Boris says awesome things...

Tremendous news has flooded into the Boriswatch inbox. According to The Times (hardly a traditional avid Boris supporter), Gordon Brown “has all but written off Ken Livingstone’s chances of winning the London mayoral election.” This, ladies and gentlemen, can only mean one thing – Boris is destined for Mayor!
There are two main reasons for their dismay. Firstly, Boris’s campaign manager Lynton Crosby is coordinating a very clever “Zone 5 and 6″ campaign, targeting the area around the outer band of the Tube’s network in order to win votes in crucial enclaves.
The second reason? Madonna may well be voting for him.

Boriswatch gets quite a few requests for information from students, who are often using Boris or Boriswatch as a muse for their essays and even dissertations. Here – with her permission – is a Boriswatch Q and A session with Helen Clark, a journalism student from University of Lincoln.

Q: When and why was Boriswatch started?
A: Boriswatch was started in 2003 when I saw Boris on Have I Got News For You and found him intensely funny. I looked on the internet, and found virtually nothing about him. So, seeing as I could build websites, I started Boriswatch. It was originally a subsection of my personal website, but gained its own web domain in early 2004.

Q: How good has the response been to it?
A: Immense. After about 3 weeks of posting, the visitors ramped up to around 300 a week. Now, the site pulls in over 2000 visitors a week, has two contributors, and has appeared on BBC News, Sky News and ITV. We’ve had articles published in FHM, BBC News and the official Back Boris site, as well as interest from smaller organisations. And – dare I mention it – there’s even a Boriswatch-constructed Boris For Mayor song!

Q: Has Boris himself seen or commented about the website?
A: Boris has seen it and commented on it on ITV and the BBC as well as his personal website – and thanks to his wonderful team I have met up with him many times. There was even a Central News piece on Boriswatch itself, complete with a discussion with Boris on what he thinks of the site, Boriswatch t-shirts and the first mention of the legendary Boriswatch Thong. However, when the Boris team first approached me, their opening line was “Are you some sort of nutter?”

Q: Why do you think Boris appeals so much to the younger generation?
A: Well, firstly, he’s funny. Some people don’t like his privileged upbringing, but his personality and self-deprecation takes the edge off of the criticisms. Personality is a rare commodity in politics, and it’s a breath of fresh air. Because he’s funny, people listen to him. And because they listen to him, they realise that he speaks his mind, regardless of the political fallout, which is very rare in politics. And because people find he says what he thinks, they tend to agree with him! People can see that underneath the messy fair lies a very clever brain – I’ll never forget when he forgot write a Telegraph column that was due to be published the next day. It was 12.30pm, and we were in a pub in Oxfordshire. He whipped out two paper napkins from behind the bar and started writing. That article, written on the spur of the moment, was in the paper the next day, almost completely unedited. I know many people that take days to achieve the same thing…
And let me tell you – I’ve met him many times, and his appearance and personality is no act. He is the same in private as he is in person – which can be seen as a good thing or a bad thing!

Q: Why do you think he has had the ability to weather problems which would have destroyed other politicians careers?
A: It’s the Stephen Fry school of deprecation, I think. Most of the time, people actually agree with him. He speaks sense, and cheers people up. That’s a very rare quality, and people warm to him so much that minor transgressions can be forgiven. People don’t want to lose the one person that speaks sense and entertains them in politics. Yes, he gets things wrong – but when he does, he admits them, rather than cover it up like most public figures.

Q: What would you consider to be Boris’ finest moment?
A: Ooooh, good one. Well, up until now, I would have to say becoming a minister in shadow government would have to be the top achievement so far. Boris has always wanted to focus on politics, and he would have been chuffed at that.
However, the greatest achievement is get to come – becoming Mayor of London!

If Boris wins, will we be waving goodbye to the old, jovial and downright amusing Boris Johnson? The two sides are interchangeable, argues Boris himself in this video excerpt from Reuters.

The Times delivers an article trying to get under the skin of the new self-restrained BoJo – and thoroughly fails. It’s not far away though, reasons Alice Mills.

Out of the current crop of minor parties in British politics, the Greens stand out as one of the more mature plantations. However whilst UKIP have had some success in Euro elections, and even Respect have an MP, Sian Berry is still dragging her sandals, polling just three per cent of the popular vote in London.

As Ken [officially] launched his Mayoral Campaign, making a second preference pact with Ms Berry, she took to the stage, showering the audience with her youthful good looks she unfortunately proceeded to open her mouth. This is what came out:

“Boris Johnson has real contempt for Londoners. He hates that we celebrate each other’s heritage; he hates that we try to pass on a healthy environment to our children; he hates that we look after our most vulnerable neighbours; and most of all he hates that we all expect to share in our city’s financial success. And if he’s elected he will do his best to destroy all of that” (Source: www.politics.co.uk)

According to wikipedia, Oxford educated Ms Berry is a veteran campaigner who spearheaded the “Alliance Against Urban 4×4’s” and more recently set up “Census Alert”.

The former is a group of busybodies who go around Hampstead plastering people’s cars with fake parking tickets. After not far off vandalising residents’ cars in Hampstead and Highgate for a few years, Ms Berry was stupid enough to then try and get elected as their MP in 2005. Needless to say she lost miserably, polling 5.3% of the vote in an election where there was widespread protest voting on the Iraq issue.

Her latest venture, ‘Census Alert’ is an organisation that campaigns against Lockheed Martin being awarded the contract for the 2011 UK Census, on the grounds that they are also a defence contractor. Their website includes factually incorrect information, such as insinuating that the Lockheed Martin F-22 ‘Raptor’ was used in the ‘Shock and Awe’ bombing of Iraq in 2003, when in fact it only came into active service in December 2005, and is primarily an air superiority fighter, not a bomber.

Now that MS Berry has turned her dimwitted attentions to this feeble attempt at persuading Londoners that Boris hates them all, hopefully the result will be that the three per cent of Londoners that fancied her enough to give her their first preference will now decide to look elsewhere.

An excellent insight into a day on the Mayoral campaign trail comes from the Guardian Backbencher email sent to inboxes today. Here’s an excerpt:

“Saturday morning and the Backbencher heads to mayoral hustings in west London. But Ken’s not there. Even Paddick isn’t there. Boris is left practically hosting the hustings, lingo-bombing the audience with new terms for road potholes – “enigmatic craters” – and commuting – “armpit-nuzzling hell” – before setting off out into the neighbourhood along with black social worker Shaun Bailey, who will contest the area at the next election (with boundaries redrawn). The Backbencher is alarmed. Before her eyes, a general, not London, election walkabout is taking place.

Boris approaches black constituents and a number are now saying he gets their vote. Emphatically.

Bailey lingers at the back of the caravan and gripes to the local reporter about the man who’ll be his Labour challenger after the boundary change. “I met two rival candidates the other day who didn’t bitch about each other but they were women. Here? It’s war. He never spends any time in his own constituency. He’s always in my end. I
say, ‘Go back to your own constituents’”.

Then. The sound of free speech. A black woman shouts “disgraceful” at Boris and the team spring into action: Bailey moves swiftly to placate her while the lofty strawberry-blond walkabout ringleader ushers the rest on, in jolly overdrive. He grabs and then pulls a young peroxide-blond woman across the pavement towards the naturally blond Boris. “Go on. Say you’ll give Boris your vote,” he shouts at the bemused student: “Us blonds have got to stick together.”

Ten metres away, Bailey has finally managed to calm the angry black woman and luckily for the Tories neither seemed to have heard. A campaign strategy based on persecuted blonds might not fly round here.”

Great spot by Boriswatch reader cased: London taxi receipts featuring the Back Boris campaign. Cunning!

Got a Boris photo you’re aching to share with Boris fans? Video footage of BoJo? Something else? Help is at hand with a new widget we’ve added to the bottom of the sidebar. It enables you to send files into us simply and easily. Get sending!

Iain Dale, Conservative blogger to the political stars, pleads with the public to accept Boris as the Mayor in this article in the Telegraph. Sure, the article’s main points are great – but my favourite part, I think, has to be the picture…

Ann Treneman, sketch writer for The Times, details a meeting with the Mayor-in-Waiting: Boris Johnson runs away from the circus to be a serious candidate. A lot of articles are coming out in favour of the new, transplanted Serious Boris!