Labour's u-turn on Boris Bikes

Next year sees an important expansion of Boris Bikes in the capital. Docking Stations for them will appear across Wandsworth, and in my borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. There will also be more of them in Lambeth and in Kensington and Chelsea.

My borough has already had an early start with some Boris Bikes available near Westfield in Shepherd's Bush. But next year they will become a familiar site on the streets across Hammersmith and Fulham. From May there will 60-70 docking stations in our borough each with spaces for a minimum of 25 bicycles.

This is fantastic news for cyclists - who will find it easier to get around, save money, and keep fit. But it is also good news for everyone else. It means less pollution and an easing of traffic congestion and crowding on the buses and tubes.

This is a transport scheme that will be available 24/7 for residents and other people within our borough. It is also an affordable way to travel with annual membership costing just 12p a day. That is important when people are considering whether to take a low paid job, given the cost of commuting.

Boris hopes to have more cable cars crossing the Thames

They have only just opened, but the cable car rides across the River Thames, between the O2 in Greenwich and the Royal Docks, are already proving a great success. The construction carries 2,500 passengers an hour - equivalent to the numbers using the Blackwall Tunnel. Most of the cost has been raised in sponsorship of £36 million from Emirates Airline. At this month's Mayor's Question Time at the London Assembly there have already been calls for more crossings.

Kit Malthouse says:

"It is a very pleasant and in fact social way to travel and it strikes me there are other parts of the city that could benefit, not just from a river crossing but from some kind of cable car connection, whether you can take it down the A2 to Bromley Town Centre or indeed, extend the network across and into Canary Wharf. I was struck by, as you say, once you are at the top, the geography of London laid out before you and there is a possibility of extending the network in the future."

Roger Evans said:   

"Could I add my voice to that of Kit Malthouse and ask if you will consider extending the cable car in future, not least to my own constituency in Havering where it would make a very fine way of travelling to view the Rainham Nature Reserve when people want to go and watch a bit of wildlife."

Why is Boris spending £8 million of our money to promote ugly buildings?

When you read that architects are "award winning" it is a pretty reliable sign that their output will be hideous and show more regard for winning an award than for the plight of the poor suckers expected to live and work in the monstrosities they have created. So it is depressing that the Mayor of London Boris Johnson announces that he is spending £8 million of our money on a scheme that will surely result in new homes in the capital being uglier than they would otherwise have been.

The ploy is to give modernist architects control of the design for self build homes, and projects under the community right to build initiative. There could be all sorts of good ways to encourage these schemes. The worst possible option, and the one chosen, is a subsidy for those who opt for ugly design.

The press release says:

The Mayor, who has already introduced a design guide for new homes as part of his London Plan, has enlisted the help of leading London architects and designers who have offered to help successful
applicants refine their ideas into projects which will improve the capital’s neighbourhoods and make them better places to live, work and invest in.

Ben Derbyshire, managing director of awarding winning architects HTA; Peter Murray, architect and chairman of New London Architecture; David Birkbeck, chief executive Design for Homes and Tamsie Thomson, director at the Royal Institute of British Architects, are all lending their expertise to the initiative, helping successful bidders to bring their ideas to fruition through specialist design review sessions.

Boris: Government "not moving fast enough" on strike ballots minimum threshold

A key objective for Boris Johnson's second term as Mayor of London must be breaking the stranghold of the union militants over the tube network in London.

At a recent Mayor's Question Time session with the London Assembly he indicated his impatience at the delay of the Government to bring in a reform that would help:

Tony Arbour (AM): In the light of Londoners’ recent endorsement of your policies, will you redouble your efforts to persuade the Government to introduce legislation to ensure that a strike ballot requires 50% + 1 of eligible voters to support it in order for any subsequent strike to be valid?

Boris Johnson (Mayor of London):  Yes, Tony, I will continue to press this case. I have to say that it is not something that the Government, I think, is moving fast enough on, but it is a powerful case.

Tony Arbour (AM):  Do you not think that your hand has been very considerably strengthened by your victory when this was clearly one of the issues in London, that when you go to Ministers, particularly the Conservative Members of the Coalition, you will be able to say to them that you speak with the support of more than 1 million voters in London, who do expect Conservatives to keep their promises?

Boris announces new team

The Evening Standard reports on the new team chosen by the Mayor of London Boris Johnson.

It says:

Kit Malthouse, who ran previously ran policing for the Mayor, will help implement the campaign pledge to create 200,000 jobs. The heavy-hitter, who has a professional background in finance, will get to work regenerating struggling parts of the capital. The other key appointment is Stephen Greenhalgh  as deputy mayor for policing. He will run the Office for Crime and Policing during the Olympics and the financially tricky months which will follow, when pressure will be on to cut police numbers.

Eddie Lister continues as the chief-of-staff and deputy mayor for planning, while two other first-term veterans — Munira Mirza and Richard Blakeway — will have beefed-up roles covering education and culture, and housing. It brings to seven the number of deputies assisting Mr Johnson, including one at transport and a new statutory deputy following the ousting of Tory Richard Barnes in last week’s Assembly elections.

London still has a Labour majority. How can this change?

Nobody who spent more than an hour or two canvassing for Boris Johnson can have failed to spot those who still regard themselves as Labour supporters.  London still has more people who regard themselves as Labour supporters rather than Conservatives, despite the win for Boris.

But at least the "Labour for Boris" section of the London electorate have shown they are willing to vote Conservative under certain circumstances. Even a small lead for the Conservatives in London at the next election would make a useful contribution to the handful of extra seats needed for an overall majority in the House of Commons. I suspect that in seats such as mine (which will be Hammersmith and Acton under the new boundaries) it would be a Conservative gain if the votes for Boris and Livingstone were replicated at the General Election. The ward breakdown of the Mayor of London vote will make interesting reading.

Increasing the number of ethnic minority votes is important. Lord Ashcroft's report gives a few useful tips. "Putting people in boxes in the name of diversity," is resented. Also language can be misinterpreted. Attacks on "multiculturalism" by David Cameron and others has been taken to mean support for racial segregation. Of course it means the opposite, that there should be integration. Conservatives have the right policy but the wrong language. The attack should be on "racial separatism."

There will be a policeman at every Tower Hamlets polling station tomorrow

Democracy in Tower Hamlets is not only under attack through widespread electoral fraud but also intimidation. So it is a relief to see that police officers will be on duty outside every Polling Station in Tower Hamlets during the election for Mayor of London tomorrow.

Of course the fraud will only be stopped when those running the Council's Electoral Services Department have the will to stop it. That means carrying on systematic checks. At the moment where large numbers are registered from the same address it is shrugged off as overcrowding. Sometimes it is. But when the media have carried out spot checks they have found frequently it isn't. For instance when City AM knocked on a door in Bute House in Shoreditch where seven postal votes were cast in a recent byelection they found that only two adults lived there.

Will the votes in Tower Hamlets be enough to clinch it for Ken Livingstone? In 2008 there was a majority for Livingstone of 20,000 compared with 6,000 in 2004 - this was during a period, of course, where in London generally there was a big swing against him. Among the total votes cast across London there was a majority for Boris Johnson last time of 140,000, after including second preferences. It was a lead of 6% over Livingstone. Given that there has also been evidence of voter fraud in Newham as well as Barking and Dagenham a Livingstone victory by a margin of around 1% would probably equate to the election having been stolen.

The case for Boris

The election for Mayor of London will soon be over. Some Londoners have found it an unedifying campaign. It has certainly been robust. While Conservatives have been proud of their candidate B

oris Johnson, many in the Labour Party have felt excruciating embarrassment at their choice of Ken Livingstone. Our capital has a sophisticated electorate. There may not be a natural Conservative majority but there is a vitality, an independence, a spirit of aspiration, innovation, optimism, and good humour which has prompted many not born in the city to live here.

When the eyes of the world are on London on July 27th, as the Olympics opens, who will be our Mayor? Who would be the best advertisement for a city that celebrates wealth and success? Who would radiate warmth, unity and good cheer? Who would show we were looking to the future rather than the past?

Thinking back to four years ago, I remember even Conservative supporters on the doorstep being doubtful as to Boris's seriousness. Would he be lazy? What had he ever run before? Would he be up to the job? Labour suggested he would be a joke - but also ran a smear campaign suggesting he was a racist who would ban the Koran.

New poll gives Boris a 12% lead, biggest of campaign

By Tim Montgomerie
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With just two full days until polling day Populus have released their poll on the London Mayoral election and are saying that Boris Johnson is on course for a big win.

In a poll for The Times, Populus put Boris Johnson 46% to 34% ahead of Ken Livingstone in the first round and and 54% to 44% in the second round. In other words the Mayor has a 12% lead in both rounds in his bid for what would be a spectacular re-election.

I say "spectacular" because the Conservatives are 11% behind Labour across London in the same poll, by 44% to 33%. Boris Johnson is out-performing his party by a massive margin. By the same token, of course, Ken Livingstone is badly under-performing his party.

A total of one-in-six Labour voters tell Populus that they'll be voting for Boris.

If Populus is accurate the Liberal Democrat Brian Paddick is set to come a humiliating fourth in the first round with just 5% of the vote. Green Jenny Jones could finish third, with 6% of support.

A poll earlier today gave Boris a much more modest 4% advantage.

Boris got another boost this evening with a front page endorsement from the London Evening Standard. The Standard hasn't been as partial as four years ago but you can read the endorsement here.

Boris lead increases to 4% on YouGov

A new YouGov poll for the Evening Standard shows an increased lead for Boris Johnson over Ken Livingstone of 4% in the Mayor of London election - 52% to 48% after second preferences are included. That is up from a 2% lead for Boris by YouGov a week ago. But, as Tony Travers says, if the latest poll is accurate it is still "too close to call." Especially give the advantage to Livingstone over multiple voting in east London - you can hardly blame the pollsters for not being able to account for that.

In the first preferences round the Lib Dem candidate Brian Paddick is on 6%, independent Siobhan Benita and UKIp's Lawrence Webb are on 4% each and the Green Party's Jenny Jones is on 3%.

So far as the 25-strong London Assembly is concerned the poll shows the Conservatives going down to eight with UKIP gaining two, Labour gaining four and the Green Party losing one.

Incidentally the Survation poll last week that was supposedly showing a 8% Boris lead turned out to be a 10% Boris lead. There was another Survation poll, reported in the Mail on Sunday yesterday which apparently shows a Boris lead of 24% - 62% to 38%. But I have not been able to find confirmation of that.