Category archive for ‘Comment is Free’ 
-
Stop bashing blogs
By Simon Fletcher 20.11.08
It has become an accepted fact that in Britain the political blogosphere is dominated by the right. Yet in London the situation is reversed, as the recent attacks on bloggers by the Evening Standard’s Andrew Gilligan show.
Unlike the national picture, the most influential political websites covering London government are not those of the right but those that expose the London mayoralty to scrutiny and examination.
Four sites in particular – the MayorWatch website and the bloggers Dave Hill, [...] -
Shares fair
The one thing the government should not do in the current circumstances is accede to the demands of the banks to alter the conditions of the bail-out plan announced earlier this week. Their attempt to change the terms of the deal in order to pay dividends to their shareholders – which they would only be able to do off the back of money pumped in by the taxpayer – is a recipe for shoving public money into the banks through [...]
-
Same old blues
David Cameron used his main speech of the week today to reiterate the message of his emergency speech on the economy yesterday – his call for unity in the face of the financial storm. We must put our differences aside to achieve financial stability; we will not allow what happened in the US to happen here, he says.
Yet his message of unity is aimed purely to dampen the growing sense that there really is a difference between the parties on [...] -
Why Brown needs Boris
In his speech at the Unite reception on Saturday night, Gordon Brown did not mince his words about London’s mayor, criticising Boris Johnson’s ill-judged speech in China after the Olympics closing ceremony – and rounding on Johnson’s plans to increase fares above inflation while cancelling the planned charge on gas guzzlers. The fact that the prime minister chose the annual Labour conference event of the biggest trade union in Britain to signal a hardening in the government’s line towards the [...]
-
Fallen off track
The latest argument over the tube goes something like this. London Underground says the cost of the next stage of the much-needed investment on the tube, which is organised through the public-private partnership (PPP), is about £4.1bn. Tube Lines, the infrastructure company charged with carrying out this work says it’s more like £7.2bn. The arbiter, who oversees disputes relating to the tube contracts, agrees more with London Underground than Tube Lines, but nonetheless puts the figure at between £5.1bn and [...]
-
The bus stops with Boris
This morning, the full scale of Boris Johnson’s above-inflation transport fare rises was revealed. The figures show some very painful price increases for large numbers of Londoners, most notably an 11% increase in the price of a single bus journey on Oyster – up from 90p to £1. David Cameron’s attempts to portray his party as kinder and gentler won’t be helped by that, or by the 10% increase in tube fares for children aged 11 to 15.
The Tories do [...]