Boris says awesome things...

"Whose hen do is this, again...?"

The fate (pun intended) of the great British summer fair appears to have been saved after health and safety chiefs agreed to introduce a new set of guidelines for organisers. The ‘Save Our Fetes’ campaign, run by the Daily Express has been calling for clarification from health and safety bosses after excessive precautionary measures were threatening to kill the traditional summer fete.

Judith Hackitt, Health and Safety Executive chairwoman, said: “HSE agrees wholeheartedly with the sentiments behind the Save Our Fetes campaign. The campaign prompted us to offer this advice and we are very keen to help promote village fetes. Fetes are an important part of British community life and no one here wants to put a dampener on anyone’s fun. All that is needed is sensible and proportionate preparation, not excessive paperwork and precautions.”

The campaign to save the fete (which, by the way, is essential – how would we know otherwise who had the largest marrow?) was backed by several celebrities including Boris himself. According to the Daily Express “a number of influential names from the world of politics and showbusiness gave us their backing”. Whilst that may be true of a significant elected representative such as Bozza, the other A-list celebrities who supported the campaign were Dame Vera Lynn (142), Richard Hammond and Louisa Lytton (no, me neither).

Despite promises during the Mayoral election that he wouldn’t interfere with the wishes of local councils and residents, Boris has this week invoked a new power that allows the mayor to overrule local planning decisions.

Tower Hamlets had refused to extend the planning permission for the sixty three storey Columbus Tower in Canary Wharf on the grounds that it would affect light to a number of homes and would have a detrimental effect on conservation areas.

However, Bozza is expected to use a new power to overrule the council as the tower is of “strategic importance” to the city.  The project is expected to create “thousands” of jobs as well as partly funding the Mayor’s ambitions Crossrail project.

BoJo said “This is a decision I have not taken lightly, however the Columbus Tower proposal clearly meets the test of a planning application of major significance to the whole of London. Canary Wharf and the Isle of Dogs form a key part of my economic development strategy and I have also made it clear that I consider Canary Wharf to be suitable for tall buildings.”

The tower would be ten metres taller than One Canada Square – London’s existing tallest building – and would house a hotel and flats.

Apparently, renaming a Tube station isn’t quite as easy as you’d think.  So have found the residents of Archway, who are determined to have their local Underground stop renamed in honour of famous historical local resident Dick Whittington.

Walter Roberts, a local Archway resident said, “If London’s most famous son gets a Tube station named after him, it would point many tourists in the direction of this Gateway to the North in a way Archway can’t as it sounds dull as ditchwater. The name Archway is irrevocably linked to the suicide bridge and the dreadful Archway Tower which is loathed as one of the worst examples of contemporary architecture. It falls to reason therefore that the area would benefit commercially and culturally if the station is renamed – perhaps as Whittington Cross or Whittington Stone.”

Boris has thrown his weight behind the campaign in the same way you’d back your four year old when they tell you they want to be an astronaut when they grow up. A spokesman for the mayor said “The Mayor believes marking the area’s historical connection with Dick Whittington seems appropriate, however he wishes to warn campaigners for a name change that the cost of doing so would be considerable. As well as changing signs along the line, there are the costs of changing maps and announcements. Given the pressures on Transport for London’s budget, it seems unlikely that the names of Tube stations can be changed in the near future.”

[Boriswatch Translation: "Lovely. Now go away."]

Naming Underground stations after ex-London Mayors might also set something of a precedent. In seven hundred years we might well see Red Kennington or Boruis-lip Gardens and pantomimes the nation over featuring spritely young ladies dressed up as Boris singing songs about “inverted pyramids of piffle”.

Or not, obv.

Where did you say the spaceship had landed...?

There was euphoria in a small corner of London (and, indeed, the rest of the UK) this weekend as England’s cricketers regained the Ashes from the Australians. Andrew Strauss’ side won the fifth and final Test by 197 runs and the series 2-1.

In a highly alliterative message of congratulation, Bozza said that England had “spun, swung and swatted their way to an incredible triumph.” We at Boriswatch Towers presume he was talking about the cricket, and not the removal of a wasps nest somewhere in the pavilion.

BoJo continued, “I hope this amazing feat will inspire kids who may never have played cricket to pick up a bat or a ball in the hope of becoming the next Freddie Flintoff, Monty Panesar or Jonathan Trott.”

Bozza wasn’t the only person to get in on the act. Buckingham Palace said, “The Queen congratulates the England team on their victory in the Ashes, and extends her good wishes to both teams on their excellent performances over the course of the series.” Does she? Really? Do you think Her Maj knows the different between a silly point and a mid-off? And isn’t the Ashes an event in which she should be largely impartial, being as it’s like her expressing a preference of which of her kids she wanted to win the school Egg and Spoon race…?

"But the Mayor said the lights were always going to be green...."

London’s traffic lights are always going to be green after an announcement by the Mayor of London this week that over three and a half thousand sets of lights were going to be replaced with energy saving LED bulbs. These LED bulbs will save Transport for London about £200million a year in energy costs as well as reducing carbon emissions by 60%. They also last around ten times longer than ordinary bulbs reducing maintenance costs.

In a quote strangely reminiscent of northern comic Peter Kay, Bozza said, “I’ve seen the future – garlic bread – and it comprises these tip-top, energy-busting traffic lights.  Installing these eco-bulbs will cut the climate change emissions coming from London’s galaxy of traffic lights by more than half, as well as save money from energy bills.”

The project will cost £2.4million and will reduce the capital’s carbon emissions by six hundred tonnes per annum.

One thing the Mayor does like is a nice bit of dinner.  This week, however, Bozza’s favourite restaurant nearly went up in smoke…

Fire services were called to the famous Pasha restaurant in Islington at around 5.30am yesterday morning after a fire broke out on the roof garden of a terrace above the famous Turkish eaterie.

The fire is not being treated as suspicious and no-one was hurt in the incident.

Bozza has previously called Pasha his favourite restaurant saying “They are friendly guys serving fresh food. When the wife and I get a minute to ourselves, it’s the perfect hideout.”

Tulay Hassan, the landlady, said: “The tenants said there were no cigarettes or barbecues out there. The firefighters put the fire out before it spread but the important thing was that no-one was hurt. It’s a relief the restaurant was saved.”

Another day, another transport story.

This one is quite intriguing, though, as a diplomatic row is brewing between Boris and none other than Barack Obama over unpaid congestion charges.  It turns out that the American Embassy refuses to pay the £8 congestion charge (unlike around three quarters of the other embassies) because they consider it a “tax” and therefore not payable because of their diplomatic immunity.

Apparently the American’s owe Transport for London the not insignificant sum of £3,446,420 in charges and fines, a sum which the Yanks have no intention of paying. Apparently the collective sum owed by these rebel embassies is around £28million [Rebel embassy? That sounds quite like something out of The Empire Strikes Back - Boriswatch Ed]

Considering Boris’ claims last year that “he would happily ’slap an asbo’ on non-paying embassies were it not for the Geneva conventions” we at Boriswatch Towers are looking forward to Obama being served with such an ASBO, presumably whilst happy slapping President Ahmadinejad in a hoodie….

Boris has thrown his support behind a new initiative launched this weekend which aims to reward random acts of kindness on the streets of London.  The Kindness Offensive, supported by finance firm ING Direct, launched at the weekend and aims to “highlight how warm hearted people really are for no real reward, just to be kind.”
One of the first recipients of such an award was 23 year old Katie Moore who helped a man pretending to be lost on London’s South Bank. She received a medal, flowers and balloons for doing WHAT EVERY OTHER RIGHT MINDED INDIVIDUAL WOULD HAVE DONE IN THAT SITUATION.

BoJo said, “This is a truly inspirational project that will brighten up the daily lives of so many Londoners.” The initiative will shortly be extended and will include medals, vouchers and cash rewards for people who “don’t run over little old ladies”, “hold the door open for someone with shopping” and “queue politely for the bus”.

Has human nature really got to the point where we have to hand out flowers to people who perform acts that have been the absolute minimum benchmark of politeness for decades? Good grief….

Considering his highbrow educational background and wealthy family, we at Boriswatch don’t imagine the Mayor has ever had to eat a lot of bubble and squeak or tried to make jam out of the remains of his rotting apricots.

"Ah, yes. Takes me back to my Eton days with the senior boys..."

Still, that didn’t stop him this week endorsing a new campaign to encourage Londoners to reduce the amount of food they waste. A recent report estimated that the UK threw away a staggering 6.7million tons of food every year – about enough to feed one Texan – and so leading chefs have teamed up to produce recipes to make the most of leftovers.

Among the recipes is one for a risotto including leftover pork. (Now, we don’t know about you, but we rarely find gigantic legs of non-eaten pork lying about in the back of our fridges. We normally cook just about enough pork for us to eat. Perhaps Hugh Fearnley-Whatsisname is alone in having to cobble together a soup from leftover samphire and wood pigeon.)

BoJo somehow managed to crowbar the unusual and slightly bizarre phrase “marooned mashed potato” into his endorsement. “Londoners chuck away a mind-boggling amount of perfectly edible food, some of which could instead be used to make a great tasting meal. It is high time we treated that lonely dish of marooned mashed potato or plate of rice relegated to the back of the fridge with the respect it deserves. It makes sense for your wallet, as well as for the good of the planet, to make your food go further.”

The new buses will be about this high....

A leading research centre* has established that 98.3% of Boris’ time as London Mayor is taken up with matters of transport.  Not content with mentioning the word “bicycle” in every single sentence uttered to the general public, Bozza’s war on the humble, innocent “bendy bus” continues apace.  One can only reason that an ancestor of the Mayor’s was once cruelly denied transit by such a vehicle (or that one ran over Mrs Johnson’s shopping in 2001) as he really doesn’t like them very much.

It has been announced that the Shepherd’s Bush bendy bus (try saying that after several bottles of pinot grigio) will be retired by the end of 2011, four years early. Boris was positively gleeful, saying, “Bendy buses on other routes are on borrowed time and I can confirm they will all have gone by 2011.”

He continued, in that inimitable language, “These writhing whales of the road have swung their hefty rear ends round our corners for the final time.”

Not strictly true, considering they are going to be in operation for another two years, but we get your point. Although we are not really surprised to see them phased out if it’s only their rear ends that are being swung around the corners. Sounds like a Health and Safety issue to us.

(* Boriswatch Towers)