Boris says awesome things...

When: Tonight (30th March 2009) Channel 4, 8pm

Dispatches, the current affairs investigative programme, is devoted entirely to Boris tonight. Rumours abound that the showing won’t be as pro-Boris as Boriswatch hoped – the byline “Do Boris’s ideas really stack up” doesn’t ooze confidance – but it should still be an interesting programme.

Not least because it plans to stir up the Guppygate controversy by airing the recording of Boris considering beating up a journalist for his friend…

Update 8.20pm: In fact, it couldn’t be more anti-Boris. Their process: Gather together Boris-detractors, film their complaints, air them…

Update 9:10pm: Can anyone say “hatchet job”? Write in to www.channel4.com/contact if you feel the need to complain…

Update: 9:20pm: Awesome twitterage on the programme (follow Boriswatch.com here). Favourite: “it’s like a 19 year old ranting 1st year journo student doing his 1st camera piece after writing for Socialist Worker”.

Update 9:30pm: Just sent my complaint in to Channel 4 – I suggest all Boriswatchers do the same: http://www.channel4.com/contact/ .

My One Piece of Advice is a site dreamt up by Guy Baumann, asking public figures to give one piece of advice in order to help the rest of us. A noble idea, Boriswatch thinks.
He’s asked 19 public figures so far – and only one has bothered to reply. Can anyone guess which one?
Yep, it’s our very own Boris Johnson! Here’s the jubilant blog post from Guy. Boris’s pearls of wisdom are these:

“Work hard and never give up.”

I think we can all agree with that, can’t we, Boriswatchers?

It’s not a statistic that many people have considered — that is, until they find themselves caught short in the Capital — but London’s public toilet provisions have falled by more than 40% in the last year. Never fear, though: Boris and his team think they’ve found a solution. The Mayor’s office will be asking local businesses to throw open their doors for those in dire need of somewhere to answer the call of nature without necessarily expecting them to purchase anything in the meantime.

An article in the Guardian is trying to bring the problem to the public’s attention, a fact that Boris’s gang say is part of the problem; while a lot of businesses are already relatively open to the man on the street using their facilities, not many people know where to find the ‘safe’ locations. BoJo wants that to change, and is encouraging businesses to make it clear that their toilets are available on a no purchase necessary basis.

On the surface, it sounds like a great idea: the public get better toilet provision, and the tax bill doesn’t have to cover it. Still, the rapidly declining number of official public toilets seems to be causing some people a bit of worry, including Mike Bone of the (we kid you not) British Toilet Association, who noted that this scheme shouldn’t let councils off the hook for providing their own services, as — among other things — toilets in places of business won’t be available twenty-four hours a day, possibly leaving some people up an aptly-named creek without a paddle.

What do you think? Is this a good plan, or can it only be a temporary measure until a more permanent council-based system can be put into place?

It’s not often that we get an opportunity to applaud the Daily Mail here at BorisWatch Towers, and so we’re going to seize the moment: their recent article on Boris’s decision to encourage St George’s Day celebrations highlights a bold decision that should have been made years ago.

A multicultural society is important, there can be no doubt about that; in fact, trying to pretend that Britain is anything other than a melting pot of other cultures is pretty much hiding your head in the sand at this point. However, there’s nothing wrong with celebrating the traditionally English along with that, and Boris makes a very good point: why is it that we don’t make a fuss for our patron saint in the country the way St Andrew, St Patrick and St David are celebrated? Is England no longer a thing to be celebrated?

Still, if blatant nationalism isn’t your thing, you might want to note that St George’s Day marks the date of death (and probable birthday) of Shakespeare, so perhaps you might find yourself tempted by a few sonnets or a quick trip to the theatre.

Let us know your thoughts. Will you be embracing your Englishness come April 23rd? If so, how? If not, what’s stopping you?

(image: VentnorBlog Isle of Wight News)

Never let it be said that we here at BorisWatch Towers don’t present to you the hard-hitting stories when they matter. Here, courtesy of TotallyLooksLike.com, we can reveal to you a shocking link between the Mayor and the very peak of the American wealthy elite. Sort of.

While I don’t think anyone’s necessarily going to be confusing them on the street any time soon, it’s hard to deny that there’s a certain similarity there — a fact that’s kind of worrying, given Trump’s hardcore combover.

What do you think? Has the internet discovered Boris’s doppelganger, or is it just two blond men with wild hair that both happen to be wearing suits? Let us know in the comments.

Just a quick note: an increasingly rare public media appearance by Boris is tonight, 8pm GMT on BBC Radio 4. The show, Any Questions, debates the big topics of the day – think Question Time for radio.

Here’s the link to listen – click the Listen Live button on the top right at 8pm GMT.

The thrashing of Ken at the Mayoral election was a joy to behold. And it looks like we’re going to get another showing – Ken has announced that he will run for Mayor in 2012!

Boriswatch is fairly confident that he will have a tough fight on his hands – recently, Sir Alan Sugar was touted as another potential contender. This is shaping up to be  a hell of a tussle – may that best blond-haired man win!

Enterprising web folks have launched TweetBorisTweet, a site where visitors can vote on a new background for Boris’s Twitter page!
Boris has become on of the most followed UK twitterers, even though cynics might claim he doesn’t necessarily do the tweeting himself. However, gems do appear from time to time – take this one from yesterday:

“Due to popular demand here is the recipe for my homemade chutney. Apple, raisins, vinegar, sugar & onion. All in a pan. Cook till ready. Eat.”

Or not.

But close, according to the Mayor’s father’s new book, Stanley I Presume. By all accounts, according to an article in the Telegraph this week, Johnson Sr (StaJo? DadJo?) was recruited for spy training during his days at Oxford in the sixties. While he was the given ‘most intensive training in clandestine techniques known to man’, he apparently left for a job at the World Bank through a real fear that his ‘incompetence might have cost people their lives’ — typically self-derogatory humour (I hope) from the Johnson family, there.

Suddenly, the picture we ran of Double-O Boris the other month doesn’t seem quite so far-fetched…

When you’re Mayor of a city as cosmopolitan as London, it’s important that you try and keep as many people happy as possible. Men and women, rich and poor, black or white — and, despite Boris’s undeniable Conservatism — Labour and Tory. As such, BoJo doesn’t snipe at the Labour Party nearly as often as he did back when he was an MP (as much of a shame as that is, given his typically acerbic wit), but he’s really gone for it recently in his blog.

The most recent entry, published the next day in the Telegraph, involves a fairly scathing attack on Labour deputy Harriet Harman and her recent comments regarding the ‘nauseating’ payout that Sir Fred Goodwin, the man who seemed intent on bringing down the Royal Bank of Scotland, will receive as a pension — approximately £650,000, a figure that Harman has described as ‘not going to happen’, as it is ‘unacceptable’.

It’s easy to agree with Harman on this — after all, no one wants to think that the people who have mired the country in its current financial mess should be allowed to profit one penny from it. Unfortunately, and as Boris points out, there’s nothing she (or we) can do. The rules have been made, and now they have to be stuck with. Unfortunately, this time it means that the fat cats get the cream. We have to accept it this time, but lessons need to be learned in order to prevent another catastrophe further down the line.

It’s a controversial piece, certainly, but well worth a read. It raises some interesting questions about precisely who’s to blame for the whole business, and serves as a reminder that — no matter what the Government might portray as being the case — this situation is not as simple as it first appears.