A short play about London
Scene 1, in which Mr Johnson says he will fund PCSOs with £20m from TfL’s budget
Scene 2, in which Mr Johnson tells The House of Commons and The Prime Minister of his clever plan
Scene 3, in which Mr Livingstone tells Mr Johnson that the £20m in question isn’t in the TfL budget
Scene 4, in which Mr Johnson says that Mr Livingstone moved the goalposts
Scene 5, in which The Audience explain to Mr Johnson the difference between a draft budget and a final budget
As I’m clearly not meant to be a playwright, let me try prose. Boris Johnson has of late been talking about increasing the number of police community support officers in London (total number of Parliamentary mentions about PCSOs before his outburst at PMQs by Boris Johnson: nil). The funding for this would come from a reduction in TfL’s advertising budget. Unfortunately for Boris, he was looking at a draft budget. The funding for his plan isn’t assigned to advertising and the budget was finalised on the twenty-second of January.
Boris’ reaction was to say that Ken ‘moved the goalposts’ by changing the budget. Given that he had well over a month to cast his eye over the document, the argument seems rather weak. In any case, he has to find another £20 million, on top of the £100m error in his maths, from somewhere. It would be interesting to know whether that would come from cutting something other than publicity or whether it would go into further ticket price rises.
Transport is a key issue for London. It has improved and continues to improve; it’s not as far or as fast as we’d like, but it will never be. The poor transport infrastructure in London was holding the city back as you had a bizarre situation where you could get to London really very easily but moving around the metropolis could be challenging; it was a brake on business, if nothing else. I would say that the lack of knowledge about London transport and London government that these two mistakes - first £100m and then £20m - indicate is, at the least, a serious demerit against any candidate for the mayoralty.
xD.
