Boris says awesome things...

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.

The internet is awash with stories about how the 2009 budget is going to affect people — as you’d expect, given its importance to the Great British public — and as usual, reviews are mixed as to how useful Darling Alistair’s plans are going to be in helping us muddle through the recession the media never stops banging on about. Here’s a handy summary for those who didn’t manage to catch it firsthand, as well as Anne Redston’s examination of the problems that lie therein. Of course, this is BorisWatch, and it would be entirely remiss of us not to include Boris’s thoughts on the whole thing. Quoth Mr Johnson:

This budget does little to help London and a lot to hurt it. While there are some welcome announcements, the Chancellor’s barrage of measures to raise more tax from high earners affects London and Londoners far more than anywhere else. Our capital is the engine room of the UK economy, generating 17 per cent of the UK’s GDP each year. Penalising high earners with higher taxes risks undermining the capital’s competitiveness in the cut throat field where the City has been most successful, and runs the risk of driving highly skilled workers away and deterring others from coming.

Many of the housing measures – such as the extension of the stamp duty – are too small to help the London housing market as prices are higher here in the capital. Also, the capital will benefit very little from measures to help the oil industry, manufacturing or the car industry. The boost to low carbon industries is very welcome – and is supported by my economic strategy – but I want to make sure this is not simply targeted at other parts of the country and that London gets its fair share.

The man has a point: London is going to struggle more than most places due to the high cost of living, and it’s no wonder he’s keen to ensure that his city is looked after. What do you think? Were Londoners short-changed by our Darling Chancellor, or is everything as it should be? Let us know in the comments

It wasn’t all fun and games for Boris yesterday, despite the patriotic St George’s Day celebrations across the city; the Mayor also wound up at a private meeting with the Metropolitan police authority in order to discuss the fallout from the G20 summit. For those of you who’ve been hiding under a rock for the last few weeks, video footage of an unnamed policeman pushing an innocent bystander over, causing what is now believed to be a fatal case of internal bleeding, has lead to the Police Complaints Commission taking a good look at the events with an eye to severely disciplining those involved. However, Boris gave an interview before his meeting in which he stated that:

I worry that there are large sections of the media that are currently engaged in a very unbalanced orgy of cop bashing.

I think it is wrong, it is wildly overdone … everybody understands that there are serious questions to answer about what happened to some of the protesters at the G20, and particularly Ian Tomlinson, and thoughts are with his family, but you have to get it into proportion.

Now it’s beyond dispute that some members of the police force were well out of line in terms of their professional conduct and behaviour while on crowd control duty, and as such a full and frank investigation is necessary. Having said that, of course, you can’t (and shouldn’t) throw out the entire crop because of a few bad apples, and the media is indeed guilty of stirring up anti-police resentment among the masses — resentment that makes it very difficult for the hard-working bobbies out there to do the jobs they need to do. Additionally, police morale has nosedived in recent weeks, which can’t be good for anyone.

Is Boris right? Has the media unfairly tarred and feathered the whole of the police force in order to drum up sales, or was it a justified response to the tragic death of someone who wasn’t even involved in the protest? Let us know in the comments.

After yesterday’s celebrations, the Guardian has reported on Boris’s latest words about what Englishness is all about — this time, that we should reclaim the St George Cross to stop it being the prerogative of the BNP. He certainly has a point: most of the complaints that come linked with a resurgence of support for the April celebration focus on worries that it will be linked to a nationalism that has become somewhat tarnished by its association with groups that preach the lofty and ill-considered goal of England Über Alles.

However, Boris is right. It doesn’t have to be this way, and we shouldn’t let the prejudicial minority spoil it for the many (especially with the news in the article that the British National Party could gain seats at the European elections in June). By all means, let’s keep the flag flying, and celebrate Englishness for its unifying traits, not its ability to exclude.

A happy St George’s Day to all our loyal readers from everyone here at BorisWatch Towers!

Inkeeping with the tone of the festivities (and as a sop to the current labour laws… something to do with exploitation of workers), we’ve let the interns have the day off, and we’ll be joining them shortly in order to make the most of the fine weather and celebrate what being English is really all about. Of course, with the events Boris has laid on all across the Capital, there’s no shortage of things to do this week, so be sure to let your red cross fly, your inner Englishman stand proud, and celebrate this sceptred isle for all it’s worth.

How did you spend your St George’s Day? Was it the national celebration you’d hoped for and so richly deserved, or — in the tradition of British summer festivities — a bit of a damp squib? Let us know in the comments.

A recent survey conducted by YouGov found that more people trust Boris to keep his promises than the Prime Minister, with almost double the number of people choosing BoJo’s word over that of Mr Brown in terms of how likely it is to come to pass.

As good as this news is, the actual percentage of people who trust Boris’s word stands at a staggering(-ly low) 20%. Now we’re all for a healthy dose of cynicism here at BorisWatch Towers (although our compatriots over at that other Boriswatch site would no doubt disagree on that one), but can it really be the case that four out of five people surveyed don’t think that Boris will match up to his promises? Say it isn’t so, Great British Public!

As he nears the end of his first year in office, let’s hope that Boris’s perceived trustworthiness increases with time. It would, after all, be rather nice to have a politician we could believe for a change.

As you’ll no doubt have heard, the Damian Green debacle has run out of steam (even if it hasn’t come to a complete stop yet) with the news that Green was innocent of any wrongdoing. Of course, this is good news for Boris, who many feared had made a disastrous decision in commenting on the whole affair when it happened. For a full rundown of the events of recent days (seriously, there are pages of articles), anyone who’s interested could do a lot worse than to check out Google’s news feed. Of course, it’s likely that the picture will become a lot clearer over the next few days, and so you can expect regular updates on how this affects our dear old Mayor.

Hopefully now Mr Green — and by extension, Boris — can put this whole ghastly mess behind them and focus on the future, both political and personal.

It’s been rather a slow week for Boris-related news (between people either praising his foresight or condemning his latest decisions as his first year in office draws to a close), but an interesting tidbit slipped onto the letters page of the Guardian. With reference to Gordon Brown’s decision to subsidise electric cars, Jenny Jones of the Green Party writes:

I’m not a big fan of Boris Johnson’s plan for electric cars in London, but at least it is a plan with passion. Brown’s plan is puny, with no thought for the bigger picture.

We’ve commented on Boris’s environmental policies here on the site before, and so we’d like to take this opporunity to open up the debate a little. Do you agree with Jenny Jones? Are Boris’s policies more useful than the PM’s when it comes to a green London? Does his recent decision to reduce the size of his environmental office change things at all, or is it truly just a way of streamlining the bureaucracy of City Hall? Let us know in the comments.

Another of the country’s leading police officers has resigned — this time Bob Quick, who felt the need to quit his post as one of the top dogs in the UK’s counter-terrorist hierarchy after revealing secret documents to photographers outside Downing Street. As the article notes, it seems that most people agree that Quick was right to leave, but there doesn’t seem to be any shortage of people willing to praise the work he did while he still had the job. As for Boris’s opinion on the whole affair, we humbly present you a snippet of YouTube’s finest.

While it’s unfortunate that things had to end the way they did (and no doubt Quick would be the first to agree with us on that score), it’s nice to see that his entire career hasn’t been blemished by this affair, and that he was allowed to leave the post with some degree of dignity intact.