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Post by Deleted on Aug 7, 2014 19:31:55 GMT
All I'm going to say is... He was elected for two terms for a reason. IMO, the New Routemaster. Nothing more nothing less. All because passengers want the freedom to hop on and off between stops, but the rear door makes it only part time. But it also helped Leeds to trial out the New Routemaster all thanks to First Group's alternative NGT proposal. No don't hyjack it to another NRM thread... Edit: On the Letterman show, Boris admits that he only do two Mayoral terms. www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZdY-qJRMG0I agree there should be term limits. Sorry I am a bit confused, what are you saying here?
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Post by jrussa on Aug 7, 2014 19:46:07 GMT
All I'm going to say is... He was elected for two terms for a reason. Yes the two terms are self evident but the reasons really are not. He only won by 62,000 votes in 2012 against Ken Livingstone who endured a nasty and vicious media campaign and whose campaign was somewhat lacklustre and lacking in direction. If Boris had won by a much larger margin then there'd be no argument but he only just got in on second preference votes. I can clearly remember watching the telly to see the result and there was a palpable sense that he had actually *lost* because the count had taken so long to do and verify. As in much of British politics I think the London Mayoralty can really only be won by a candidate for two terms in a row. Your track record and mistakes will find you out by the end of 8 years - Ken tried to push it and lost in 2008 and lost again in 2012. Even ignoring the wider political ambitions I think Boris has concluded that he would struggle to win again in 2016. There is far too much emerging criticism of his policies and the local council elections this year don't bode well for the Tory vote come 2016. In fact the Tory control of London borough councils has declined right through Boris's time as Mayor so you can question what positive impact he's had on the Tory vote. I agree with your post.. The main reason for Ken losing in 2008 was due to Gordon Brown and the 10p tax rate. Like what you said, Boris only won merely on the 2nd preferences and the bad time the press was giving Ken. Ken has done a tremendous amount for London and I do not see any other Mayor being any more innovative and life-changing for many years to come...
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Post by Deleted on Aug 7, 2014 20:53:32 GMT
At least Boris ordered 600 NBFLs before the end of his second term. You never know, he might order some more in 2016, just before his term ends. I'm so hoping that happens, but I don't know how likely or unlikely that is.
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Post by snoggle on Aug 7, 2014 21:21:25 GMT
At least Boris ordered 600 NBFLs before the end of his second term. You never know, he might order some more in 2016, just before his term ends. I'm so hoping that happens, but I don't know how likely or unlikely that is. If you really think ordering buses is the most critical job for a Mayor I think you need to do some research on the Mayor's responsibilities. I don't know for certain but I doubt a Mayor can tie the hands of his successor by landing them with a massive financial bill for a policy they are unlikely to follow. I believe there is a process for the Government whereby the main Opposition MPs (likely to be Ministers if their party won) are informed by civil servants as to what is going on in terms of government decisions so they are suitably briefed in the event they need to take over. I believe the process runs for a few months before a likely election. With fixed term parliaments now we know when the General Election will be thus easing this process. We always know when a Mayoral Election should be (barring some unforeseen event) so again there should be a time whereby the incumbent cannot lumber any successor with ridiculous commitments. Massive schemes like Crossrail or the underground upgrades will always straddle Mayoral elections so there's no way to stop those projects. General election contact briefing note
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Post by vjaska on Aug 8, 2014 1:50:50 GMT
Yes the two terms are self evident but the reasons really are not. He only won by 62,000 votes in 2012 against Ken Livingstone who endured a nasty and vicious media campaign and whose campaign was somewhat lacklustre and lacking in direction. If Boris had won by a much larger margin then there'd be no argument but he only just got in on second preference votes. I can clearly remember watching the telly to see the result and there was a palpable sense that he had actually *lost* because the count had taken so long to do and verify. As in much of British politics I think the London Mayoralty can really only be won by a candidate for two terms in a row. Your track record and mistakes will find you out by the end of 8 years - Ken tried to push it and lost in 2008 and lost again in 2012. Even ignoring the wider political ambitions I think Boris has concluded that he would struggle to win again in 2016. There is far too much emerging criticism of his policies and the local council elections this year don't bode well for the Tory vote come 2016. In fact the Tory control of London borough councils has declined right through Boris's time as Mayor so you can question what positive impact he's had on the Tory vote. I agree with your post.. The main reason for Ken losing in 2008 was due to Gordon Brown and the 10p tax rate. Like what you said, Boris only won merely on the 2nd preferences and the bad time the press was giving Ken. Ken has done a tremendous amount for London and I do not see any other Mayor being any more innovative and life-changing for many years to come... I think there is more to it than that: The reason Ken never got back in was because his 7% fare cut would never of been able to be achieved given the financial state at that time. He also seemed to be just like other politicians in that nothing really set him apart whereas Boris had appeal to both the working classes & upper class people with his personality & unusually interesting character for a politician
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Post by Deleted on Aug 8, 2014 6:43:44 GMT
IMO, the New Routemaster. Nothing more nothing less. All because passengers want the freedom to hop on and off between stops, but the rear door makes it only part time. But it also helped Leeds to trial out the New Routemaster all thanks to First Group's alternative NGT proposal. No don't hyjack it to another NRM thread... Edit: On the Letterman show, Boris admits that he only do two Mayoral terms. www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZdY-qJRMG0I agree there should be term limits. Sorry I am a bit confused, what are you saying here? I don't get it either.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 12, 2014 8:08:57 GMT
Boris is a terrible Mayor, he has wasted millions of pounds if taxpayers money, it's ok for people like SafwaanF1, they get to see a funny looking bus, and they think that's what the Mayors job is, but money was wasted on the NB4L, Cable Car, and lives risked with the fire station closures
rant over
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Post by Deleted on Aug 12, 2014 21:18:32 GMT
Boris is a terrible Mayor, he has wasted millions of pounds if taxpayers money, it's ok for people like SafwaanF1, they get to see a funny looking bus, and they think that's what the Mayors job is, but money was wasted on the NB4L, Cable Car, and lives risked with the fire station closures rant over Calm down man, I meant it in more of a relaxed way. It's not as if everything he's done has been terrible. Look at Barclays Cycle Hire. That was a success. Btw, the NBFL looks great, not funny. That's something I'm going to stick by.
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Post by twobellstogo on Aug 12, 2014 21:52:24 GMT
Boris is a terrible Mayor, he has wasted millions of pounds if taxpayers money, it's ok for people like SafwaanF1, they get to see a funny looking bus, and they think that's what the Mayors job is, but money was wasted on the NB4L, Cable Car, and lives risked with the fire station closures rant over Calm down man, I meant it in more of a relaxed way. It's not as if everything he's done has been terrible. Look at Barclays Cycle Hire. That was a success. Btw, the NBFL looks great, not funny. That's something I'm going to stick by. Unfortunately, Johnson fans, the cycle hire scheme (which I think is wonderful) was proposed by Ken Livingstone in his very final days as mayor : Johnson then ran with the idea.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 12, 2014 22:13:03 GMT
Calm down man, I meant it in more of a relaxed way. It's not as if everything he's done has been terrible. Look at Barclays Cycle Hire. That was a success. Btw, the NBFL looks great, not funny. That's something I'm going to stick by. Unfortunately, Johnson fans, the cycle hire scheme (which I think is wonderful) was proposed by Ken Livingstone in his very final days as mayor : Johnson then ran with the idea. ... *Looks and feels like an idiot* Thanks for that.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 13, 2014 7:23:39 GMT
Boris is a terrible Mayor, he has wasted millions of pounds if taxpayers money, it's ok for people like SafwaanF1, they get to see a funny looking bus, and they think that's what the Mayors job is, but money was wasted on the NB4L, Cable Car, and lives risked with the fire station closures rant over Calm down man, I meant it in more of a relaxed way. It's not as if everything he's done has been terrible. Look at Barclays Cycle Hire. That was a success. Btw, the NBFL looks great, not funny. That's something I'm going to stick by. Emirates Air Line, Barclays Cycle Hire, the reason sponsership has to be used on these services is because they know that it won't be successful and could have financial difficulties. NB4L looks awful
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Post by vjaska on Aug 13, 2014 12:03:21 GMT
Like I said before, I thought Boris has done ok, no way near brilliant but ok. However, if Ken got back in, he'd of probably fallen flat on his face with his ludicrous 7% fare cut that was unachievable.
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Post by snoggle on Aug 13, 2014 12:21:37 GMT
Calm down man, I meant it in more of a relaxed way. It's not as if everything he's done has been terrible. Look at Barclays Cycle Hire. That was a success. Btw, the NBFL looks great, not funny. That's something I'm going to stick by. Emirates Air Line, Barclays Cycle Hire, the reason sponsership has to be used on these services is because they know that it won't be successful and could have financial difficulties. NB4L looks awful Hang on a second. Sponsorship was proposed and sought because the Mayor thought the schemes *would* be so successful that they could be built and run with *no* public money. The problem is that he was wrong and that public funding has been necessary for both schemes. I've tried to find the revenue and cost info for the Cable Car and Cycle Hire schemes. Unfortunately TfL provide revenue numbers but not costs. The cable car revenue was £3m below budget last year (£5m as opposed to £8m). Someone posted on Twitter that the Cable Car apparently does cover its running costs so it's not a total loss but I'd sell it off because it's a tourist attraction not public transport. I understand every trip made on the cycle hire scheme involves a subsidy of over £1 per trip which is obscene. The bus subsidy is 15p per pass jny and even in the wild days of Ken's spending was never more than 25p. Therefore the cycle hire scheme is hopelessly uneconomic and we have the further issue of Barclays never having contributed what it promised despite massive and widespread advertising coverage on the TfL website, on the cycles themselves and on the cycle docks. Personally I'd shut the cycle hire scheme as it's pouring good money after bad even though I agree with the idea of such a scheme. I just don't see how you can ever make it work on a reasonably sound financial basis - people expect it to be free or very cheap whereas it is actually very expensive to run. When Boris increased the charges the numbers of people paying a subscription fell sharply as did occasional users. Despite the scheme covering a much bigger geographic area the usage went down in 2013. This year looks a bit more bouyant because of the warmer winter and nice weather in recent weeks. There are obviously lots of ways of defining success but if you look at the harder issues like financial performance, volume of use then it gets hard to see where Mayor Johnson's "schemes" have delivered genuine benefit. To make a real difference with transport requires a load of hard graft and understanding of the detail and I just don't think Boris works like that.
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Post by sid on Sept 1, 2014 18:09:37 GMT
I think Boris has done ok, but it seems his crazy 'Boris Island' idea has finally been discarded.
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Post by vjaska on Sept 1, 2014 18:59:33 GMT
I think Boris has done ok, but it seems his crazy 'Boris Island' idea has finally been discarded. Some would say it's not as crazy as either adding a third runway at Heathrow or closing Heathrow Airport altogether. Personally, I think its one of the more sensible ideas out there regarding the need to expand London airport capacity.
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