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malumbu Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Obviously Khan will walk it. But it got me

> thinking tonight that Sean Bailey had been put up

> as a patsy. The Tories could have put up a

> stronger candidate but is suits their agenda to

> both use the current mayor as a scapegoat, but

> also that this will keep the outer boroughs

> conservative, where he and his centre left

> politics are generally not supported.



Inner Londoners still gradually moving to Outer Boroughs and the Home Counties - not sure whether it will have an effect eventually or even if they turn Tory :)

Interesting, once when in the outer boroughs people would tell me that had to move out because of 'them' (ie immigrants), now it tends to be due to the 'schools'. Will in future it be due to LTNs and left wing politics? Conversely it is now nice to see some of the outer boroughs more diverse - Bromley (town) and Beckenham certainly, it wont stay that way as you get further out. My politics have become slightly more moderate as I get older, but certainly no move to the right...!
Interesting, once when in the outer boroughs people would tell me that had to move out because of 'them' (ie immigrants), now it tends to be due to the 'schools'. Will in future it be due to LTNs and left wing politics? Conversely it is now nice to see some of the outer boroughs more diverse - Bromley (town) and Beckenham certainly, it wont stay that way as you get further out. My politics have become slightly more moderate as I get older, but certainly no move to the right...!
  • 3 weeks later...

Duncan - nope, many people moved out in the last century to the outer boroughs due to the influx (or at least as they saw it) of immigrants. These people will now be getting on/dying out.


Nowadays I expect it is more likely that many move out due to 'better schools' although from the other part of this site I expect some will move out as the outer boroughs are more pro-car.

I'll agree, ?200 on every single council tax bill in London ish? 10% increase from last year.


How was London run before the Mayor?


DulwichFox Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> > Do away with the post .. Too costly..

>

> The Mayor's salary is

> ?152,734. per year

> The salary of an Assembly Member is

> currently ? 58,543. per year

> except for the Statutory Deputy

> Mayor which is ?105,269. per year

> and the Chair of the Assembly which

> is ? 70,225. per year

>

>

> 1 Ken Livingstone 4 May 2008

> 2 Boris Johnson 9 May 2016

> 3 Sadiq Khan Incumbent

>

> None of them have done anything of benefit.

>

> Foxy

Well we voted to have a Mayor so nothing is going to change, you can put up or shut up!


What did the Romans/Mayor do for us. Oh contactless travel? Integrated local transport? Reduced fares?? 2012 Olympics where we were the envy of the globe, maxed out on national happiness and the last time the country was united???

You're right Malumbu, not forgetting cancelling the last route master historic route, building an over running / over cost tube line , not getting knife crime under control , failing to fund the police correctly and not forgetting installing measures to reduce pollution that make it worse and don't account for elderly and the disabled (street space)


The mayors done loads of things for us...

So is the question: does the Mayor have power to do stuff? Or is it: why does the Mayor use the power he has to do stuff I don?t like?


If it?s the latter, London has the opportunity to vote him out in a few weeks. Although we all know that?s extremely unlikely to happen.

mrwb Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> I'll agree, ?200 on every single council tax bill

> in London ish? 10% increase from last year.


Less than 10% of that is the Mayor and Assembly, 75% ish is the police and the rest is the Fire Brigade and TfL. Not saying the Mayor and Assembly plus Boroughs are the right way to run greater London, but most of the spending would be incurred anyway.

If there were no Mayor, there would still be a budget for all those things, and local authorities would still be the major player in local taxes after government guidelines. So the Mayor in reality is little else but a bureaucratic figurehead. The in-between guy (or gal) elected to manage the oversight of our metropolitan cities. The power for manoeuvre within that is very narrow.

You're right blah blah, the budget for services would still be there and needed but the cost for city hall, city hall workers, assembly members , tsars , the Mayor and all associated expenses wouldn't.


That's multi millions that could be used for London centric projects / needs and not just on a layer of bureaucracy that sits between local councils and the government.

Spartacus Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> You're right blah blah, the budget for services

> would still be there and needed but the cost for

> city hall, city hall workers, assembly members ,

> tsars , the Mayor and all associated expenses

> wouldn't.

>

> That's multi millions that could be used for

> London centric projects / needs and not just on a

> layer of bureaucracy that sits between local

> councils and the government.


Potentially. What you?ve listed costs about ?65m a year according to the budget on London.gov.uk. Presumably if we did away with the Mayor and Assembly we?d want some oversight of TfL, LFB and the Met, perhaps this could be absorbed into central government departments or perhaps the boroughs could provide oversight as a collective group somehow? In either case that wouldn?t be free.


Personally I would favour power being devolved downwards from government to the mayor (particularly around transport) and a rethink of the borough structure which makes little sense.

Ultimately though, power resides with government. So the Mayor, like local authorities, is not a law unto itself, especially when it comes to setting and maintaining budgets. Failure to pass a budget is against the law in fact, and invites government to step in, in the way they have in Liverpool (following those corruption allegations). So while there is some sense in a body having overall responsibility for management of key services and infrastructure across a large city or region, the ability to change anything is very limited.


The Mayor in reality is just the return of the Greater Metropolitan Authority, hence the body being an elected one. And when looking at the range of candidates this time round, most of the non main party candidates are citing things as policy they have no powers to deliver as Mayor. I suspect Count Binface will do better than all of the smaller candidates in the end, with Khan winning outright from first preference votes.

When I gave an example of what the Romans did for us I purposely used Livingstone. This thread very much seems to be aimed at some people's displeasure about Khan.


I could go through each of them and list good and bad points - Livingstone bike hire, Oyster, congestion charge, London 2012 good, bendy buses bad and could be perceived as a crook/zero humility.


Johnson - ULEZ, investment in low emission buses good, removal of Western congestion charge, new routemaster, garden bridge and Boris island airport (three vanity projects) bad. And a (allegedly) megalomaniac/liar.


Khan - hmmm, slightly more exciting than Starmer, but hardly a character. Yet he will get a landslide so either people aren't bothered, there is no viable alternative, and/or he'd done OK.


Local government will always be clunky/dysfunctional. LAs are often poorly joined up, or do not seem to follow/share best practice. I worked with Oxford once where there seemed to be a massive rift between Oxford City Council and the County Council, Labour vs Tories. Interestingly Oxford all but banned cars 30 years ago and if you visit now you wonder how they could have ever been allowed in the first place. But the uproar at the time about pushing traffic out to the ring road and beyond it's borders.


We lost our regional government structure under the coalition government - an unnecessary level of bureaucracy? Yet Covid showed how valuable that tier could be.


And other metropolitan areas want to do what London does in having policies and systems that go beyond individual boroughs particularly on transport.


As said it's clunky, I am sure could be made to work better, but it ain't going to go away and you are going to have four more years of Khan.

The Tory lot are miffed (again) they just don?t get why London doesn?t like them, or want their mayor


So they bully the mayor from above. Same old Tory tactics.


But London prefers a Labour mayor, even a one like Khan.


And so the next 4 years go.


It?s a way of sticking it to the current Tory government.


Fcuk you, fcuk Brexit.

New London mayor poll: (Comres)


Sadiq Khan (LAB): 41%

Shaun Bailey (CON): 28%

Luisa Porritt (Lib): 8%

Sian Berry (GRN): 6%

Niko Omilana (IND): 5%

Farah London: (IND) : 2%

Brian Rose: (IND): 2%

Count Binface (CBP): 1%

Peter Gammons (UKIP): 1%

Laurence Fox (REC): 1%



I'm not sure how Count Binface will ever be able to show his face if he ends up drawing with Fox...

I can't vote for Khan as he spent so much on fireworks in preparation for the Brexit vote (who saw that coming)! Also Southwark Council have so many empty properties on their books which they don't seem to want to let out. This goes against Khan's policy for the homeless in London.


Also Southwark Council have created in the past year or so a nightmare road policy for car drivers. They don't seem to care if you're disabled, elderly, etc. just as long as they can rake in the money from more road closures.


Been having lots of Labour people coming out delivering leaflets in my area. Didn't have a chance to talk to them yesterday but they probably know I go against the grain in the area.


Then again, Shaun Bailey was a good choice for me as he would hopefully undo these things. But I have a personal reason that I wouldn't vote for Shaun Bailey and it's a shame as I think he would be good for London.

  • 2 weeks later...
I voted for the Count (the entreaty for supporters to put their bins on the pavement at least once in the last week as a show of support did it for me). Was just pondering the significance of his standing for the Count Binface Party rather than as an independent - and after a quick google in turns out the CBP is registered to an address in Forest Hill. So practically a local candidate.

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