vote Boris

[eloise0]

Boris has made london a much cleaner place, he cares about London, and doesn't waste money on stupid projects.
He's got my vote.

I agree with OhDo, I don't think the bikes should have been a priority in such tough times, or the buses. I think it is done for spin purposes - the bikes help "save the planet" and the "polar bear". Some voters like that sort of stuff and the media absolutely loves it as the 1% cheer on from their ivory towers (with posters of polar bears on their walls).

The bikes thing was originally mooted by Livingstone actually.

And I don't share your idea that having the scheme is wasting money. It's now a very highly used mode of transport & it would obviously appear to take pressure off other public transport as well as easing car congestion. I don't use it by the way so I have no vested interest.

From Wikipedia;

"(it) is potentially the only Transport for London (TfL) system to fully fund its annual cost of operation , a goal originally estimated to take two to three years. The scheme is sponsored by Barclays bank, which is contributing £25 million (18% of the scheme's initial cost) over five years to the project's funding"

'The bikes thing was originally mooted by Livingstone actually.'

That comes as absolutely no surprise at all.

What exactly is the problem with them Claig if they self-fund?

If they self-fund, there is no problem. I don't know a lot about them, but how long did they take to self-fund?

'Yet, one of Boris?s first acts as Mayor was to slash funding for the London Cycling Network, the only real attempt at a large-scale pan-London network for cyclists, and also the road safety budget. Then came news of Boris?s taxi expenses ? a whopping £4698 for short hops across London during his first year alone. Why was he not making these journeys by bike?'

If they self-fund, why slash funding, particularly as we have supposedly passed the "tipping point" and were told that we had only "50 days left to save the planet"?

www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2137808/Boris-Johnson-courted-lost-growing-cycling-lobby.html

It doesn't say that it is' self-funding, but will* be. Helpful links provided already but perhaps you won't look at the Graun, Claig. Conversely, I won't look at the DM . I suppose timing depends on expansion, but original idea was 'within 2-3' years which is not long.

meh, my asterisks went awry

It doesnt matter who mooted them. They were introduced whilst we were being told our country was on its knees. Whilst physios, OTs, specialist children's nurses etc were being deleted to save money.

They certainly were not self funding when they were introduced. They only serve a tiny part of London's population. There are none in Walthamstow, Edmonton, Tottenham for example.

Nor will there be.

I am not good at maths but if 25 million is only 18 percent of the entire cost, they are costing me a hell of a lot of money.

Bikes are nice. Being able to rent a bike is very nice.

It is not essential and how many times have we been told by this government that we must be prepared to put up with services being pared to the bone?

How much respite could be paid for with the Bike Money?

I doubt it's ever as simple as 'this money could have been spent on that' however much we'd like it to be, so I'm not really sure how valid the argument is, although please don't take that as criticism. It's not at all. I don't disagree that respite care is more important in itself than bike hire. But I don't think the Mayor's office is responsible for NHS spending in any form, is it?

'Back in July 2010, however, he had launched a cycle hire scheme. Boris Bikes have undoubtedly proved themselves to be fun. Yet not only have there been long-term technical issues, but, according to City Hall?s own figures, only one per cent of Londoners uses them.'

I provide links for my quotes Claig . Let me guess, was that in the Mail by any chance?

One per cent use them, but they generate lots of publicity and they "save the planet" and mayoral candidates spend lots of time talking about them. I think OhDo is right, they are not that important, there are far more important things that politicians should spend their time on (and yes I have heard that we had only 50 days left to save the planet) such as crime and the issues that OhDo mentioned.

Yes it was the Mail article, and it is all in favour of the cycling scheme and Boris Bikes and I haven't read it all, but possibly also believes that they contribute to "saving the planet".

bob I know that things are not that simple and I dont for one moment think that the services would still be here if the bikes were not.

The bikes in themelves are not a bad thing, nor is all this manic street cleaning and flower planting, building refurbishment and prettification of my borough pre Olympics.

BUT it strikes me as fiddling whilst Rome burns (fairly apt if you live in North/East London) to introduce this stuff when services are being decimated.

Not just a bit, not just trimming off the nice extras like Holiday Clubs and Day trips - but stopping all respite, cutting social workers for disabled children, specialist nurses and wheelchair services.

It brings home just how distant Boris and his lot are from the realities of life for so many of his constituents.

Rubbing salt in the wound IYSWIM.

It reminds me of when my DD was sick. The parents of children on treatment for cancer were informed that transport would no longer be available, that we would have to get public transport to hospital (I wont go into the difficulties of transporting a vomiting child with no immune system on the tube).

At the same time the hospital aquired a huge sculpture, a pebble. Beautiful as it was, and knowing that the money for it came from a totally different budget - it didnt take away the sense of injustice.

Bike schemes and new buses are for the good times. Not for when people are struggling to survive IMO.

If people want to 'save the planet' they can bloomin' well walk. That's what I do, but then 'saving the planet' wasn't on my list of bike-benefits. Managing to turn everything into a raging froth about that & polar bears is something the DM & its readers appear to enjoy anyway.

Just want to point out that I dont read the DM. The very idea

(and I dont get the polar bear thing at all.)

OhDoAdmitMrsDeVere, I can't disagree with you .

'Managing to turn everything into a raging froth about that & polar bears is something the DM & its readers appear to enjoy anyway.'

The DM article is all in favour of the cycling schemes. I'm agreeing with OhDo with her views about polar bears and more important things to spend money on. I'm saying that there may be spin involved in it, in catastrophic climate change and in decreasing numbers of polar bears and that the spin may be diverting attention and even money from issues that are far more important to the 99%, but which are not of as much interest to the 1%.

Boris bikes where a good idea to reduce the population of London, get all the people who've not been on one since they were kids and know nothing of road safety to kill themselves.

Seeing as Boris likes riding thru red lights, it's hardly surprising he came up with that idea along with those stupid fake routemasters.

Ken sorted out the transport perfectly fine he started the program of replacing the bus stock and Oyster cards and no matter what you think of the bendy bus any easy to obtain mass produced piece of transport is infinitely better then wasting millions of pounds on an ugly pointless vanity project that amounts to nothing more then a Millennium Dome of the road.

So disappointed that the village idiot has been voted back, I've lost all faith in humanity, as a resident of London I'm clearly surrounded by idiots.

'Ken sorted out the transport perfectly fine..'

I doubt you'll find a bus driver or cab driver to agree with you on that one.

It was better then it was under him, I don't think bus drivers have anything to moan at the mayor about, I know a bus driver and a contracted bus engineer and all their gripes are with the companies.

The companies may well hate the Oyster card (except on the more empty routes) and they may have not wanted to update the fleet in order to keep there contracted routes but hard luck, it's all better for the customer (Oysters better for the drivers as they didn't get robbed on the no cash routes so that was a plus for them too).

Traffic was terrible under Ken - it was gridlocked.

Some lights were on green for as little as 10 seconds.

Black cab fares rose 8 times under Ken making them totally unaffordable for the average londoner which, in turn, increased the number of illegal mini cabs.

Black cabs have all ways been unaffordable for the average Londoner, in my 33 years of being on this god forsaken rock I've never met anyone who's used one since my mother was forced too when my sister fell in the round pond in 1976.

EMA is a non-issue, it was a blatant bribe by Labour. It doesn't exist in any other country, and it hasn't existed for most of the history of this country. Children shouldn't feel like they are entitled to be paid to go to school, it's ridiculous.