Sadiq Khan. Can anyone tell me something positive about what he has done?

[Luckymum20]

So the past few days I've unfortunately gone down a bit of a rabbit hole of clips about the Mayor of London.

From what I have seen the man is an utter buffoon who has done nothing to improve London, in fact quite the opposite.

Strikes increasing. Homelessness increasing. Crime - off the charts. Congestion zone charges etc.

And don't get me started on the deputy who seems to be from another planet!

I am not from London, so just wondering if anyone at all has anything positive at all to say about this catastrophe of man!

Strange. I remember a bunch of (admittedly mostly non-Londoner) people whining at great length about how ULEZ expansion would effectively ban their old vehicles from entering greater London and that it would be a disaster for local businesses. A number of ULEZ cameras were cut down or otherwise damaged.

If, as you're claiming, those old polluting engines were gone well before the ULEZ was expanded, why all the complaints?

@Everythingwillbeokeventually44

He condemns any normal British person who has genuine concerns about the current state of the country. Everyone has a right to protest and express their concerns about things that are important to them and one group should not be singled out. People are raising very valid concerns and just get called racist of fascist and it's disgraceful.

Can you provide a specific example(s) of Khan "condemning any normal British person" - as well as define what a "normal" British person actually is?

"People are raising very valid concerns" - such as? I believe other posters have asked you to outline these concerns, can you?

"just get called racist or fascist". If an individual uses racist language or fascist terminology they are likely to be racist and/or fascist. To avoid doubt, all an individual has to do is articulate their "valid" concerns without using racist or fascist language. Simple really.

The incumbent Mayor of London is not responsible for the UK and is not obliged to respond to random "normal" British people outside London, who struggle to define what their "concerns" about the state of the country are (let alone why they believe the Mayor of a city should fix them). The Mayor is answerable to his/her voters in London. If the "normal" person is a London voter, they have a number of ways to raise their concerns directly with the Mayor's office.

Are you as het up about what Andy Burnham is doing in Manchester, another large city? Or Richard Parker in Birmingham? Or Steve Rotherham in Liverpool? Or is it just the London Mayor?

Well yes, that’s what the ULEZ did, stopped people driving them in certain zones unless they paid, had a scrappage scheme to upgrade vehicles and generally disincentivised driving in certain areas and separately promoted and made safer non polluting alternatives - better bus options, walking and cycling routes. Some areas are still over polluted.

it’s not just cleaner cars but there’s pollution from brakes and tyre wear so an overall reduction in cars is needed too.

and CO2 emissions from cars have reduced. Given he faced backlash from Starmer, being taken to court by several London boroughs and people destroying cameras and so on it’s been a huge win. The people least likely to drive (London’s poorest) were most affected by pollution and many of the biggest improvements to air quality were in the most deprived areas. It’s a really marked improvement. If they’d continued just as it was it would have got worse as the pace of swapping habits and switching to cleaner cars wouldn’t have been as fast. There’s definitely lives saved by this policy. It was very comprehensive and not at all easy to push through.

www.london.gov.uk/programmes-strategies/environment-and-climate-change/pollution-and-air-quality

Talk to me about the garden bridge. Oh, and crime statistics.

Don’t forget the highly successful flagship Routemaster buses that cost £280m that Boris loved so much. He was a big fan of a vanity project - they were twice the cost of a normal double decker and having to be phased out.

Yes garden bridge was a mistake. But Boris did many good things. Crime did actually fall under Boris.

I work in London. Over the last 20 years it has become more pleasant and a better run place overall. Transport works well, crime is relatively low by big European city standards. There is an issue with phone theft which has got worse over the last five/six years. The major challenges are the very high cost of housing and the COL in London. Mayor Khan has for me been okay, I would give him six out of ten alongside Johnson. It is clear though that he suffers some viscous racist attacks, which is why he is singled out.

London has improved??? Crime is low???

You have to be joking. That self-satisfied lazy one, all pomp over substance?

Violent crime in London is falling, yes.

And water cannons

Yeah right

That would be the Boris who gave £100,000-odd of taxpayers money to the American woman he was shagging would it? Or the one who bought (again, with our money) completely useless water cannon?

It is right, yes.

https://www.london.gov.uk/violent-crime-leading-injury-falling-every-london-borough

Yes. HTH.

Even Mexican citizens have been advised not to travel to the UK.
This is blatantly untrue.
1: The Mexican government don't actually issue their own travel advisories at all (for any country), the rely on travel advisories from other N American countries like the USA and Canada.
2: Neither the USA or Canada have a 'do not travel' advisory regarding travel to the UK, either currently or in the recent past (post COVID)
3: The travel advisory for the USA is level 2 "Exercise increased caution, specifically "Exercise increased caution

in the United Kingdom due to terrorism"
Which basically puts the UK in the same group a Spain, Germany, Sweden, Greenland and France. And has been a standard sort of travel advisory for the UK, on and off since the 70s

I haven't checked Canada's advisories, but doubt they're more extreme than the USA's

It’s not you. So many of them now. I imagine mostly bots.
However sometimes I have a funny dream of separating part of the island and putting them all right-wing people, with Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage, and Tony Whatshisname in charge, with not a single immigrant/ POC in their cities, and let them live in their perfect, great land protected by high walls. Ah, dreams.

That's complete BS. As someone who lives and works in London, we all know crime is on the rise.

So the stats are just made up, are they? It must be frustrating when reality doesn’t conform to your prejudices.

And I also live and work in London.

Ha! Yes please. And they can stick as many flags on lamp posts (at half mast obviously!) as they like there

Citation needed.

This statement requires evidence. Hitchens' Razor and all that.

Why, if you really and truly think about it, would crime figures be falling?

Think about it for a moment. Why, in an ever expanding city, would crime fall?

there’s only one reason. People don’t report it. There isn’t an active police force.