They may be the best taxis in the world (and that’s according to a survey for the website Hotels.com) but they are also the world’s most expensive.

This is set to get worse from this week as taxi fares in the capital defy the pay freezes in place elsewhere, and rise by 2.3%.

Transport for London say that the average cost of hailing a black cab will increase to £10.39 during the day and £14.15 at night. The fare rise, the lowest annual increase since 2004, is intended to take into account the rise in average national earnings. It will also help taxi drivers cover the increased costs of insurance and fuel, which reached record price levels this week.

Boris defended the increases, saying: “The capital is blessed with wonderful cabbies and we’ve deliberated long and hard to come up with an increase we think is fair to everyone during these tough economic times.”

Bob Oddy, general secretary of the Licensed Taxi Drivers’ Association, said: “We welcome this small but important increase. Like everyone else, London’s cabbies continue to face significant challenges.”

Since the unfortunate Liverpool incident, Boris has been pretty careful not to offend great swathes of the British populace with flippant remarks or unwise criticism.

That was until this week when Boris made the following comments at the London Planning Awards: “I have decided that we are going to go ahead with the new town centre at Brent Cross, and I tell you, cross isn’t the word for some of the people up there, and it’s very, very exciting and I think it’s very rewarding actually.”

It seems pretty innocuous to me, but the people of Brent Cross are not happy (as Bozza alluded to in his remark.)

Alison Hopkins of Humber Road, Cricklewood, who is campaigning against the development, was offended by the Mayor’s comments and has made a formal complaint to his office. She said: “What annoys me about this, leaving aside the rights or wrongs of his decision, is that he is treating this as a big joke. His remarks are designed to denigrate those he purports to serve and represent and are highly insulting to all of us.”

Darren Johnson, Green Party London Assembly member, said: “This reveals that beneath the Mayor’s chuckling veneer lurks a cavalier disregard for the views of Londoners.”

A spokesman from the Mayor’s office said: “The Mayor believes the development at Brent Cross will provide a major boost for the area, creating jobs, improving transport links and transforming the quality of life of thousands of Londoners – not least the good people of Brent Cross who are always close to his heart and whom he’d never wish to offend.”

An Efficiency Czar

We at Boriswatch HQ recently took a trip to our local picture house to see the George Clooney drama Up In The Air in which Clooney is employed to go into companies and tell their staff that they are being made redundant. It appears that Bozza must also have enjoyed the film, as he’s just decided to splash out £130,000 a year on Nicholas Griffin, an “efficiency czar” expected to help the Mayor deliver £2.4 billion in savings over the next three years.

(Incidentally, I like how Mr Griffin uses his full Christian name. “Boris Employs Nick Griffin” not a headline the Mayor wants to see, I don’t imagine).

Griffin is a former managing partner at City consultants Deloitte and will be paid up to £130,000 a year to oversee performance at GLA bodies including Transport for London, Scotland Yard and the Fire Authority. He will, apparently, have to find £1.7billion of cuts at TfL alone. The axe is likely to fall in areas such as information technology and human resources and some jobs are expected to go.

Reports that Griffin will rack up Clooney-esque numbers of hotel reward perks as he travels around London giving people the sack remain unconfirmed….

There have been a lot of claims and counter-claims over recent weeks that parties are stealing each others policies ahead of the forthcoming General Election.  Some politicians deny it whilst others employ the old ‘well, if it’s in the nation’s best interests, what does it mater where it comes from?’ approach.

Now, it seems that Gordon Brown (Labour, remember) is set to adopt on of Boris Johnson’s key London policy initiatives as part of Labour’s main Election commitments.

The Living Wage was introduced by Bozza in London to more accurately reflect the cost of living in the Capital.  It’s significantly higher than the national ‘minimum wage’ and now looks set to be rolled out nationwide if Labour hang on to power.

Civil servants could get at least £7.60 an hour, more than the £5.80 minimum pay, to haul them above the poverty line. A ‘living wage’ would benefit the 100,000 staff who are on a salary of less than £15,000 a year. Procurement contracts would be rewritten to include the demand that firms will pay staff such as cleaners, chefs and security guards the agreed minimum and this could benefit a further 100,000 workers.

Many big companies such as Barclays and HSBC have introduced the higher wage after being lobbied by the campaign group Citizens UK.

Labour hope this Living Wage commitment will be a vote winner as they begin their Election campaign.  If this proves to be the case, they will have the unlikeliest of Opposition sources to thank.

With pretty much every building that is built these days looking like every other building that is built these days, we should send out a huge ‘hurrah’ to the people that design and fund weird and wonderful (and utterly pointless) constructions.

And so, this design has been unveiled as London’s lasting Olympic legacy.  The 120 foot ArcelorMittal Orbit has been designed by Anish Kapoor and will tower over the Olympic site in East London.  It’s supposed to represent the five Olympic rings, I believe.

Bozza was, of course, at the launch of the £19.1m project. The Mayor said: “Of course some people will say we are nuts – in the depths of a recession – to be building Britain’s biggest ever piece of public art. But both Tessa Jowell [Olympics minister] and I are certain that this is the right thing for the Stratford site, in games time and beyond.”

And do you know what? He’s right. If everyone had mumbled about the cost of projects in the past, we’d have no Great Pyramid, Eiffel Tower or Statue of Liberty to look at, would we?

BoJo continued in his inimitable style. “Some may choose to think of it as a Colossus of Stratford, some eyes may detect a giant treble clef, a helter-skelter, a supersized mutant trombone. Some may even see the world’s biggest ever representation of a shisha pipe and call it the Hubble Bubble. But I know it is the ArcelorMittal Orbit and it represents the dynamism of a city coming out of recession, the embodiment of the cross-fertilisation of cultures and styles that makes London the world capital of arts and culture.

“Also, it will generate money with the restaurant at the top of the thingy.”