London mayoral hustings: ‘Groundhog Day’
Just popped into the first hustings of the London Mayoral contest at the Friends Meeting House in Euston Road.
As Boris Johnson said opening the event, it’s “groundhog day” and he told the audience (Age Concern supporters) that they could be forgiven for thinking they’d “woken up after nodding off in the last (2008) Age Concern husting … to a distressingly familiar panel.”
Ken Livingstone majored on heating homes and accused Boris Johnson of failing to do enough on insulation.
He also says he’ll get Transport for London to up its energy purchase bought at bulk prices and pass on the extra discounted fuel to households.
Boris heckled, but the heckling from the platform was nothing compared to the heckling from the older people who’d turned up to listen. About two dozen even laughed when Brian Paddick (Lib Dem candidate again) said they might vote for him. He might want to get his peroration a little more positive . “Giving up is not an option!” he said.
Ken’s biggest applause was for attacking Boris over his £250,000 a year job at the Telegraph. He produced a pledge to take no outside income if elected then threw it down for Boris to sign. No sign yet that Boris is going to sign it. Ken said anyone who can’t get by on the £140,000 a year that comes with the Mayoralty must have a “very interesting lifestyle.”



There are 6 comments on this post
Boris probably thinks he’s hard done by compared to his chums in the city who see that kind of money as a month’s expenses.
Gary,
Lahndan will probably vote for the Fat Public Schoolboy again.
In which case they deserve all they get – probably more riots, street crime and weekly gang murders and racism.
So glad I don’t live in the dump.
Surprised Boris is standing again- I’d have thought he could smell blood from all Cameron’s issues building up and saved himself for the party leadership.
Pity Ken is standing again. I can’t see him attracting any of the voters he lost to Boris last time. A fresh face would have stood a better chance.
Fortunately the lively, vibrant, exciting, diverse city of London will survive whoever becomes mayor. When you live there, you realise it’s far better than what appears in the negative tabloids (e.g. racism – Mr Edwards – by comparison with most of the country, London baraelt has a racism problem)
for “baraelt” read “barely” (my fingers and a keyboard have never worked well together)
You think we have a racism problem in North Yorkshire? Come and see.