Boris says awesome things...

Spin - It makes you ill

Dear Boriswatchers,

Boriswatch Towers got mildly tainted yesterday by the expenses scandal and wants to clear up a couple of points:

1. The site Boriswatch.com has never received funding by Boris Johnson or anyone connected with him. The site is wholly independent – but rather likes him.
2. If people asked before publishing, they would get closer to the real story. The BBC asked; the Evening Standard didn’t even try, and gave implications in this article that are wholly untrue. There’s a lesson there that I’m sure doesn’t need spelling out – or maybe the Standard just wanted to sell more papers.

I’d like to thank Tory Troll for actually taking the time to contact Boriswatch and actually publish the truth. His post this morning couldn’t be fairer.

Onwards and upwards, Boriswatchers!

Best Wishes,

Simon

The ideas and posts for Boriswatch often stem from you guys – fellow Boridwatchers with a keen eye for Boris-based details. So, we’ve decided to harness that power.
See the little blue “Feedback” tab half-way up the far right of every Boriswatch page? That, my friends, is a new way to contact Boriswatch Towers if you have any praise, comments, complaints or ideas on anything Boriswatch. It’s in conjunction with a great little service called Get Satisfaction, and all the feedback will be available in the Boriswatch Forum over at Get Satisfaction.
So, click on the tab and praise/comment/complain/suggest away!

PlayRadioUK published a rare live (nowadays, anyway) interview with Boris yesterday, as the results came in on the local elections. The 8 minute audio interview talking to Iain Dale is a bit of a gem – it really sounds as though Boris has kept the humour but added a bit of gravity to his views. Well, all apart from the kickoff question – “are you a bit damp from your experiences in the river?”, a reference to his very Boris-like fall into a river while being filmed the other day (here’s the story and video in case you missed it). Boris announces, tongue in cheek, that it was a “brilliantly engineered publicity stunt” to get “saturation coverage”. Brilliant!
So here’s the interview – it kicks off at about 1min 30secs.

As you will no doubt know by now (the coverage has been political light-relief on a dire week of political combustion), Boris fell into a river this week. It’s just as contortingly amusing as it sounds – The news sites have been cock-a-hoop, and twitter has been ablaize with people either laughing or holding the metaphorical head in their hands.
The BBC has the full take on the event, but here’s the video…

Oh, Lily Allen.
We’ve previously commented on the predilection that the diminutive Mockney rebel has for the Mayor, but it seems that she’s gone and dashed all our hopes.
Yes, we’re afraid to report that Ms Allen will be voting for Gordon Brown at the next election, despite the fact that she was credited with starting a rebellion against Brown’s policies only a year ago. Apparently, Lily feels that she could never become a Tory, so it’s Labour all the way when the ballots open.
Isn’t it terrible when party politics gets in the way of something beautiful?

With the furore about MPs’ expenses raging in the media, it’s somewhat disappointing to see that Boris has followed suit with his former colleagues and attempted to cheat the system for as much as he could get his grubby little mitts on.
What’s that, you say? He hasn’t?

Oh.

Yes, Boris appears to have come through the scandal completely unscathed, gently deriding those who did exploit the expenses system and quipping like a pro along the way. The soundbite of the week has to come from his defence of bike-riding:

Unless you’re completely insane or devious or a Liberal Democrat then there is no way you can fiddle your bike expenses.

I know that many people (including the folks at BorisWatch Towers) were shocked at the level of dodging and diving that appears to be a regular part of MPs’ expense claims — at times, it’s seemed like a parliamentary remake of Minder — and so it’s nice to see at least one high-profile figure who doesn’t have financial skeletons coming out of his closet.
And let’s face it… if there was anything to dig up, it would have been plastered over the front pages by now.

Into WHAT? Even Boriswatch had to look that up. Apparently it’s Phone Blogging – or “online audio postcards”, as the marketing has it – and Boris and his team are showing their cutting edge credentials by getting a phlog started while Bozza is at the C40 Climate Change conference in Korea. Updates will be announced on Twitter and on the City Hall website.

So, here’s his phlog, which will be updated daily: www.ipadio.com/phlogs/borisjohnson/

Update 4pm: Here’s Boris’s first Phlog (enjoy the first “what?” as it dawns on him that he’s on air…!):

So we’ve made it. Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson has been in charge of the nation’s capital for a full year. It’s still standing. Tower Bridge is not on fire, Canary Wharf has not shut down due to an elaborately comical mishap involving trifle.

To all the naysayers, we blow a hearty raspberry, and make rude gestures in your general direction. To those who doubted him twelve months ago… well, we can’t say we blame you. Look at the man. Based on appearances alone, we wouldn’t trust him to run a pub quiz, let alone a city. But the fact remains, Boris has done it, and he’s done us proud.

Sure, there are problems. This is politics. There are always going to be problems. Utopias don’t exist. However, Boris has made massive leaps forward in dealing with the arts, young people, sports, the police force and crime (among others), as well as dealing with scandals that may well have sunk a lesser politician but that have hardly left a dent in him. That’s not to say that everything’s exactly peachy — the bendy buses are still here and the Routemaster is not, which should be addressed as soon as possible — but things seem to be ticking along nicely. We here at BorisWatch Towers are looking forward to the remainder of Boris’s term — and, with any luck, his subsequent re-election when the time comes.

Well done, Mr Johnson, and a happy anniversary to you.

Good news for BorisWatchers and bad news for those who follow the Banner of Red Ken: Boris is definitely running for re-election next time the ballots come around, and isn’t looking for his break at the Prime Ministership (Prime Ministerhood?).

The Standard recently reported that Boris might not run for Mayor again, instead using his current role as a springboard to the Premiership in future years. However, this rumour has been emphatically quashed by Boris, who states that his ‘appetite for power is glutted’.

Say what you want about Boris (and believe me, people do), but I think it’s hard to deny that he’s going to be a great asset when it comes to hosting the Olympic Games in 2012. While you can’t judge the worthiness of a mayoral candidate for one job alone, it would be a great shame if he wasn’t there leading the country as the torch arrived. As such, it’s looking like it’s going to be an interesting election next time around, with Boris and the former Mayor Ken Livingstone both looking for another shot at the title. If you thought last year’s ballot was interesting, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

Underhanded swipe of the week? Immediately after saying how hard the job of Mayor could be, Boris went on to say ‘I pay tribute to Ken Livingstone for making it the job it is’. Intentional or not, that’s a bit of a burn to Red Ken. Ouch indeed, Boris.

As all you literary bods are surely aware, this week — specifically the 22nd of April — played host to the London Book Fair. This is typically a big deal for the publishing world, and as such they hire big names to give the occasional speech. You guessed it: Boris was there, and in full swing. Here’s the video of his performance.

It’s not often that you get to take a look at Boris in full rhetorical swing, so spend ten minutes listening to him wax lyrical about books and the like. The best bit, for those who don’t feel like sitting through the whole thing? Boris stating that his favourite mayor in literature is the man in charge of Amity Island in Peter Benchley’s Jaws — the selfsame mayor who said that everything was OK even as body parts were washing up on the beach — and highlighting the lessons we can learn from that. Genius.