
Ah, I see, as you were, Nostradamus walks amongst us.
They were bought in the aftermath of the London riots, where they would have made a difference.
The met police official report disagrees with you on this.
"However it [water cannon[ is unlikely to have been an appropriate and practical option owing to the speed and agility of the disorder"
Useful for large groups who, by the nature of the protest, are targeting specific locations eg government building, an embassy and so on.
Not so much against the form of disorder in the riots where one shopping centre is as good as another.
don't see how you can say theyd have helped in London riots -were small gangs of roving youths (at least by us in Ealing) not sure that water cannon could've got to them quickly enough
Was just the usual silly 'big idea' from Johnson, file along with garden bridge, Scotland to Ireland bridge, Dover to Calais bridge & floating airport....
Museum of London looking at buying some of the scrap tho 🙂
Spending the £300k on youth outreach or reversing the youth centre closures, would've been a far better use of the money, but that's not what he's about.
Water cannons, Garden bridges, and those useless new routemaster buses that cost 212.7 million for the first 600 (354,500 pounds per bus).
There are many reasons to bash Boris but Tresseme signed off on these - she was Home Sec at the time
What bearings in your suspension to survive cleaning with a water cannon?
I would love to have a play with one of these. Great to be the cannon operator but to be honest I quite fancy being cannoned too! I've been tear gassed, smacked about with a baton and brought down by a police dog (all training) so being water cannoned would complete the set (and maybe plastic bullets and tasered too but I think I'd give those a miss).
It'll be a disaster if they get scrapped unused- he's still never been shot with one as promised.
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There are many reasons to bash Boris but Tresseme signed off on these – she was Home Sec at the time
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Don’t think she did, she refused permission to use them. Normally if I buy something expensive I check I can actually use it, not a difficult concept
354,500 pounds per bus
Is that a lot for a fully kitted out double decker bus? Seems a fair amount, but is it compared to the alternatives? I don't suppose there's that much supply available for double decker buses.
London may well come to regret selling them. Riots seem to be periodic, we’re due the next round in 2021.
If somehow BoJo or Rees-Mogg end up as PM as a result of the Brexit deal being rejected I think there will be riots sooner than that, I might even be there protesting (peacefully obviously...) myself
In the list of vanity projects that Boris Johnson has spaffed public money on, this barely warrants a footnote.
He's a complete self-serving ****!!
He should refund the money out of his own pocket IMO.
Is there anyone who actually supports LyingBloHard?
Theres a section of society - comfortably off, senile old Daily Mail reading racists in the South East, who think he's marvellous. Dementia being the only reason you couldn't see through his tired, self-serving shtick, I suppose.
Guess who's going to be deciding who the next PM is. Unbelievably Boris is back to being front-runner with the bookies
I'd have liked to get my hands on one for that price. Could've made a decent camper van, they look like a nice boxy shape to work with it.
Much as I hate Boris, 350 grand for a really nice big quiet bus that will be used 16 hours a day for a decade seems pretty reasonable
They would got more for them on ebay, plenty of collectors and entrepreneurs about
ONly allowed to sell them to police forces in europe and the like. Part of the deal to stop them being sold to nasty folk
The buses are outrageously expensive as they are a bespoke design just for london. A modern hybrid double decker of the shelf is under £200 000 - and the off the shelf ones have more seats!
I blame Theresa May...... for everything.
Much as I hate Boris, 350 grand for a really nice big quiet bus that will be used 16 hours a day for a decade seems pretty reasonable
Wasn't the issue that they broke, so the quiet part was not working and they were just ... well ... buses?
Part of the deal to stop them being sold to nasty folk
As if our nice government would sell stuff to nasty folk !!
On the buses - the reason for the custom built bus was a constantly open rear platform for hop on hop off in traffi9c - this requires a conductor. this feature is not being used on 99% of the routes.
Just a huge vanity project wasting millions for no extra utility according to the indy link I put in above.
What link?
The one I thought I'd posted! either I am stupid or the forum didn't take the link!
I don't know why we couldn't sell them to a country that has a need. A few years ago I saw all the UK's old green goddesses lined up in a compound at the Lagos State Secretariat in Ikeja. So that's where they ended up!
I blame Theresa May…… for everything.
Maybe not in this case.
The home secretary, Theresa May, has rejected an attempt by Boris Johnsonto deploy water cannon on the streets of London and refused to authorise their use by any police force in England and Wales.
May heaped further humiliation on the London mayor by telling him that the three 25-year-old German water cannon, which he authorised to be bought last year by the Metropolitan police, have no fewer than 67 faults that need to be dealt with before they can be used.
Johnson insisted, however, that the £218,205 spent on buying and refurbishing the three water cannon from the German federal police would not be wasted and that a licence for their use “would be procured” from the home secretary in the event of serious disorder in London.
Johnson was said to be disappointed by May’s decision but insisted the police would continue to train on the machines.
He told MPs he had been right to give the Met approval to buy the cannon last year because the deal had saved £2.3m compared with the cost of ordering them new. The move to purchase them had been backed by the prime minister and 68% of Londoners, according to one poll.
Johnson said later: “We can’t use them at the moment. That is correct. We haven’t been given a general licence for their use. We will keep these devices in reserve and should there be another occasion when they might be a useful tool of crowd control, the Metropolitan police commissioner can make another application.”
The Met police said it was “naturally disappointed” by May’s refusal to allow forces to use water cannon.
May told MPs that her decision followed exhaustive medical and scientific tests that led her to conclude that the German cannon had the potential to cause serious injuries including spinal fractures, there were doubts over their usefulness in fast-moving riots and they were likely to damage the British tradition of policing by consent.
“Where the medical and scientific evidence suggests those powers could cause serious harm, where the operational case is not clear, and where the historic principle of policing by consent could be placed at risk, I will not give my agreement,” said May. “The application for the authorisation of the Wasserwerfer 9000 water cannon does not meet that high threshold.”
Presumably that means he would literally wait until riots started and would then try to bully/blackmail the Home Secretary of the time to immediately permit their use. What a total shower
<div class="bbp-reply-author">mogrim
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Is that a lot for a fully kitted out double decker bus? Seems a fair amount, but is it compared to the alternatives?
Yes, especially considering they're not very good buses. Direct comparison, Lothian Buses bought 8 Volvo B5s for 2 million- so add in bulk discounts for London's order of 600...And it carries more people, is smaller, has better emissions and lower fuel consumption, and higher uptime, and is just generally nicer to be on- largely just because it's a really well proven well tested model at the end of a series of really well proven well tested models, rather than a scratch-built white elephant with little prior art because nobody else had ever ordered something so stupid.
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