BORIS WINS - WE’RE BACK!!
By Alexander | May 3, 2008
Can I start by thanking all those who voted for me on Thursday and the large number of people who helped achieve the incredible result for London.
We’ve done a huge amount of work and it’s all been worth while. Boris will be a credit to London and the Conservative Party - a Mayor who will represent all of London and not just those whom he thinks might support him at the next election.
 I got 45,000 votes in North East (8,000 more then Labour did in 2004) , whilst Boris got 57,000 - that’s a huge result in an area that is by no means our strongest in London. Our supporters poured out on the day to ensure that the man who they wanted to win beat Livingstone.
The Guardian reading, chattering classes will be up in arms about this win. Nothing makes me happier. We’re back. A warning to Labour - be afraid, be very afraid.
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Vote Now
By Alexander | April 30, 2008
After all the months of work we’re only a few minutes away from 1 May. The polls open at 7am and close at 10pm. Voting today will make a really positive difference to the way that London is run for the next four years - it’s time to end the lies and corruption.
 Vote Conservative. Vote Boris!!
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Seen at last…..
By Alexander | April 19, 2008
I’ve been wondering what the Labour party have been up to, much to my surprise we’ve hardly seen anything of them. I’m sure that they’re been on the phones and knocking on some doors, but when it comes to leaflets and general activity there appears to be a remarkable lack of presence.
However, they were finally sighted today - they had a stall on Broadway Market, or at least they did until the Markets Officer made them move.
I am reliably informed that the Labour councillors were not happy, but I hope that they don’t take it out of him in any way, after all it’s not just him, hardly anyone in Hackney knows who their Labour councillors - they never do any work so how could they.
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The 1980s are back!
By Alexander | April 16, 2008
Can I start by thanking the Better Archway Forum for organising tonight’s hustings in Archway - well attended and well organised.
 I had a really enjoyable evening. It’s always entertaining to be reminded of what it must have been like to fight the long won battles of the 1980s with the Left. It’s been a long time since I have heard Comrade used so many times - Citizen Smith and Arthur Scargill would have been proud. Most of the discussion was quite rightly centred on local issues, although was I surprised that no-one brought up the issue of the enviroment or crime - they were mentioned as side issues, but there were no direct questions about what anyone has planned for tackling climate change or making our streets safer.
The best bit was the reaction to a question about the RMT and Boris’ suggestion that they should enter a no strike agreement if they agreed to be bound by the ruling of an independent tribunal which would fix terms and conditions. Labour, LibDem, Green and Left List were all united in saying that the RMT should be allowed to continue to hold London to ransom whenever they want - remember the strike over kettles a few years back?
 Also I suspect that Evening Standard sales in Archway may have slipped - they really weren’t happy about the coverage Livingstone has received and seem to have forgotten that a year or two ago he was more than happy to take the Standard’s money whilst writing a weekly restaurant column for them.
 I wish more moderate voters could have seen the meeting, although to be fair to those there only about half were from the extreme left, it would make elections a damn sight easier for us to win.
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How stupid are these people………?
By Alexander | April 2, 2008
I came across a voter tonight who was thinking about voting BNP, I’ve never seen anyone look so shocked when I quoted a few of the following nuggets. I almost felt sorry for her, almost I hasten to add. They really are loathsome people, totally beyond redemption and if you read this I really to ask that you forward the attached link (again courtesy of the Evening Standard) to all your friends in an attempt to encourage them to vote. I’d rather lose than get one of these morons elected via the top up list because of a low turn out.
VOTE - it really can make a difference.
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Latest poll results
By Alexander | March 23, 2008
It’s a few days late I know, but the latest poll results (17 March) are encouraging reading. Boris has apparently extended his lead over Livingstone and it would appear that there’s all to play for. The results were Boris 49%, Livingstone 37% and Paddick on 12% - please read the attached link to the evening Standard for the full article.
You know it must be getting bad when Gordon Brown has to come out and support Livingstone - everyone knows that they can’t stand each other and Livingstone must really be losing it if he thinks that rolling out Brown will actually do him some good. It would be difficult to decide which one is currently the most unpopular, six of one and half a dozen of the other!
On a final note I’ve never been asked for Tory leaflets on Stoke Newington Church Street before, things really must be changing!
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Livingstone and the Greens
By Alexander | March 23, 2008
It’s interesting to see Livingstone and the Greens cuddling up. Livingstone must reallly be worried if he thinks that he needs to do deals with them, but then there is a track record when it comes to this pact.
Most people have forgotten that when the Labour Party lost two seats on the Assembly in 2004, Livingstone had to buy off the Greens by promising them some enquiry into a bridge across the Thames if I remember correctly, so it’s not really a surprise in that respect.
However, I am genuinely surprised that the Greens are so keen to be associated with Livingstone - when you consider his intemporate comments to a Jewish reporter, and his praise of an Islamic extremist who believes that homosexuals should be stoned and that it’s acceptable for women to be beaten - I would have thought that they would have wanted to stear well clear.
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BORIS JOHNSON: THE COST OF LIVINGSTONE
By Alexander | March 10, 2008
It is time for a Mayor who puts the needs of Londoners first
Conservative Candidate for Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, today set out to Londoners the cost of Mayor Livingstone. Â In his speech, Boris Johnson said:Â
The moment I really thought that the current Mayor of London was out of touch with life in this city - the moment I decided he’d lost the plot - was when he last week offered an explanation for why his senior adviser on race and policing was using council accommodation.
It was because he was on “a fairly low income†at the time he qualified for a council home.
That turned out to mean £40,000 a year; double the income of half of Londoners.
What on earth could he mean by “fairly low�
Ah - it turned out that it was “fairly low†in comparison to Mr Jasper’s salary for the last four years, which has been close to £120,000 per year, while he has been using council accommodation that might have been given to one of the hundreds of thousands of poverty-stricken Londoners who are currently on the waiting list.
In his arrogance, his denial, his refusal to understand what Londoners resent about his regime, he reminds me of Marie Antoinette. So perhaps it might be a good idea if we focussed on what life is like for those who do not receive grace and favour accommodation from the Labour mayor.
Let’s imagine that you are not in the position of Mr Lee Jasper - being paid over £2000 a week and paying only £90 a week for accommodation.
If you are trying to get on the housing ladder you face not a ladder, but a sheer unscalable Everest of a £250,000 average cost.
A summit made yet more unattainable by the £7,600 slapped on top by Gordon Brown in stamp duty, compared to £1,230 when Livingstone first took office.
And if you are renting privately you are paying an average of £843 a month, while council tenants across London faced sharp increases in their rents last year of an average £18 a month.
Londoners on low incomes are coping with huge increases in the cost of essentials:
- the price of bread rose by 14 per cent
- the price of eggs by 30.3 per cent
- the price of butter by 36.2 per cent
- and the price of heating oil and other domestic fuel is up by 42.6 per cent.
And all the while council tax has been going up.
It is 20 per cent more than when the Mayor was last elected in 2004, very largely because London does not get the funding we need from Central government.
London is the motor of the British economy.
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With only 12 per cent of the population, we account for 19 per cent of GDP - and that means we make a massive net contribution to the Exchequer of £17.8 billion.
And what do we get in exchange, from this Scottish Chancellor and his Scottish Prime Minister?
I will tell you what we get. We get ripped off.
We have four of the poorest boroughs in the UK. We have appalling rates of child poverty.
We are expected to live in the second most expensive city on earth and yet this year 29 of the 32 London councils received settlements from the government that were “on the floor†- that is, below the rate of inflation.
Which in turn means that those boroughs will have less to spend, in real terms, on London’s citizens than they did last year. Â
That means cuts in everything from mental health provision to preserving our green spaces.
Londoners are getting a raw deal, and the real disgrace is that it has been left to the individual boroughs to make this point to Gordon Brown.
Where is the Labour Mayor, Mr Livingstone?
Have you heard him utter a peep of protest?
Me neither.
He is happy to offer his musings about the glories of the Bolivarian republic of Venezuela, but he does nothing to champion London’s councils or Londoners.
And instead of doing anything to tackle the cost of living, he adds daily to the cost of Livingstone.
In 2001 the average band D property owner paid £122 to the Mayor’s office while the equivalent figure is £311 to day.
The cost of a single Tube cash fare in Livingstone’s London is £4 - three times the European average.
Not content with taking £330 million from Londoners last year, for the privilege of driving through their capital.
And not content with the most draconian fining regime in the West, he is now clobbering the motorist again with a £25 charge that he himself admits is environmentally worthless and will do nothing to alleviate congestion.
And what do we get for it?
We get incompetence, mismanagement and waste.
The cost of a tube ticket may have risen by 166 per cent but signal failures and delays have risen as well.
And it is still a matter of wonderment that after five years of operation, an astonishing 65 per cent of congestion charge revenues goes to the contractors who are running it and hardly anything on improving the roads.
But then this is a man who happily wasted £34 million on the development of the West London tram.
He appears to have no grip whatever on costs at Transport for London and you know time after time Labour ministers stand up and say that I want to cut transport and police.
They know it is a lie.
But I do want that money more sensibly spent and Londoners deserve to know why at the last count there are 232 officials at TFL currently earning more than £100,000 a year, when there were at the last count only 43 on that kind of money in the Home Office and only seven in the Treasury.
And why exactly £3.5 million was paid out in bonuses to these officials when key performance targets were missed?
And why the Mayor and his chums are jetting off to Caracas and Cuba at a cost of £36,000 when the rest of us are enduring the nightmare of the Tube?
And of course he is too arrogant to tell us because he thinks he is simply untouchable, because he thinks that this City is his to govern as he likes, and that our money is his to spend as he pleases.
This is a Mayor who paid Bob Kiley £3200 per day to twiddle his thumbs or as Mr Kiley put it himself:
“If you ask me what I actually do to earn my consultancy, I’d have to tell you, in all honesty, not much.”
And there he spoke for many people currently employed by the Labour Mayor.
Â
With a record like this it is terrifying that he is one of the chief gatekeepers for the taxpayers’ contribution to the Olympics.
When you look at eight years of mismanagement of the Tube,
- the chronic strikes
- the collapse of Metronet, which he partly engineered in his ideological warfare against the contractors.
It is barefaced cheek for this serial incompetent to say that he and he alone is capable of overseeing the Crossrail project.
And that is why it is time for a new approach from the government and from the Mayoralty, to make life easier for Londoners and to widen prosperity, and to improve the quality of our lives.
This Wednesday I would like to see Alistair Darling reverse Gordon Brown’s plans to increase the tax rate for small companies.
I want to see him rethink his disastrous plan to hit the so-called non-doms which is driving so many highly skilled individuals and investors out of the capital.
The Chancellor needs to guarantee that all planned Tube improvements will go ahead, in spite of the Metronet collapse.
And the government must ensure that Network Rail and the Train Operating Companies make increasing the capacity of London’s trains their first priority.
And we need to do more to help first time buyers to get on the property ladder.
London’s level of owner occupation is the lowest in the whole country and a full ten per cent lower than that of the next lowest region, the North east.
And that is why it is time for Alistair Darling to follow the lead of the Conservative Party and raise the stamp duty threshold for first time buyers to at least £250,000.
And it is time for the government to get serious about reducing child poverty and the shameful health inequalities of this city.
After eight years of a Labour Mayor and ten years of a Labour Government a child born in Haringey is three times more likely to die at birth than a child born in Richmond.
And if you travel eight stops on the Jubilee line from Westminster to Canning Town -Â the average life expectancy of the surrounding communities declines by eight years.
And that is why I have proposed that we ring-fence spending on public health so that we end the injustice by which Kensington and Chelsea spends £21.26 per head on such programmes and Tower Hamlets only £5.87 per head.
And let me tell you what else I will do, as Mayor so that we bring an end to this era of waste and sleaze.
I will institute proper oversight of the next generation of Tube contracts so that the failures of Metronet are not repeated and we get the Tube upgrades we deserve.
And simply by reducing the rate of increase in Transport for London’s non-recruitment publicity budget:
We can double the size of the safer transport teams
We can put an extra 440 PCSOs on the rowdier bus routes.
And by beefing up the powers of the Revenue Protection Inspectors, we can put an end to the epidemic of fare evasion that is costing Londoners £47 million a year - even on the Mayor’s grossly optimistic figures.
And across the board we will be reallocating mayoral spending so as to improve the lives of Londoners.
We will spend less on the Mayor’s personal media and marketing team and use the savings to pay for four rape crisis centres across the city.
I am going to reduce TFL’s spending on management consultants and pay for free travel for injured veterans, more secure cycle parking, and more officers to crack down on illegal minicabs.
And we will introduce proper financial controls - so that we are not relying on Mayor Livingstone and Tessa Jowell to keep a lid on the Olympics.
And I will clean up the chaos of the London Development Agency by insisting on proper transparency for Mayoral advisers and proper democratic scrutiny of LDA spending.
We cannot go on like this. We are not getting value from either the Labour Government or the Labour Mayor.
Â
I will scrap the Londoner, the Mayor’s ludicrous Pyongyang-style newspaper.
I will curtail the Mayor’s embassies and other vainglorious foreign policy ventures.
And above all I will end the cosy conspiracy of silence between the Labour Mayor and the Labour Government - whereby underfunding of London’s councils seems to meet the tacit approval of City Hall.  Â
It is time to speak out for a fair deal for London.
It is time for a mayor who puts the needs of Londoners first.
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Value for money?
By Alexander | March 5, 2008
As a taxpayer and Conservative I’ve always believed that investment is the way forward, it’s the only way to ensure that services are kept up to scratch and ready for future developments. However, that doesn’t mean that you just throw money at a problem without thinking about whose money you’re spending and ensuring that you get value for that money.
No-one would deny that vast sums have seen spent on the NHS over the last ten years, it’s just a shame that we’ve seen so little for it. Disagree with me? Then please tell me why waiting lists have gone up from 41 days in 1997 to 49 days in 2008 - and whilst we’re at it would you also please explain why, when my 91 year old grandmother broke her hip, it took the local hospital 4 days to reset it - apparently she wasn’t a priority. My response to that comment was, and still is, unprintable.
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Jasper has gone!
By Alexander | March 4, 2008
It appears that Lee Jasper, Mayor Livingstone’s race advisor has finally resigned. He has blamed the “rascist” campaign waged against him for finally forcing him out. There was nothing rascist about the Evening Standard investigation into his actions and he should be roundly condemned for playing the race card when it’s completely unjustified - the BNP are rascist - using the race card in an attempt to deflect attention away from critisism is both disgraceful and disgusting.
You can read whatever you want into Jasper’s decision to resign, but I find it interesting to note that he resigned before he could defend his record in front of the Greater London Assembly members - something that he had been demanding for weeks.
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