judgement), one of his first acts is to ban booze on the tube and punish all drinkers, rather than the actual people causing trouble. In fact, this unpopular measure with Londoners will just take resources away from dealing with real crime.
Boris then announced some nice jobs for his Tory chums (on top of his own five jobs)- 'looking into bureacratic waste' and 'cronyism' in City Hall. What a better way to do this than to have his expensively paid bureaucratic 'friends' to write a report about it. I wonder how much that is going to cost? Lets hope Tory GLA leader Brian 'Taxi' Coleman is not involved, I don't think another £50k taxi bill would be value for money.
The environmentalists must be happy at Boris's decision to give the go ahead for an energy guzzling de-salination plant at Beckton. Still Thames water shareholders will be happy that they won't have to 'waste money' on fixing leaks anymore. On top of the fact that cycling will not now get the £500m from the gas guzzler charge and that Boris is going scrap half the congestion charge area and give people less time to cross the road - Londoners are sure in for a fun time. (The Tories even had the cheek to say they were going to plant 10,000 trees as evidence of their environmental credentials yet Ken had promised to plant a million - so thats over 900,000 less trees to be planted - great eh?).
All this and more in less than two weeks. Still, don't expect to hear any bad news about Boris in the Evening Standard.
Boris then announced some nice jobs for his Tory chums (on top of his own five jobs)- 'looking into bureacratic waste' and 'cronyism' in City Hall. What a better way to do this than to have his expensively paid bureaucratic 'friends' to write a report about it. I wonder how much that is going to cost? Lets hope Tory GLA leader Brian 'Taxi' Coleman is not involved, I don't think another £50k taxi bill would be value for money.
The environmentalists must be happy at Boris's decision to give the go ahead for an energy guzzling de-salination plant at Beckton. Still Thames water shareholders will be happy that they won't have to 'waste money' on fixing leaks anymore. On top of the fact that cycling will not now get the £500m from the gas guzzler charge and that Boris is going scrap half the congestion charge area and give people less time to cross the road - Londoners are sure in for a fun time. (The Tories even had the cheek to say they were going to plant 10,000 trees as evidence of their environmental credentials yet Ken had promised to plant a million - so thats over 900,000 less trees to be planted - great eh?).
All this and more in less than two weeks. Still, don't expect to hear any bad news about Boris in the Evening Standard.
What's it got to do with libertarians? He's a tory, not a libertarian.
ReplyDeleteMost of the general public can't stand the tories or labour. They choose the one they hate the least, in the same way as one might choose death by firing squad over hanging.
There's no hope in either of them.
Despite his claims to love freedom (and he was the libertarian poster boy which says something about their judgement), one of his first acts is to ban booze on the tube and punish all drinkers, rather than the actual people causing trouble
ReplyDeleteMy argument against the ban isn't a libertarian argument, as I'm not a libertarian. I oppose it because it will be completely ineffective, not because I think people have an inalienable right to drink alcohol on the tube. If the ban had any chance of *reducing* rowdy anti-social behaviour then I would support it but it won't. The authorities already have laws to deal with rowdy drunken louts. So why aren't they using them? The only people likely to fined for flouting this ban are those who are not making a mischief of themselves and who aren't causing a problem. Brain dead politcs at its most sublime.
Err....
ReplyDeleteAre you in some sort of bubble / world of your own?
1. Banning booze on TfL has been a hot "water cooler" topic and incredibly popular. Left and right. Work, in the pub , chatting in shops, not heard any one against.
2. As someone how knew the London before smoking was banned. Without smoking the underground / tube / trains are a whole lot better.
Yes we still get smoking. But its rare and unless they are clearly looking for trouble others will the get them to stop.
Same with drinking. Make the atmosphere better and id real trouble makers.
Well, if we're trading anecdotes, I never heard anyone ever complain about drinking on the tube prior to ban.
ReplyDelete