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Boris Johnson must be in deadly earnest about his contention for the London Mayoralty as he's even given up his longstanding column in The Daily Telegraph - and this isn't a man who spurns a steady extra-parliamentary earner.
Still, no need to worry about your straitened income, Boris, because with policy proposals as feeble as your latest - a new tree for every London street - you'll soon be back at the journalistic coalface.
Boris says that: "Tree-lined streets add to the sense of community and security - they help us breathe, for God's sake. Let's have more of them and make London green again."
I barely know where to begin refuting this twaddle. But I don't want to live in a community of trees, chatting with oaks or silver birches and commiserating with them about the hooligan of a eucalyptus that's insinuated itself at the end of the block.
Besides, London is already rated - in terms of sheer herbage - as one of the greenest major cities in the world: we have parks, we have gardens, we have trees in abundance.
No, Boris's wooden "initiative" is really just a pre-emptive caber tossed at the current incumbent because the £3 million budgeted for planting the trees is to be gained by axing the Mayor's newspaper, The Londoner. Well, the wood pulp Londoner may not win any awards for fine writing but it does give Ken an opportunity to tell us what he's actually doing about the most important environmental issue affecting us flesh-andblood Londoners - transport.
Love Ken Livingstone or hate him - and I'm certainly strongly ambivalent - we have to acknowledge he has grasped the nettle of what his office can actually do. It was Ken who pushed for full control by London Underground of Tube maintenance, and foresaw the farrago that would ensue if this was carved off from service operation. The collapsed PPP that has led to a taxpayers' bailout of the Tube renovation consortium cannot be laid at his door.
We voters have loved Oyster Card and hated the bendy buses. We have watched, bemused, as the desperately needed Crossrail link has been kicked back and forth. And, of course, we all have an opinion on the Congestion Charge.
Yesterday, Boris came out a bit on the Charge and, surprise, surprise, he says he will get rid of the western extension - where the bulk of True Blues stable their Bentleys. This may be a crowd-pleaser but along with his assertion that he will be "less punitive" on drivers, it hardly seems an integrated transport policy.
This policy needs to be coherent, achievable, and to do something to improve the lives of all those whom he wants to elect him - not just the
Chelsea farmers. No amount of political grandstanding will make the London Mayoralty an admired institution; we don't care how many City nabobs get their hands shaken or whether our Mayor struts about on the world stage as our "ambassador". We know full well we live in the coolest city on earth; what we want is someone who will make it easier for us to traverse its streets without our blood boiling. Neither more treehugging nor driving will help one jot.
Reader views (2)
"Besides, London is already rated - in terms of sheer herbage - as one of the greenest major cities in the world: we have parks, we have gardens, we have trees in abundance."
Not for much longer we won't the way things are going. Come to sunny Bermondsey and see the historic plane trees planted by the first woman mayor of London to improve the environment for some of its poorest people being cut down so that expensive and oversized blocks of grim flats can go right to the edge of the street. Where we walked down a sunny tree lined street a few years ago, now we walk down canyons cast into darkness.
You may not care about living in a nice street with trees and birds but other people do even if they are in social housing.
- Thalia, London, 28/01/2008 22:48
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Having read the Will Self article I feel that the comment on getting rid of the western extension of the Congestion Charge where the bulk of the "True Blues stable their Bentleys" does not give a fair reflection of what this charge is doing to the people who live along it's boundaries. This charge has split for example Harrow Road, an area of social deprivation and has caused much misery to the occupants of the northern side needing to use the other side as they are not exempt. Likewise I am sure the people of Shepherds Bush and the surrounding areas are having the same problems.
This western extension is good for the residents within its boundaries because of the discount but as for the rest, well it just makes life harder to get around.
- Susan Jacobs, London, UK, 16/01/2008 08:26
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