So long, it's been good to know you

Well, it's over. The One London group was not tapped by destiny on Thursday and it is out of the London Assembly. For those who think the group should have united with UKIP, I must say that, even if it could have been done, that alliance would not have produced the required 5 per cent for at least one member in the Assembly.

So that is that. One London Blogger is moving on to pastures new (as yet unknown) having witnessed local government at close hand. It is fully as dysfunctional and corrupt as most people suspect and London is not in need of a "government" any more than it was for the many centuries during which it was as much of a world capital as it is now. Actually, more so.

As Peter Cook and Dudley Moore used to say: "Now is the time to say good-bye. Good-bye."

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Anyone would think there was an election coming up

Hizonner the Mayor, quondam friend of the IRA and of Sheik al-Quaradawi, seems determined to prove his patriotic credentials. The Great Glass Egg has welcomed TA servicemen back from Iraq and now Hizonner has announced that he will want to see a Veterans' Day established in London, to be celebrated on Friday June 27 in Trafalgar Square.

This is how London@Work, one of the internal e-mail information sheets that, like all the others are little more than Our Ken's propaganda sheets:

Mayor to establish annual Veterans Day event in London

On Thursday, the Mayor announced that he will establish an annual Veterans Day event in London. The first event will take place in Trafalgar Square on Friday 27 June 2008, and the Mayor will be working with Veterans’ groups and the Government, as well as seeking the support of the boroughs, to host the event in London.

The Mayor said: ‘My aim is that on Veterans' Day every year, London pays tribute to all our veterans, the sacrifices they have made and our gratitude to those who have served our country in the Forces or in the Merchant Navy and Fishing Fleets.’

I am sure Hizonner will not mind if we ask one or two questions on the subject.

First of all, why do we need a Veterans' Day, when we have Remembrance Day and the Remembrance Sunday parade in Whitehall whose purpose it is to recall "those who have served our country in the Forces or in the Merchant Navy and Fishing Fleets"?

Secondly, who is pay for this extra and unnecessary event, which will undoubtedly have Hizonner's name all over it? Could it be the London taxpayer? This year the GLA precept has gone up by only 2 per cent, as opposed to the double figures of the last two years. But if there are any more projects of this kind and the 2012 Olympics eating up the budget, future rises are likely to be somewhat higher. Then again, those will not be election years.

Thirdly, why June 27? What happened on that date that we need to commemorate?

Fourthly, why use an American idea, which is Veterans' Day, when we have our own ways of remembering (see first question above)?

Fifthly and most importantly, how does Hizonner know that he will still be Mayor of LondON in June?

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The Green candidate probably needs spectacles

Siân Berry, the Green mayoral hopeful, is one of only two women candidates and is really rather pretty. That lovely smile gets her a long way, including on various debates and discussions where she has no business to be unless the other small parties get a look-in as well.

It certainly is not her ideas or her maths that give her the special status. One London Blogger received the Green campaign programme newspaper (they are not allowed to campaign yet so that unnecessary paper production is a programme) yesterday. The main article is entitled “Siân’s 20-20 London Vision”. Hmmm.

It is full of ideas of what project that would make life for many people in London easier might be cancelled (hint: if it involves people driving, cancel it even if that will continue to cause congestions) and what might be given free to more “deserving” categories. I have a piece of information for dear little Siân. Nothing is free. Somebody is going to have to pay for it. Who will be that somebody?

She has some interesting ideas about transport. In the first place she bleats:

We need to bring an end to the transport tribe mentality. It’s no good thinking of ourselves as ‘a motorist’, ‘a cyclist’, or ‘a bus user’ – we’re all just people trying to get around. My plan is to give Londoners a real choice of cheaper more efficient transport options for each journey they make.

Of course, if there are no tubes or train lines – categories pretty little Siân does not seem to have heard of – where people live, there are not that many options to get around. If you live in the suburbs and have to get to work in the centre, your options are always limited. And if there are no tubes and inadequate buses after midnight, getting home after an evening out (perhaps if you are a Green you deplore such frivolities) becomes very difficult.

Some of her suggestions are laughable. Others need a certain amount of discussion. She wants to take 20p off all bus and off-peak Tube fares and impose car clubs in every neighbourhood, the latter presumably meaning a bunch of City Hall officials, should she get elected, who would be organizing it at our expense. Pedestrian areas in every town centres is also rather difficult to impose if you are giving out orders in the Great Glass Egg.

One London Blogger is intrigued about that reduction in Oyster card prices. London’s tube is immensely expensive as well as immensely inefficient, though I notice that there are no suggestions about that coming from pretty little Siân. Perhaps, she does not travel on it particularly often. I have some more news for her: millions do every day.

If those fares will be cut, does that mean that the money thus not paid over was unnecessary in the first place and TfL can get by very well without it? If so, what is it they spent money on that they will not buy under Green rule?

If not, then where will be the money coming from to make up the difference? Not our taxes, perchance? Among all those “tribal” categories one has been forgotten: taxpayer, that patient milch-cow.

If this means a rise in taxes, should little Siân not tell us? At what level will taxes rise? National? We think not. Alistair Darling, if it still he, will not be in the giving mood to a Green with stupid ideas. London-wide? Well, yes, that is more likely. The hikes in the GLA precept will shoot up, as there are no suggestions that Ms Berry will cut back on the present City Hall budget to fund her pet schemes.

Another question arises. London transport is used by many millions who do not live in London and whose children at the moment go free, if they are under 11. They, too, will benefit if Oyster cards become cheaper (an unlikely scenario, I admit, but one that is being promised by this blonde), while Londoners will pay higher taxes to fund the scheme.

Explain to me again how that will make us better off?

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Here is a better idea - shut down all quangos

While struggling with the concept of a new boiler and the notion that gas bills will be considerably lower in the future (or as much as British Gas will allow them to sink) One London Blogger received communication through via the snail mail from the Energy Saving Trust.

It encourages the recipient to fill in a form and send it back, using Freepost, after which I shall be sent a report on how energy efficient my home is and how I can cut down on my energy bills and “help fight climate change”.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is being funded by the government both from national and local taxes. Or, as we have so often said, it’s your money and mine, folks. The private sector members of this organization are the large energy providers, who could, presumably, give that advice anyway. One does wonder what they get out of joining these quangos.

One London Blogger doubts just how impartial that advice is going to be from an organization that is mouthing government slogans on its website and seems to be unaware of the fact that there has been no rise in the earth’s temperature since 2,000.

Do I actually need this “free and impartial advice”? Free in a very limited sense, as my taxes are paying for the whole organization. Oh and yours, too. Surely, the best way of finding out whether you are saving energy is checking your bills and then talking to experts on heating rather than some once-removed-government-body, that is a quango.

While there is a section on grants and offers, the former being, presumably, yet another way of spending taxpayers’ money and the latter definitely full of subsidies, there is little on how many people are employed. Incidentally, the form that arrived at One London Blogger’s home also mentions the fact that

Our Energy Advisors are currently touring London, so why not pop along to one of the events to discuss your energy queries face to face?

We do hope that they are touring London on bicycles and do not use up extra energy by doing power point presentations or other highly suspect shows.

Here are some better ideas. Shut down all quangos and save a great deal of tax money that way. Then cut those taxes from the budget (chance would be a fine thing) so people will have more money left to install better boilers and more efficient insulations. Then reform the tax system so people on low income do not have to pay taxes at all, thus enabling more people to do without benefits and to have an energy efficient heating system at home.

Sorted.

Oh, and one more thing. One London Blogger will not be filling in the form, thus saving on the paper that might have to be used for the provision of an energy saving report. Sadly, One London Blogger, along with millions of other people, will have to go on paying enormous amounts by way of tax to keep all these drongos in high salaried employment.

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Back to work

One London Blogger has been overwhelmed with boiler problems at home. A new one has to be installed and little attention can be spared for anything else. The chief plumber was heard wondering aloud what happened to global warming. Well he may ask.

The news from most of the northern hemisphere is that this has been a spectacularly cold winter and it is causing severe hardship that may well turn into a humanitarian tragedy as the heavy snows in Central Asia, Afghanistan, Kashmir and other suchlike places melt. But do we hear NGOs worrying about it? We do not.

NGOs and heavily subsidized scientists are more disturbed by the possible and entirely unproven difficulties that some people might experience in 50, 75, 100 years’ time if the global warming will continue.

Today’s Washington Post (yes, Little Englanders that we are in One London, we tend to follow the world’s media) carries an article about yet another report about the need to reduce carbon emission to zero or, in other words, shut down western economy completely (and that will be a help to the developing world), in order to prevent the earth from warming up even more.

It seems unlikely that many Americans could have read even the article, never mind the report, as they are far too busy digging themselves out from the biggest snowfall in thirty years. (That expression “thirty years” does come up whenever people start looking at temperature changes. Is there anything in it, such as cycles?)

With the exception of Britain and parts of North-West Europe this has been an exceptionally cold winter in the northern hemisphere. Canada is experiencing another bout of snow and ice; most of the United States is covered in snow; Asian countries are watching their animals die in hundreds as fodder disappears and bad weather prevents more supplies being delivered. There was snow in the Middle East and the Gulf and, as it happens, even Britain has not escaped entirely as the 80 mph storm last night demonstrates.

What, we ask ourselves, happened to global warming, man-made or otherwise? Why is it not manifesting itself? And should we now stop shackling our economy with extra taxes and regulations but power ahead and help the developing countries to develop so that in future they do not suffer from climatic problems as much as they do now?

Certainly not. Far too much has been invested in the man-made-global-warming scam and far too many snouts are in the trough. All sorts of explanations are flying around that prove its existence in the teeth of all evidence, such as 2007 was colder than 2006, which was colder that 2005. In fact, there has been no global warming in the twenty-first century and the figures that purport to show otherwise are very suspect.

But one cold winter or even two cold winters do not global cooling make. Indeed not. Or not necessarily. They just prove that weather is unpredictable and the link between climate and weather is poorly understood. Then again, a couple of relatively dry years in Britain do not a drought make, yet our readers must recall the panic that was being spread about that a couple of years ago.

One can only surmise that Hizonner has started flushing his loo again (or gathering rainwater to use for that purpose) and all those gardens designed especially for the British drought have been drowned out by the floods. Certainly, one never hears about them these days.

Meanwhile, our readers might like to look at the work and outcome of the badly reported but immensely important 2008 International Conference on Climate Change that has just concluded in New York City. The conclusions, which emphasise the importance of nature as opposed to self-important people in climate change are also of interest. Funnily enough, these have been produced by eminent scientists who have broken away from that famous consensus, rather like Louis Pasteur did in the nineteenth century.

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Wild rumours are circulating

The Great Glass Egg is all abuzz. Wild rumours are circulating that Lee Jasper has actually resigned but nobody is prepared to confirm this. Could it be because he is due to face a special plenary session of the London Assembly tomorrow.

Apparently, according to the rules laid down in that wretched Act, former mayors and officials can be summoned by the Assembly but not former employees. A coincidence surely.

When in a hole ...

Today’s Independent has an interesting interview with Andrew Gilligan who has become the scourge Ken Livingstone fears most. How do we know that? Well, really, by the amount of personal abuse that is heaped by Hizonner on Gilligan, whom he has called not just a racist (everyone gets called that) but also a liar and a murderer. In fact, Hizonner found himself quoting Lord Hutton on the subject of Andrew Gilligan.

This does not seem to bother Mr Gilligan, whose investigation of the shenanigans around the LDA and the millions of pounds it has mis-spent and the way he conducted his campaign have been masterly:

His approach has been that of a chess player, planning several steps ahead and trying to anticipate the responses of the Mayor to the Evening Standard's stories. So after spending more than four weeks investigating a network of 11 companies and organisations, linked to Livingstone's race adviser Lee Jasper, that were in receipt of around £2.5m in public money but allegedly did little for it, Gilligan deliberately held back large amounts of material from his initial report.

"One of the most important things in this is to plan for the counterattack, because this is an extremely damaging story to Livingstone. We knew he would say it was all lies and there would be the inevitable dash of Lord Hutton thrown in. We held quite a lot of our evidence back. He's not a cautious politician, and we knew he would shoot his mouth off straight away. And then we
rolled out more of our other evidence. He fell right into the trap in an absolutely amazing way."

The Mayor responded to the Standard's accusations by quoting Hutton's comment that "I have considerable doubt as to how reliable Gilligan's evidence really is" and insinuating that the stories were politically motivated and racist.

"In some ways, Livingstone's response has been more damaging than the allegations, because it has been so unpleasant, so transparently dishonest and so arrogant. The clear impression has come across of a man who doesn't believe he should be held to account and doesn't want to answer straightforward factual questions. I was perfectly happy for him to pile in and say I was a liar and a murderer, because they are ludicrous charges."

He is, of course, absolutely right. It is Hizonner’s unhinged response to the slightest criticism that damages him most. Interestingly for a man who may not be the most intelligent one in London but has always appeared to have plenty of political savvy, Hizonner has not understood this, any more than he has understood that accusing everyone he disagrees with of racism does not really work.

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