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OK it's been 8years. Forget his style. What has he achieved in his time.
His highs and lows?
Did he introduce the proles to wiff waff?
He's effectively closed the Embankment to vehicle traffic.
Made dodgy blonde hair and a big mouth a political advantage - I'm looking at you America.
Made sure everyone knows who he is in time to become PM...
City Hire Bikes?
He's not Ken Livingstone?
Livingstone set the hire bikes up. They merely arrived in time for boris to put his name on.
Boris did scrap bendy buses and replace them with Boris buses.
There's a theme here isn't there?
He got to see a lot of free sport at the olympics?
He has a great record for overturning local borough councils planning permission refusals, approving 17 out of the 17 developments that he has called in. Most were refused for things like not providing enough affordable housing or being grossly over scaled, fortunately the poor multinational development companies can appeal to Boris when the nasty democratically elected borough council aren't letting them make enough profit.
Otherwise, he has finally managed a couple of fairly decent bike lanes, and his buses, while expensive, are probably marginally better than the old ones. Oh, and he's done a good job of taking credit for projects that weren't his, like the hire bikes and the Olympics.
Embankment- good or bad thing?
Doubled homelessness. Paid developers to take over public land to build luxury flats, gave a contract for an unwanted bridge to pals after a crooked selection process, championed buses that didn't work, the list is endless
But hey, he has a funny hairstyle and a good selection of one liners.
Closed down a multitude of London fire stations (against all advice / voting) resulting in fire deaths due to hugely increased response times. Even had the cheek to say closing them would "improve our terrorism response capability" - he's a complete moron, a dangerous one at that.
[quote=bikebouy said]He's effectively closed the Embankment to vehicle traffic.
Sounds like a good thing to me 🙂
And re: Boris Bikes, Ken unveiled plans for the scheme in early 2008, BoJo became major a couple of months later with the scheme opening over 2 years after that. So the scheme was hardly all sorted on a plate with contracts/sponsorship lined up. So all Ken did was make a press announcement 😉
There are much better routes for bikes than the Embankment, could have closed down the Strand and then Fleet St through and past the Walkie Talkie..
But if you live/use that area, you'd know that.
Did he introduce the proles to wiff waff?
The Riff Raff ?.... playing Wiff Waff?
His late entrance to try and **** up AFC Wimbledon's plans for a return to their home at Plough Lane was pretty special, even by his standards.
He was an exceptional Piñata.
He does seem pretty pro-cycling. Beyond that, I guess you'd have to live in London to know one way or the other.
His opportunistic stand in the EU question means I have written him out of the book of life regardless.
He's a bloody liability.
He wasn't the mayor or MP for anywhere else for 8 years, which is a result of sorts
Boris Bikes. Livingstone got the ball rolling, Boris finished it and then expanded the scheme. Cycle superhighway is excellent my daughter commutes daily using it (much safer than road aside from numerous agressive cyclists)
Buses, as above got rid of dangerous and congestion causing bendy busses and brought in modern double deckers
London continues to thrive (degree of out performance vs rest of country is becoming a problem however)
No terrorist attacks
DrJ London has a huge amount of council housing, sadly a very large amount of it is occupied by retired people with lifetime assurance of tenancy (certainly was around us in central London) - there isn't the land or money to build new council flats and the Labour controlled boroughs are selling them off faster than ever anyway
more interesting than most of the dullards.
Oh yes, forgot - pissed away money on illegal water cannons.
Boris prevented terrorist attacks #jambaplanet
I especially liked the bit where he saved the other monsters from a big scary dog by kissing it repeatedly. Good work.
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Nice one Perchy! 
Taken shameless, opportunistic self-promotion to a previously unknown level.
Helped advance the cause of part time workers, by example
The new cycle routes are an improvement but not universaly loved, seems to be a few issues around the E&C area according to LFGSS and other sites, water cannons were a massive waste of money and just headline grabbing, +1 on "Taken shameless, opportunistic self-promotion to a previously unknown level."
However he gets a plus if he's tried try "to **** up AFC Wimbledon's plans for a" move to Plough Lane
Cycle superhighway is excelle
Scrapping Ken's segregated highways plan in favour of painting some dangerous bits of road barclays blue is terrible, after so many deaths even he is now saying segregated is better.
He also handed Barclay's the biggest advertising coup ever seen in London, still failing to make Borris bikes cost neutral and they all struggle greatly to keep up with demand.
He's courted property speculation by dubious investors at every opportunity, overturned many local planning decisions,
Homelessness has definitely rissen, tho, that's a nationwide phenomenon.
He scrapped the hybrid bendy buses, which was good and bad as they struggled on some parts of London's streets but they were much more effective at moving more people quickly than double Decker's
He replaced them with his vanity buses that look great but cost millions and are now diesel only as the batteries have failed and there was no warranty in the contract.
He ballsed up TfL negotiations, handing tube drivers chunky pay rises even Bob Crowe wasnt expecting.
has been closing down air pollution monitoring stations and overseen a huge fall in air quality with 10000 deaths a year in the city attributed to bad air, 6000 of those due to the ride in NO2 levels.
He rolled back the congestion zone in Kensington and Chelsea and scrapped Ken's plan for a 25 quid a day c-charge for supper polluting big engines.
Basically being mayor of London was a brilliant career move for keeping him in the news but he had famously done little actual work and left it all to his deputies until a photo op was required.
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London continues to thrive (degree of out performance vs rest of country is becoming a problem however)
I didn't realise we called the investment of Russian crime "thriving".
No terrorist attacks
Super-Boris has no influence whatsoever in this. The reason there hasn't been a terrorist attack in London is due to the work of the intelligence services and the fact that there aren't as many people willing to blow themselves up in the UK as the Daily Mail would have you think.
jambalaya - MemberNo terrorist attacks
I know we had low expectations of him, but giving him credit for not making terrorist attacks is a bit much
I'm going to put it in my annual review though. What have you achieved this year? Well there were no terrorist attacks in my office.
Boris Bikes. Livingstone got the ball rolling, Boris finished it and then expanded the scheme. Cycle superhighway is excellent my daughter commutes daily using it (much safer than road aside from numerous agressive cyclists)Buses, as above got rid of dangerous and congestion causing bendy busses and brought in modern double deckers
London continues to thrive (degree of out performance vs rest of country is becoming a problem however)
No terrorist attacks
DrJ London has a huge amount of council housing, sadly a very large amount of it is occupied by retired people with lifetime assurance of tenancy (certainly was around us in central London) - there isn't the land or money to build new council flats and the Labour controlled boroughs are selling them off faster than ever anyway
How did I know who wrote that before even checking the username?
How did I know who wrote that before even checking the username?
I'm guessing the key-words "terrorist" and "...Labour..." [slur] will have helped.
Not got caught snorting coke off a hookers arse?
Wasn't Lee Rigby's murder a terrorist attack? Another Jambafail.
No terrorist attacks
Lee Rigby....
edit: Doh! Beaten to it!
There are much better routes for bikes than the Embankment, could have closed down the Strand and then Fleet St through and past the Walkie Talkie..
But if you live/use that area, you'd know that.
Except that would have meant closing Bank junction, and affecting the new pedestrian area at Aldgate.
The Embankment route is ideal for me.
But if you live where I live & work in Tower Hill, you'd know that.
He replaced them with his vanity buses that look great but cost millions and are now diesel only as the batteries have failed and there was no warranty in the contract.
I'm fairly sure the batteries are being replaced, under warranty, with an improved model. But that's just what I've read in the paper, so who knows what the real story is.
gave away the olympic stadium to a couple of smut pedalers then tried to cover up what a bad deal he'd got for the public???
There's been much talk of Boris' legacy' over the last few weeks/months, and it seems to boil down to his ability to use the media to create a myth which shrouds reality, and fools deluded people into thinking he's actually done something. The reality is, that he has in fact caused an awful lot of damage, and left London in a far worse state than when he came into office. Anything 'good' he appears to have achieved was actually planned/executed by others, such as the hire bike scheme (which was proposed and researched by a team led by Jenny Jones). He closed several fire stations to save £30 million, then announced a new 'garden bridge' that will cost, wait for it... £30 million.
Nero fiddling while Rome burns. That's the truth of Boris' 'legacy'.
He has a great record for overturning local borough councils planning permission refusals, approving 17 out of the 17 developments that he has called in.
This is a bit of an exaggeration - there are 32 boroughs in London so this represents calling in less than 1 application in each of the boroughs in his whole term in office - and that's on tens of thousands of planning applications.
I can't find any figures but my perception is that the previous mayor was far more inclined to use his powers on local planning applications when he was in office.
that he has in fact caused an awful lot of damage
Other than the fire service, have you got some specific examples?
My impression is that Boris has appointed deputies and trusted them to get on with it - then taken the credit when things have gone well.
I'd score him 3/5.
Livingstone would be luck to get 2/5.
Removed The ridiculous and ill thought out congestion charge extension introduced by Ken. Introduced contactless payment on public transport. Dragged the underground in to the 21st century.
The current works to convert Farringdon Road into a cycle superhighway are quite impressive. Major route through the city will soon be fully segregated for bikes, removing two lanes of motorised traffic in the process.
Funny how he's turned Ken's blue bikes into his own red ones.
Funny how he's turned Ken's blue bikes into his own red ones.
If only he'd managed to find a sponsor with a predominantly blue label it might have been running at a profit...
😛
"Other than the fire service, have you got some specific examples?"
Massive increase in homelessness.
Massive increase in public transport fares.
Massive increase in housing crisis (and total failure to meet house building targets).
Increased pollution levels.
Lying about not closing Tube ticket offices.
Causing transport disruption by refusing to listen to transport workers.
Failure to deliver 'no-cost' cycle hire scheme.
Total failure to deal with youth/gang violence.
Failure to deliver improved police service.
Millions wasted on vanity projects such as that stupid cable car, the Thames Estuary airport, and now the 'Garden Bridge'.
Failure to deliver a suitable replacement for the Routemaster bus (it was quite ironic recently when there was an issue with the new buses, and several Routemasters had to be drafted in to try to deal with the crisis).
Many more local failures such as £4.5 million lost in Crystal Palace 'development'.
Total failure to address poverty in London. More homeless families with children than ever before.
Just for starters. There's countless more examples, but life's too short.
Fire deaths have halved.
Actually, this could turn into a Python-esque 'How has Boris failed' type thing;
'Apart from a, b, c.... x,y,z; how has he failed?' 😆
The biggest construction project in Europe, Cross Rail, being delivered on time on budget.
Ah, Crossrail. Because there hasn't been a single issue that's affected Londoners during it's planning and construction. 😆
Without going into all that; you can't count Crossrail as one of Boris' 'achievements', because he's had nothing to do with it, really. It was conceived, planned and approved way before he became mayor.
Somehow getting people to post achievements for which he's not really responsible on the internet.
Paid all his taxes?
More than can be said for Ken...
Fire deaths have halved.
Where would one be able to review these numbers? I am sure you're as honest as the day is long, but citation is needed.
Paid all his taxes?
Yes he did. Eventually.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-30932891
Asked whether he would pay the demand, Mr Johnson said then: "No is the answer. I think it's absolutely outrageous. Why should I?
Out of that list above:
[b]Massive increase in homelessness[/b] - is largely down to migration. More than 3,500 a week are moving to London and there's simply no way of housing them. Additionally a significant proportion of the rough sleepers and those with alcohol problems have come from abroad - large numbers have had their return trips home paid for by London taxpayers only to return a few months later. It's quite a noticeable problem in many parks and public spaces now and there's very little any Mayor can do until legislation changes.
[b]Massive increase in public transport fares.[/b] Not sure on this - one of the changes is that part time workers no longer get stung by season ticket restrictions. Much of the TfL budget goes on staff and with endless industrial action leading to above inflationary pay rises it's not a massive surprise that the travelling public have to pay more. The fare rises have also funded long term infrastructure projects like Crossrail and Crossrail 2 - by contrast the Labour Candidate for the Mayor election has a plan to slash long term capital investment to freeze fares. Don't pay now / don't get the service later - great for political expediency but just storing up problems down the line.
[b]Massive increase in housing crisis (and total failure to meet house building targets).[/b] See above. Around 6,000 affordable housing units are built in London each year. We'd need to build that every 3 weeks just to keep up with current migration. Unfortunately young people aren't interested in working in construction and many of the older more experienced trades left the industry in the recession. So even if we wanted to build 2,000 homes a week the supply chain for it no longer exists. The size of the problem can also be seen in the plans by the 15 largest social housing developers - between them they have committed to 93,000 new homes in the whole of the South East over a ten year period. Again, that doesn't even mop up the new demand in London in a 6 month period.
[b]Increased pollution levels. [/b]Which is down to NOX and the EU deciding that everyone should be driving in diesel cars despite the manufacturers completely gaming the Euro 4/5/6 standards. Additionally the EU has sought to accelerate the shift away from Petrol engines to reduce C02. So should the mayor (of any party) be accountable for what turns out to have been very poor policy / science?
[b]Lying about not closing Tube ticket offices.[/b] Most of the offices have now closed. The sky hasn't fallen in yet and the doom laden predictions of the unions don't seem to have manifested. See previous complaint on cost of travel going up.
[b]Causing transport disruption by refusing to listen to transport workers[/b]. See above. Workers want (a lot) more pay, strike to get it and fares have to go up. It's all linked. Either the public support TfL or the striking workers - but can't support the latter and then complain when fares go up.
[b]Failure to deliver 'no-cost' cycle hire scheme. [/b]It costs an enormous amount to run as-is. Why shouldn't the people who use it contribute to the cost?
etc etc.
Most of these things are linked and treating them as a separate complaints is very easy but ignores the interplay of policy and limitations to the powers the Mayor really holds.
j5m - did nobody tell Boris about this when he said
"It's scandalous that in 21st century London people have to resort to sleeping on the streets".
or
"always [be] a manned ticket office at every station."
or
"promised to negotiate a "no strike deal" with the Tube unions to ensure that no strike action ever took place again on the London Underground."
or
fares would "go down in an honest and sustainable way”
or
"I would certainly not allow the congestion charge to go up above £8".
or
"We will broker a deal with a private company to bring thousands of bikes to the capital at no cost to the taxpayer."
or
"Making our streets and homes safer with 1,000 more police on the beat".
or
"£445 back in your pocket by freezing the Mayoral share of council tax".
etc etc etc
http://www.london-fire.gov.uk/news/LatestNewsReleases_fire-deaths-cut-in-half-says-london-fire-brigade.asp
Damned good work on the part of LFB, being so efficient that fewer fires actually start! Must be that Minority Report technology they installed.
Just5minutes; it would take me significantly more than just 5 minutes to be able to counter every point you've tried to make there, but I do appreciate you making the effort. But the bottom line is, it's the mayor's job to address all these issues, which Boris has failed to do.
Ninfan; those are figures for the 5 years previous to the closure of fire stations. Do you have any more recent figures?
Where would one be able to review these numbers? I am sure you're as honest as the day is long, but citation is needed.
[url= http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-32940187 ]Voila[/url]
His most significant achievement, and it's pretty ****ing spectacular, is persuading significant numbers of the population that he is a credible politician, a viable leader of both the conservative party and the country and anything other than a self serving, evil ****.
[quote=clodhopper said]
Ninfan; those are figures for the 5 years previous to the closure of fire stations. Do you have any more recent figures?
LFB said the figures were the first to be released since the closure of 10 fire stations and the removal of 14 fire engines in January 2014.
So the last set of numbers were after station closures.
DrJ - there's obviously an easy solution to the homelessness problem then so what is it?
Your inputs for London are as follows:
* 3,500 people are arriving every week (possibly double that based on the rate at which NI numbers are issued) and expect accommodation. All of these people expect to be housed.
* You can pay people to leave london and return to their home country but they will probably come back in a matter of weeks and a proportion of these also have the sort of alcohol / substance misuse problems that makes it very difficult for them to be housed in communities.
* 100,000+ families in London are already living in temporary accommodation.
* Nearly all of the B&Bs and short lease properties are full - to the point councils are now having to rent "luxury" properties in order to discharge their powers. Councils are also "broke" trying to fund properties for people who've turned up in London and know the councils have a statutory duty to house them.
* Any major developments of land take 5-10 years prior to construction starting because of the need for consultations and endless judicial reviews.
* The supply chain for construction has no excess capacity - the skills aren't there to build any faster - and at the moment there's a shortage of cranes and scaffolding as well.
* Any new construction has to be funded at a time when the surplus is still rising.
Please can you tell us how you would solve the problem?
Personally I'd scrap the office of the Mayor and save the money - the office simply doesn't have the powers or budget needed to solve the problem.
He's really good at tackling children.
DrJ - there's obviously an easy solution to the homelessness problem then so what is it?
j5m - I'm guessing that in your work there is a really hard problem that everyone knows has no easy solution. I'm guessing that you did not go to your boss and say "I promise to solve that problem". That's why you are not Boris Johnson.
That, and the hair.
Agreed. All of the people standing for Mayor this time round are also claiming they can fix the problem when it's quite obvious it's not fixable as things currently stand. But I suppose the electorate don't want to hear that.
They are therefore all as bad as Boris, albeit slightly less so on hairstyles.
His main achievement is getting people frothing at the mouth cause he's not who they wanted. it's a punishment for living in London and believing that you have the right to tell the rest of us its a great place. Him and Ken set the example of why London is a great place and stinks of piss.
Free Yorkshire (it better be cheap).
Damned good work on the part of LFB, being so efficient that fewer fires actually start!
I agree
Wonder if you can guess who opposed the shift changes?
Free Yorkshire
Is this a request, or the cost? 😀
He's done nothing of note other than continue to keep himself in the public eye. I assume this is what he set out to do so he can judge his two terms as a great success.
Still it could be worse, imagine if you were getting rid of him as mayor only to be stuck with him as your local MP. 😥
and fools deluded people into thinking he's actually done something.
That's a bit harsh, I'm sure jambala isn't a fool....
He's done nothing of note
Some would argue that thats a huge success given the tales of disaster that were foretold before he was elected
London was supposed to look like the aftermath scenes from Threads by now
I'm an LFB firefighter and i can assure you of one thing, you won't find many supporters of Boris from within the rank and file of the LFB, and that's not because we're all left wingers either (although i am happy to say i am), whilst it's true that the trend for fire deaths has thankfully been on the down for a few years there has absolutely 100% been deaths that have occurred since the closure of the fire stations last year that can be directly linked to increased response times following the closures, and i think you'll find that those figures are from before the closures. Also the LFB used to release figures based on yearly trends, after the closures they started to release them on 5 yearly trends, you know to help smooth out any increases. I wouldn't trust any figures released by our management any way, they are always manipulating how the deaths are recorded, our management are without conscience and up to their nuts in Boris' guts.
"[b]after the closures they started to release them on 5 yearly trends, you know to help smooth out any increases[/b]. I wouldn't trust any figures released by our management any way, they are always manipulating how the deaths are recorded, our management are without conscience and up to their nuts in Boris' guts."
The source data for fires seems to be readily available and also contains a count of monthly incidents not trends - it's updated every six months so another update should be available very soon:
The OP might be right though - maybe we can't trust the data.
Oh and that's bollox about the shift changes as well, what actually happened was that as soon as they changed the shifts they increased the monthly targets and threatened disciplinary action against any watch managers that failed to meet them, so we met them then they publicly claimed it was because of the shift changes.
I'm not pretending that we have less fires or that overall less people have died, that's true but it's not because of shift changes and it certainly isn't because of Boris, if those stations had remained open even less people would have died.
I must admit I have had very little time for the complaints of the London Fire Brigade ever since some of their members were caught obstructing reserve fire engines responding to call outs during their last strike.
Removed The ridiculous and ill thought out congestion charge extension introduced by Ken.
Why was it ridiculous?
Why was it ridiculous?
The extension was ridiculous, hurt alot of local high st and benefited the high rollers who were resident in the zone and therefore got an 80% discount whereas they were paying full price before.
And sent traffic levels aback to pre charge levels with an extra 30,000 cars a day using the area, it was axed because it was an inconvenience to his chums in the Royal Borough , it cost TfL 55 million in lost revenue (not counting the 2 quid hike for the rest of the zone to help cover it)
http://www.london-fire.gov.uk/news/LatestNewsReleases_fire-deaths-cut-in-half-says-london-fire-brigade.asp
What do the figures say the % drop was over 10 years? Fire deaths have been steadily decreasing for years due to many factors but to use a spike in the figures to make the point is dodgy.
My Brigade did the same when downgrading Fire Engines. Said in the last 5 years fires have gone from x to y, when if you looked at the figures either side of the one they picked you'd find they pretty much went from y to y.
Largely as mefty & kimbers have already said above. The extension covered a largely residential area with a couple of very busy destination shopping streets in it. The shops, restaurants etc took a massive hit while the wealthy residents, many of whom drive to work in the city of London were handed a huge discount. In addition, the discount enabled the huge number of residents in the extended zone to start driving in to the original zone area again! I lived in the extended zone at the time, benefitted enormously from it, and still voted for it's removal.Why was it ridiculous?
I must admit I have had very little time for the complaints of the London Fire Brigade ever since some of their members were caught obstructing reserve fire engines responding to call outs during their last strike.
I'd genuinely like to know about that as i haven't heard anything about it, is this the most recent national pension dispute? I know that those allegations were made during the 2010/11 shift dispute (apparently by Brian Coleman i believe), were investigated by the police who found no case to answer, however 1 agency driver and 1 senior officer were arrested for using vehicles as weapons against picketers.
Largely as mefty & kimbers have already said above. The extension covered a largely residential area with a couple of very busy destination shopping streets in it. The shops, restaurants etc took a massive hit while the wealthy residents, many of whom drive to work in the city of London were handed a huge discount. In addition, the discount enabled the huge number of residents in the extended zone to start driving in to the original zone area again! I lived in the extended zone at the time, benefitted enormously from it, and still voted for it's removal.
That rings a bell now. Apologies if the question sounded obtuse; genuinely interested. Purely from a layman point of view the idea of removing traffic from roads inside London sounds like a good idea, but then I've not lived in London since 2001.
(I also can't believe it's been that long!)