mayor

now to my shame i have to admit that i have not paid as much attention to london politics as i should have done.
i have to admit that if i was asked "what has the mayor of london (with the last "on" in red - which i think means london is switched on and is a vibrant go getting kinda place - which we needed to be told, oh yes we did!) done". i would be hard pressed to come up with much.
the congestion charge. good idea and seemingly well executed.
more pedestrain areas - love the one at trafalgar square.
helped win the olympics (not a favourite move of mine and apparently it is already facing overruns of £3 billion pound..)
fought and lost a battle against pfi on the tube system.
lots more street things taking place.
an assembley building that screams political transparency (all the rage - we can see what they are doing, well we are supposed to believe that is the case..) but is shaped like a cockhead. why no one noticed this at the planning stages is beyond me and it does undercut the "serious nature" of the building.
other than that i couldn't name many other things.

ken livingstone has been fairly quiet, especially when you compare him to his firbrand youth when he was fighting mags. perhaps this quietness means that he has been successful in doing lots of unflashy things that make this fine city run better.

still the two things in his favour are: he is not a tory and he is not stephen "shagger" norris.
norris it appears is prepared to move aside as the tory candidate (he has lost twice already) for the mayor's job. he is ready to "fall on his sword" so that david cameron can present a more "with it" candidate. cameron and the tories are going to let londoners (by this i assume they mean london tory members) choose the next candidate, the choice coming from a list of tories who have said they would be interested and people the tory party have head hunted for the role, which means that no matter who people vote for it will go to one of the hunted.

as long as it is not norris i am a happy person. stephen norris fills me with the same sort of ire and bile as does digby jones. the other night i had to listen to him on the radio extolling the virtues of private railroads saying how service targets had been hit - all the while not mentioning the facts that the achieving of these targets had become so much easier. but anita anand and guests seemed to like mr norris so he got an easy time of it.
here's hoping he never runs for mayor again.