As a Londoner, and having lived with the madness of that ridiculous, left winged, whining, money grabbing, useless piece of labour flesh, I am delighted that Ken Livingstone is out.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/7380947.stm

Nearly everyone I know voted for the Tory Boris Johnson, including friends that have been avid Labour supporters for as long as I can remember. I think as much as this result is a reflection on Livingstone and his inadequacies, it is also a reflection of how the Labour government is now so despised by the UK people in general.

It was also interesting that the BNP has won its first seat in the assembly. I don't really know anything about the party so can't comment at all on that one.

Thoughts?

Bruce cheered when he found out Ken (sorry, "Red Ken") is out. I have much more complicated feelings about it -- I used to really rate Ken as one of the more genuine politicos out there, especially because he wasn't in thrall to the Labour Party. And when you think about the Tory candidates in the past (hello, Jeffrey Archer! Come on down!) he really was the best of the choices. And of course the whole deal with the GLC and its abolition influenced me to some degree.

But it always seemed to be one indignity after another with Ken, and couldn't see the added value in having him as mayor. In his time, I saw the city I once loved passionately go down the cr@apper, I'm afraid. Was this the guy once behind the Fare's Fair movement, but then let single fares go up to 4 quid? What was he doing about overcrowding? Keeping the streets clean? Social unrest? London seemed to get worse, and I eventually bailed out.

Don't get me wrong -- I am still a happy lefty, but Ken and the whole Labour machine should be ashamed. They've alienated people who were once their allies, and pushed farther away those who weren't their natural friends. I think Boris is a bit of a tit, but sadly, an improvement.

Thank gawds Ken is gone. I mean seriously, he did more damage to London than anyone I've ever seen in office.

Boris Johnson...the new mayor. That's almost worth moving back to the UK for!

Boris Johnson at his best:

well, I liked Ken, and I think Boris is nothing more or less than a buffoon... I'm more than willing to give him a go, but for all his faults I think Ken was better, and I don't have any confidence in Boris to do even the simplest thing

missed out on voting by a matter of days; had my voting card and everyfing, but I left the country on the 28th

At least Boris will make everyone laugh. That's what I mean by it's almost worth moving back to the UK for.

He is a bit of a buffoon though - aren't his policies fairly identical to Ken's aside from raising the congestion charge (a Ken policy that generally worked, IMO)? I haven't been following it, but that's what people tell me.

Although - the tube fares. When did they get so expensive? They were going up when I left in 2005 but when I was back last year it cost 5 pounds or so to go from Victoria to Piccadilly. 5 POUNDS!

A bus fare, whether it be one stop, or ten, was 1.50 when I left. 1.50!!

it was only 70p with Oyster a few years back - 1 pound when I left in 05, IIRC

yes... which then went DOWN again to 90p with Oyster, regardless of how far you were going (one of Ken's initiatives)
tube journeys are WAY cheaper with Oyster too - Victoria to Piccadilly would be £1.50 or maybe £2 - and you can get them at airports and start using them straight away, ie they're available to visitors... if people don't want to be bothered finding out their best options I'm more than happy for them to pay through the nose and subsidise the rest of us


yeah, a few people have said that about Boris being worth it for the humour value, but I just don't buy it... it's too serious a job; he'll be like Mayor Quimby, trying to cover idiocy by looking cute and saying 'I'm a bad widdow boy'

I know the Oyster is available to visitors but they make it a serious faff. In Hong Kong, which has the Octopus Card (which Oyster ripped off, I believe) and it's very clear to visitors how they work and you can get them from vending machines instead of getting in the enormous queue (the station at Heathrow is a joke) and filling out a form (has this changed?). If you only have a few days and plan to take only a few journeys, it's just not worth the extra trouble.

well, that's the call each person makes, isn't it? if you'd rather save time and don't mind spending extra money, you don't bother... if you don't mind a ten minute set-up (which is all it took for both my parents, and my fiancé) you do that to save some money

in my opinion, Oyster is ALWAYS worth it, even for a trip only lasting a couple of days... I advise all my visitors to get one, and everyone has, and everyone has been very happy with it

Yup, Oyster is wayyy cheaper. I used to use it all the time. However, when visiting the UK I agree it is a faff to get one. Plus, there used to be a 2 quid deposit for each card! What a joke.

I think there still is... totally refundable though; my parents got the deposit, plus all extra pre-pay, back at Heathrow; they said it took about five minutes

*staunch defender of Oyster*

I do take your point that it is not a big deal to get one, and I agree that it is for the most part a really great system. But who in London is not going to have one? People who are already heavy users of public transport certainly will, but casual users and visitors will not. People who live outside the c-charge zone and normally drive to work, like my old boss, are not going to leave their cars at home and take the tube unless they really have to. Making them go through a slightly onerous prcoess to get an Oyster or pay a ridiculous fare won't encourage them to take public transport.

As for visitors, well it certainly is their choice to find out about it but they don't make it easy for them - and charging them 250% more for a single tube ticket is an odd thing, especially if they don't speak English as their first language.

I just compare it to the superior way Octopus card is administered in Hong Kong - you do pay to get the card (which is refundable) but you can buy one out of a machine, they even have souvenir ones for tourists - unlike London, the machines are plentiful at the main stations and never "closed" (how does a machine "close" anyway?) and you don't get stung if you happen to only be taking one journey and don't need the octopus, though you do pay more for the fare (about $2, or the equivalent of 10p). Although, almost everything is better about the Hong Kong MTR.

I left Britain in March of 2004 and haven't been back yet. I must go to see my parents though.

I bet prices have changed tremendously. London was always horribly expensive but it must be even more so now. The tube is just not worth the money these days - the only reason for catching the tube as opposed to a bus is that it's a lot simpler to work out which one to get.

I dread to think how much the train to Swansea now costs and also how much the busses and taxis in Swansea now cost. Thank goodness I won't be driving as I gather fuel there is now well over a quid a liter. My current vehicle (which does a stunning 19mpg) would bankrupt me there!

just remember: FIRST thing you want to do is get an oyster card

Not being a Londoner I can't comment on Ken/Boris.

I can however say that the fact the BNP got a seat (on this or any other assembly) is a very, very, very sad reflection on London or any society. If you really don't know anything about them they are in fact a racist, facist bunch of bully boys who want a white separatist Britain - white power, ain't no black in the Union Jack, etc.

These guys are proud of the fact that the British went out and conquered the world ... and are now complaining when everyone follows them back home. Unbelievable.

R

I don't think the BNP getting seats is a sad reflection on any society. I think rather, it's a sad reflection on the politicians from other parties that a BNP candidate is a more attractive option. There is, in my view, something radically wrong with British politics.

Let me give you an example of where Britain is beginning to fall apart...

When I was a computer programmer, I found an advert by a company that wished to hire a contract programmer. I applied and was rejected. Subsequently I discovered that they had got somebody in Ukraine to do the work for pennies. This is, of course, against British law. The law is that if there's a native that can do the job then they must be employed rather than somebody from another country. I brought this to the attention of my MP because if it happened to me then this kind of thing must be rampant. Indeed it is - look at the Chinese cockle pickers of Morecombe Bay for example. Rather than paying the legal minimum wage to locals who would happily do the work, they bring in illegal immigrants.

It is this lack of observance of the employment laws and the perception that refugees are receiving better treatment than locals that makes the BNP seem more reasonable than the existing parties. In fact I even visited the BNP website and had a look at their policies. It was all quite interesting and very different from the main parties. Essentially, I read it as a party that wants to try to make Britain better for the natives. I don't think they're bothering with the send all the immigrants home stuff any more. I can't honestly say I'm all that bothered anyway. I found British politics were so dirty and the candidates so slimy that in the last elections I registered a protest vote by voting for Miss Whiplash and Captain Beany.

Not going to enter a politics debate, but as I notice a Have I Got News For You youtube linked earlier, I'd just like to say that, were I a Londoner, I'd have voted for Brian Blessed. If he was running for Mayor, ahem.


Stu

As long as he was wearing his costume from Flash Gordon.

General Cornwalls,

You see it as a sad reflection on the politicians from other parties that a BNP candidate is a more attractive option. Well, no one put a gun to the 5.3% of Londoners who voted BNP in the mayoral election.

I understand your frustration about jobs going to the Ukraine etc. Today in Belfast, 50 FT100 Index companies are coming to Belfast from the USA to relocate "American" jobs to Northern Ireland because people here work cheaper and don't demand stuff like pensions and health care. So it's not just British companies who are at it.

You have to remember it's not Britain PLC that, rather than paying the legal minimum wage to locals, bring in illegal immigrants - it's corrupt employers. And I dispute your rosy view that there are "locals who would happily do the work" ... From my office window I can see 14, count 'em, 14 young men and women drinking in the park in the sunshine at 10.30am. This morning I got a coffee on my way to work at 8.30 - served by an Eastern European. I stopped in to get cigarettes - served by an Eastern European. When I got out to get lunch - I'll most likely get served by an Eastern European. Number of Eastern Europeans drinking in the park - 0. Number of locals - 14. And if there were no Eastern Europeans in Belfast I can bet my house there would still be 14 locals drinking in the park.

I agree mainstream politics in the UK is slimy but show me a country where they aren't? As for the BNP, for those of you who are interested ... the slime runneth over.

"Membership of the British National Party is open to those of British or kindred European ethnic descent." So, white people essentially.

Nick Griffin - BNP Leader ...

On Islam - "a wicked and vicious faith".

On the Holocaust, or "the Holohoax" as he call(ed)s it - "There is no doubt that hundreds, probably thousands of Jews were shot to death in Eastern Europe, because they were rightly or wrongly seen as communists or potential partisan supporters. That was awful. But this nonsense about gas chambers is exposed as a total lie."

On Muslims - He recently said on Newsnight that muslim immigrants were to blame for the country's hard drugs problems.

BNP youth leader Mark Collett - "I'd never say this on camera, the Jews have been thrown out of every country including England. It's not just persecution. There's no smoke without fire."

Scott McLean - The party's deputy chairman - Was shown on the TV documentary "Nazi Hate Rock" making Hitler salutes at a white-supremacist cross-burning ceremony where intensely racist songs were sung and jokes made about Auschwitz.

7 July London bombings - The BNP released leaflets featuring images of the bombed Route 30 bus and the slogan "Maybe now it's time to start listening to the BNP".

On homosexuality - It "should not be promoted or encouraged".

Any way, that's my two cents ...

R

On Oyster - I don't think an Oyster card is that much harder to get than Octopus from HK, I have both, and registered neither, took less than 2 mins to get both. I agree that the HK metro is amazing, but have you ever seen a building site in China or Hong Kong? the price of labour there is incomparable to here. It's very cheap to constantly have people cleaning the station, keeping the lines moving and generallly giving a good service.

On the BNP - Eli, I couldn't have put it better myself.

General C - the law which you refer to protecting 'your job' only applies if the person comes to the UK on a visa that is issued is specifically for them to do 'your job'. That is, if someone from outside of the EU is sponsored by a British company to work for them. Isn't it far more likely that 'your job' was outsourced perfectly legally to a country with a much lower cost of living, and therefore was actually a well paying job for the computer programmer concerned?

yeah - but labor is not cheap in NYC or Tokyo and they both cost $2 or less for a journey comparable to Victoria-Piccadilly sans Oyster (or last I used both, anyway). I know it's not that hard, but it seems counter-intuitive to put an obstacle like that into using public transport - my main objection is the lines to get one instead of getting out of a machine (unless that's changed), which at the major stations and heathrow are terrible) or to gouge people. It's like when they stopped taking cash on the night bus and put those machines on oxford street which were often broken. Just a couple strange glitches in what I think was overall a good transport policy.

I think 2 of the biggest obstacles for improving the tube are its age adn the unions. I certainly think London Transport workers should get a living wage, but tube drivers seem to make about 10k more than teachers, police officers or nurses in London when they start out which doesn't seem right somehow.

I don't think the high prices for non-Oyster tickets are for any other reason than to push as many people as possible to go over to Oyster... they've been making Oyster more and more attractive while the other options get worse and worse; if the vast majority of the users are on the cheap system I hardly think you can call it gouging

and admittedly it's a different thing if you're there for a shorter time, but I just don't get the queue complaints either... I got an Oyster card, set it up with auto-top up, and never had to think about it again; NEVER stood in line, never had any hassles... if I wanted a travelcard added I went to my local newsagent and waited two minutes

I would like to have an efficient public transport system...period...

That runs 24/7.

oh, I know what you mean... back here in Sydney I can hardly believe how crap it is compared to what I'm used to in London; I feel stranded all the time

I agree about the tube unions. It's just that they can hold up the whole city by striking, so they have a very powerful bargaining positon. Ken tried to get them to stay open longer on the weekends, but the best deal he could strike was that they would also open an hour later in the morning.

lets see what Boris will manage...