"Block Boris" Says Ken's Transport for London Commissar
As panic starts to grip Ken and the London Labour Party things are getting pretty desperate. Gordon lies at PMQs regularly that Boris wants to cut police numbers - as if a Tory mayor would ever cut back on coppers. Now Ken is pulling whatever levers he can to hold on to power. London's transport commissar, Peter Hendy, has ordered his spin team to counter the popular Boris message on killer bendy-buses. Transport for London has also told taxi drivers not to issue receipts with "Back Boris" logos. Guido understands that 50,000 books of these receipts have already been snapped up by cabbies. This is a mistake by Ken, cabbies are not ones to succumb to authority. Petty diktaks like this will only get their backs up and ensure they do back Boris.
More sinister are the implicit threats to police funding hinted at if police sources don't stop telling the truth about the appalling safety record of Ken's bendy-buses. Ken clearly favours his friend Castro's policing methods, where the police follow the party line...UPDATE : In the comments there was some dispute about whether Hendy threatened police funding. Here is the quote from an email: "The statements clearly come from the Met traffic officers involved in the investigation (and are manifestly incorrect). It makes me inclined to cut support for TOCU in future budgets as clearly their support for us is limited to taking money and is one way."
TOCU is the Transport Operational Command Unit, the Met division charged with tackling road safety and bus crime. Funded by TfL, it has 1,200 police officers, community support officers and traffic wardens and is a key part of the Met's anti-crime strategy.
37 comments:
Toe the party line?
The Times has a good piece today about ASLEF throwing money, £20k of it, at Leninslime without any declaration anywhere about.
Am I thinking of the same Peter Hendy... Ken's buddy the bus conductor who scrapes by on double the Prime Minister's salary? Well there's a surprise - he doesn't want Boris to win!
By the way Guido, it's "toe" the line, not tow the line.
As Hillary Clinton is discovering to her intense discomfort, we now live in an age where lies, deceipts and shenanigans are immediately exposable.
I hope this is going to force a more open and honest approach to politics in future. It's the likes of Guido and Youtube that make the barefaced lies and blatant gobshite that some politicos spout quite naturally so self-damaging.
Red Ken is clearly not yet wise to this new reality and seems to get more and more confused and frustrated that his every machination seems only to backfire on him. Twat.
Deal honestly, say what you think, do what you say, show respect to the electorate and abandon your sleazy hidden agendas - any politician trying this will only benefit in the end.
Boris may be a bit rough around the edges and not exactly PC - but he does seem to be entirely genuine and you know what you're getting. What's not to like?
If Boris does win the mayoral election I hope it serves as a major wake-up call to Brown, the Speaker, Clinton, etc that the proles are now totally wise to their bullshit and they should cut it out.
Guido, perhaps I've missed it - and that is likely - but could you link to the implicit threats to police funding please?
Just fascinated how Ken is planning to do that.
This election was never going to be Boris's to win, but Ken's to lose. And my word but he's doing a fabulous job.
what a little tit.
Comrades,
You will all miss Ken when he gone. Ken has made London great again with traditional red pedestrian squashing buses, traffic crawling along (and being chraged for the privilege of it) at traditional 1900's speeds and that most traditional of London buildings, a mosque on every corner.
The great thing about the taxi receipts is how much they must annoy Ken's army as they cruise around London in taxis at our expense.
Private cars are banned from bus lanes but chauffeur driven private cars (e.g. taxis) are not. Clearly, this is because it would inconvenience Ken et al.
What is it about socialists and special priviliges for party members and the rich? Sitting in a traffic jam on the M4 because you can't afford or can't fit on the train, you have the honour of watching Britain's first Zil lane, enabling party members and anybody who can afford a taxi from Heathrow to central London zoom by.
scary biscuits: Ken's army no doubt have pockets of forged cab receipts to fund their Nigerian holiday camps and Venezuelan jaunts.
Once again we see civil servants being politicised. No wonder the "Bolivarian State of Venezuela" is part-funding Transport for London.
I think Boris is a philandering fool but I'll vote for him just so I can eject Livingstone and give Brown a black eye.
Viva la Boris.
I live in hope of Leninslime being hung from the ramparts of the Tower of London by Londoners.
On what basis, and with what authority, does TfL try to ban taxi drivers issuing Back Boris receipts?
Has TfL taken over the London Carriage office?
Or is it just that Labour are piqued that they didn't think of it first?
"This is a mistake by Ken, cabbies are not ones to succumb to authority" says Guido.
Yes indeed. Ken hates them because they represent old London and old Londoners - fiercely independent red-blooded males. My god, some of them even SMOKE.
This is why he's been piling on training courses for ethnic minorities who are "under-represented" at the taxi ranks (just try that with the gondoliers in Venice!). Ethnics are more malleable, compliant and grateful for his largesse, guaranteeing him some extra votes.
Unfortunately one such scheme was in the hands of the odious Lee Grasper and has gone tits up - along with its funds.
Poor ole Ken, he thought he had the third term all sewn up, wait for the day, count the votes and head back to the trough in triumph.
He was so far up the anal sphincter's of his sychophants that he didn't see reality's size 14 boots heading for his gonads. Ahh deep joy.
One trusts, that Boris will launch an investigation into absolutely everything that Ken has done, to find the smoking gun, or perhaps like B-Liar he can manufacture some key facts.
Dear Ken, like all total leaders of the left, he just can't stop himself from interfering and gerrymandering and hanging on to power.
Once dear Ken is removed from his perch as mayor, I wonder how long it will be before he assumes another branch to perch on at the EU (hich after all runs London as well as the rest of the UK) to continue shitting on all of us.
After all, he will be in good socialist company with Mandy, Prescott, the Kinnock brood etc etc and Brooon soon to follow.
If Boris suggested that, once elected, he would arrange for various of Ken's favoured schemes to be investigated, I think we'd see Ken's mates deserting him like rats off a sinking ship.
We'd also see Ken permanently pissed and ranting at everyone all the way to polling day.
Which would be nice.
Silas,
Gilligan article in the Standard here:
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard-mayor/article-23464911-details/TfL%20chief's%20threat%20to%20police%20over%20bendy%20bus%20'criticism'/article.do
TfL pays towards the Met's transport operational command unit (TOCU).
Judith,
TfL has taken over the old Hackney Carriage Office which is now called the Public Carriage Office.
Sorry Guido if I am treading on your toes.
I wonder how long it will be before he assumes another branch to perch on at the EU.
Not necessarily. There is no need for NuLab to pay him out. Ken has caused them so much misery over the years that he was even a reference joke in Ashes to Ashes.
He'll go out of office with what he can carry and the best he can hope for is that if he stops struggling now, Boris will do the very opposite of what is expected and not ask too many awkward questions. "All very complicated...what matters now is...got to get on with today's battles, stop fighting yesterday's etc"
If Ken were smart, he'd withdraw citing - cough - illness, which would leave a technical election in place, thereby denying Boris the satisfaction of beating him fair'n'square. Boris's mandate would always be slightly undermined. Ken could then have a break somewhere sunny, come back and resume a life of media harlotry and kicking Boris. He has always had a spikey relationship with the media, but sections of it remain fond of him because he is good for a copy when they need it and he refuses to moderate his behaviour so he isn't boring. It wouldn't be the same as power, but it would pay well and would be fun.
It's been 37 years since Lambeth Council and he's 62 years old. He can fit in one 5 year term of office, at the end of which he might well have to be carried out in a bucket - if not a box - or else he could cash his chips in now and retire never having been defeated. That will give him (subject to luck) at least 20 years of media earnings plus more time to be with the children aged 5 and 3. Getting real; if you wait that long to have children, your chances of enjoying the grandchildren are slim. He has approximately ten years in which to be a father, after which teenagers tend to want to be off with their friends. Ken will be 72 by then; if he doesn't do this now, he is unlikely to ever get the chance.
He should get out now in his own best interests. He won't though.
I'd like to know how Ken can justify having London offices overseas on the premise that they are working to increase tourism and inward investment. Isn't this what British Embassies and their Commercial Departments do? The man is a bloody lunatic wasting money like this and coming on the back of the recent Jasper revelations, I wonder which of his lick spittles are employed there!
Thank you Phil, and Guido.
I had missed that. Quite spectacular that Hendy believes the Police should be supporting Mayoral policy.
/me goes to dig info on Hendy
Vienna Woods said...
"I'd like to know how Ken can justify having London offices overseas on the premise that they are working to increase tourism and inward investment. Isn't this what British Embassies and their Commercial Departments do?"
Nothing unusual in that. Look around you in Central London. There are a lot of tourist and commercial offices for overseas provincial or state governments as well as for individual cities.
British Embassies and High Commissions overseas do very little to promote tourism.
That email from Hendy really is an eye opener. Fancy putting that kind of blackmail in writing? Presumably they use the same approach for other dubious senior coppers, like Ian Blair for instance? Certainly explains a lot.
Time to burn them out of office.
The Black cab trade hate Leninslime, with a vengeance, just mention his name and you are garanteed a 1 + hr rant against the odious old trot, this will just ensure they all use the slips.
I once sugested to a London cabbie, that Ken should be dragged to death behind a Routemaster....he almost begged to drive it, as he still had his bus drivers licence....
Desperate people do silly things.
Let's hop Ken and cronies get REALLY desperate!
Would Ken have ever won if only UK citizens could vote in the London elections ?
Hendy is very interesting case - see these quotes from a Guardian interview from 2006 when he took over at TFL.
He's actually the Hon. Peter Hendy.
"His parents met during the war in an aircraft factory where his mother, the youngest daughter of Baron Wynford, staged what her son calls a "vague rebellion" by marrying a communist electrician from Cornwall."
He lives in Bath and blazes a trail of CO2 as he commutes into London everyday.
"Hendy will be stopped on his way to work (first class on the train from Bath, then on the 436 from Paddington to Vauxhall)...."
He's a multi-millionaire thanks to raw capitalism.
"In the late 1990s, Hendy made £3.8m when the bus company he was running, CentreWest, was taken over, and it gives him a jaunty air of independence. "People say, why do you work? And the answer is because you want to do something."
He hates the middle class - of course - and thinks that the 99.9 percent of Londoners who use buses in central London and loved the Routemaster must be inconvenienced by the theory that somebody with a wheelchair might want to use any bus at any time.
"The howls of outrage that met this piece of philistinism [scrapping the Routemaster], as it was seen, came largely, says Hendy, from "middle-class dinner-party land," a place he seems to disapprove of at a conceptual level.
These are people, in Hendy's mind, who have never taken a bus and only championed the Routemaster because they liked how quaint it looked as they shot past in their Saabs.
"What will mark me for the rest of my life is experiencing people being prepared to advocate active discrimination against people with disabilities for the sake of nostalgia."
Lee Jasper, now this idiot...
First thing Boris should do as soon as he gets his feet up in the testicle is have a double life sizes sculpture of Andrew Gilligan put on the empty plinth in Trafalgar Square.
Gilligan is inexorably and single handedly grinding Leavingsoon into the primeaval slime that he all too recently emerged from.....and its all just a loosening up exercise prior to fucking McBroon in every orifice prior to the General Election.
Not a man to cross lightly and just revenge for being stitched up along with the rest of the BBC by that fuckwit Campbell
Says Colonel Madd
Vienna, our national government in Brussels requires the Regions to have their own foreign policy! Serious! And as LondON is one of the EU Regions of the province formerly known as England, Ken is only doing what his paymasters in Brussels want him to do. That is to make a right mess of the old country, so they have plenty of excuses.
er, can somebody please supply the evidence for articulated buses being more dangerous than rigid buses?
They are used in other cities in the UK and elsewhere in the world, and don't seem to provoke such feelings.
I've no axe to grind either way - just like to see the factual basis for such claims.
"One trusts, that Boris will launch an investigation into absolutely everything that Ken has done, to find the smoking gun.."
You can bet your bottom dollar that the shredders at county hall will be sharpened, oiled and fired up ready for a marathon session the night of the elections.....
The very worst socialists are the ones born with a silver spoon like Hendy, Benn and Harmon. Odious class traitors, the barmiest of the lot and incalculably dangerous in office.
I saw one of Transport's slimeweasels on TV tonight in a programme about parking ticket scams. Horrible specimen, Nasty mixture of arrogance, stubbornness and stupidity, rolled up in an officious slimeweasel skin with reactorlite glasses.
We Brits traditionally hate such jumped up little corporals (remember Blakey On The Buses?), how come we have let them take over? Time for a bit of civil disobedience methinks.
Articulated buses were designed for use in relatively modern Continental cities, where town planning laid out very wide streets in a careful grid pattern.
They were not designed for the large part of London that is based on ancient villages, with narrow streets. When the No 25 takes a particular turn in our High Street, everyone - passengers, other drivers, pedestrians - takes a deep breath and dodges out of the way, and god help everyone if a delivery lorry has been left in the way.
And by the way, that's the same area where a poor man got caught in the doors and was dragged a mile - killing him on the way - before someone was able to alert the bus-driver.
2:38 PM
Interesting that Black cabbies hate Livingstone so much - he's exempted them from paying the Congestion Charge and laid down miles of bus lanes which they habitually use to full advantage. Everyone else in the commercial transportation business (except perhaps the mini-cabs, who have been offered equal terms at the customer-transferable-price of a licence and increased insurance premiums) has always been well-hacked off with this discriminatory arrangement. After all, every motorist must pay road-taxes and, unlike buses, black cabs are not even logistically efficient - although, even this argument for bus lanes grates with the nerves of ever other professional driver struggling to scrape a living, day-in-day-out, on the streets of London. Furthermore, black cab drivers even have the temerity to deliver parcels in direct competition with couriers like myself - and it's a pity that this unfair situation has not been tested in the courts. Worst of all, it's common knowledge that black cab drivers are a rip-off outfit (who will happily charge you for the privelege of sitting in traffic when business is slow) and are a bunch of thieving lying arrogant malevolant fucking bastard shit cunt bastard cunts to boot.
re: 5:25 PM
Dear Guido
I feel like the occupant of a cattle-truck every time I ride in one of these bendy-buses. And this impression is compounded by the unavoidable fact that I have very large tits which are wont to cause an obstruction in the gangways. Ken Livingstone and his chums really rub me up the wrong way. Could you suggest a solution to my predicament?
Yours
Angie Deecup
8:51 PM
Yes, I just hate bendy fucking things.
10:54 PM
yeah, strip them all naked and leave them locked in a wheel-clamped bendy bastard opposite Madame Tussauds in the Edgware Road westbound bus-lane - during the friday evening rush hour.
Quite agree with Dougal the bendy buses are simply NOT suitable for London Streets just ask anyone who does the daily commute into London on a motorcycle. Maybe all these buses could be redeployed to Heathrow for passenger terminal transfer and to help move the mountain of lost luggage. When Ken finally loses his Mayoral job he could become the next Chairman of BAA this would truely be a match made in heaven.
11:11 PM
Dear Miss Angie Deecup,
Guido Fawkes has passed me your letter for processing and further action, as required. I am most concerned to hear of your predicament and would like to arrange a meeting at your earliest convenience in order to carry out a full inspection of the afore-mentioned hazardous locations. Indeed, I am inclined to treat this matter with the utmost urgency in view of the fact that they could take someone's eye out.
I will, of course, handle matters with due sensitivity.
Yours sincerely
Will I Popout
(Senior Site Assessor, Health & Safety Executive)
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