Boris says awesome things...

Eh, up. He’s been at it again.

Boris and Dave have got involved in another scrap, this time over housing benefit. The planned moves include a £400-a-week housing benefit cap for four-bedroom homes and a 10% reduction for the long-term unemployed. The Government estimates that 21,000 households will be affected by the cap on different size homes – 17,000 of them in London. Boris is concerned that poorer families will be driven from their homes and out of the centre of London.

In a BBC interview, the Mayor commented: “We will not accept any kind of Kosovo-style social cleansing of London. On my watch, you are not going to see thousands of families evicted from the place where they have been living and have put down roots. That is not what Londoners want to see, it’s not what we are going to accept.”

The comments resulted in a ‘firm rebuke’ from number Ten. “The Prime Minister doesn’t agree with what Boris Johnson has said or indeed the way he said it,” Mr Cameron’s spokesman said. “He thinks the policy is the right one and he doesn’t agree with the way (Mr Johnson) chose his words.”

Even Cleggy and Cable got in on the act. The Deputy Prime Minister said he too “very strongly” disagreed with Mr Johnson’s comments whilst Cable accused the mayor of using “inflammatory” language. “Simply using this dangerous language is seriously unhelpful, it’s distracting from the underlying problems and the fact is the Government has got to reform this,” he said. “As part of dealing with the public finances, we have got to get housing benefit under control because the budget was just escalating.”

Bozza insisted that his comments had been taken out of context. He stressed that his point was that London had ‘specific needs’ and that he and ministers were ‘continuing to negotiate a package of measures to ensure the changes were introduced in London with minimal problems’.

We at Boriswatch HQ have often remarked on how odd a job the Mayor has. Negotiating with the US Embassy about unpaid congestion charges or speaking out against Tube strikes is invariably followed by having to judge a ‘rudest marrow’ competition in a local school.

This week has been no exception. Firstly, Boris (and the PM) have been forced to condemn a series of planned strikes by firefighters on Bonfire Night. The Daily Telegraph reported that ‘London Mayor Boris Johnson insisted the contingency plans were solid and he urged Londoners not to change their plans. He said: “Londoners should be confident that they can go ahead with their fireworks parties but, as always, take tried and tested precautions by following the Firework Code.”‘

And then, having dealt with more strike action, Bozza got to hang about with some nubile cheerleaders. The Mayor met the San Francisco 49′ers cheerleading squad, alongside chief executive Jed York and player Shawntae Spencer ahead of the annual NFL game at Wembley stadium this Sunday.

As the Daily Mail reported: “Looking somewhat confused and shooting an admiring glance towards blonde cheerleader Lauren Riccaboni, Mr Johnson could have again been landing himself in hot water with his wife Marina.”

Bozza was on arts duty this week, joining some of the UK’s top cartoonists to launch London’s Big Draw weekend.

Artists accompanying him at the launch included Tamara Drewe creator Posy Simmonds, Steve Bell, Peter Brookes, C Michael Heath and Charles Peattie (aka ‘Alex’ of the Daily Telegraph).

What we at Boriswatch HQ are uncertain about, however, is why the Mayor appears to have drawn a giant pair of ladies wobblers under his name.  We understand the ‘I love Crossrail’ bit but we are yet to fully comprehend what an (admittedly nice) pair of jubblies has to do with this sentiment.

London’s Big Draw Festival will see top artists, cartoonists, architects and archaeologists join Londoners for a two day ‘drawing celebration of London’s changing river and skyline’. There will be forty free activities which will take place at twelve London locations along the river from London Bridge to Tower Bridge.

“Drawing is not about being the best,” said Boris. “It’s about putting across the way you feel, right there, in the moment. The world is your sketchbook and I hope everyone will be inspired to join in the Big Draw.”

It looks the 2012 Mayoral Election will be a straight fight between the present incumbent, our Bozza and Ken Livingstone according to a new opinion poll in The Guardian.

And, it may be a closer race than it first appeared. The YouGov poll buts BoJo just two percentage points above his Labour rival with coalition cuts yet to be announced or really bite. It therefore looks like Bozza is going to find clinging onto power harder than he may have thought.

A sample of 1,271 Londoners questioned during the week of the Tory conference, when Johnson held a re-election rally following his decision to stand again in 2012, showed 46% would vote for the incumbent, while 44% would vote for Livingstone.

There’ also bad news for the Liberal Democrats with more people claiming they would vote for ‘another candidate’ than would vote Lib Dem. Just 4% said they would vote for the Lib Dem candidate, who has yet to be selected, and a further 7% said they would vote for ‘some other’ candidate.

In an attempt to maintain his popularity, Boris has tried to distance himself from Conservative cuts. This week, he said: “For months now we as a nation have talked about cuts and nothing but cuts, with the morbid fascination of an Oprah Winfrey discussion of self-harm. We know we have to go through with the operation. But we don’t know quite how extensive the slicing is going to be, and we have been kept so long in the waiting room while the surgeon counts his scalpels that the foreboding has been allowed to grow.”

I bet you wouldn’t get that from Livingstone….

It’s been a busy couple of days for our Boris. Not only has he had to deal with complaints about the organisation of London’s forthcoming Olympics, but he’s also been schmoozing sport’s top brass in order to try and secure another major sporting event for the capital.

First off, Bozza had to respond to criticism of the change in marathon route for the London Olympics. In an attempt to avoid having to close Tower Bridge on one of the busiest days of the Games, the event will now begin and end in The Mall, not in the Olympic Stadium. The IOC approved the decision despite objections from East Londoners.

Boris was pretty unwavering in his support of the amended route, calling opponents to the changes ‘stark raving bonkers’. The mayor said: “To say that east Londoners have been short-changed because of the re-routing of a twenty-minute marathon route that no longer goes through Tower Hamlets I think people will think that you’re stark raving bonkers. I didn’t challenge it because I agree with it! I’ve said what I think about it. I think I’ve given a very robust view. That is my view and you can like it or lump it.â€?

Even though the Olympics are two years away, the campaign to bring the 2018 World Cup to England gathers pace. FIFA president Sepp Blatter has been in London this week, meeting FA officials, players and David Cameron. Boris also got in on the act, welcoming the FIFA delegation as part of his role in the ‘Back the Bid’ campaign.

And if sports weren’t enough, Boris has also been involved with the arts world this week. Bozza was at the Frieze Art Fair this week, launching the Green Visual Arts Guide.

From the event’s website: “The Guide, commissioned by the Mayor of London and written by Julie’s Bicycle, with input from over a thousand galleries, studios, fairs and transport companies, is the fourth in a series specifically for the creative industries. The Guides set out the tools to tackle climate change issues which directly affect the visual arts. Case studies from visual art organisations of varying sizes are included to illustrate what can be done.”

We all have a little guilty crush, don’t we?  At Boriswatch Towers, we’ve always had a little bit of a thing for Kirstie off of Location, Location, Location (particularly so when she decides to have a pop at Siralan Sugar as she did this week.)

Now, Fibre Plus, a cereal bar, has carried out some research (no, we’re not quite sure how that works, either – I have never been accosted in the street by any brand of breakfast cereal) to find Britain’s ‘surprisingly tasty’ celebrities.  You see what they did, there?

The poll of 3,000 women was designed to find the people that do get you a little bit hot and bothered, but that you really shouldn’t admit to.  The Cadbury’s Caramel Bunny, for example.  Andrew Marr.  Bruce Forsyth.

At the head of the list was none other than Simon Cowell who polled a third of the votes.  Next (and this concerns me) comes ‘roly poly’ DJ Chris Moyles, closely followed by Ashes to Ashes actor Philip Glenister.

Never fear, however – Bozza was 8th on the list of celebs that ladies secretly fancy.  The Mayor saw off the challenge of Adam Woodyatt (you’d have contemplated topping yourself if you’d finished in a ‘good looking’ poll behind Ian Beale, presumably?) and Greg Wallace.  BoJo finished eighth in the list, narrowly behind Chris Evans and Adrian Chiles.

Bozza also, surprisingly, polled 2% fewer votes than Piers Morgan, which either a) means the women of this country are nuts or b) the poll’s a load of old cobblers.  We vote ‘b’.

It seems we can’t just host the Olympic Games in 2012. Oh no. The games have to have a ‘legacy’, which, as far as we at Boriswatch Towers can tell, means ‘finding alternative uses for a load of white elephant sports venues built for three weeks of events’.

(By the way, is it just us or does every day that goes by at the current Commonwealth Games make you feel a little bit more confident that our Olympics might actually be OK?)

After announcing that the Olympic Park will be renamed the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park after the games, the Olympic Games Legacy Committee (no, we haven’t made that up) also tried to clear up some confusion as to what’s going to happen to the Olympic Stadium.

Two football teams – Spurs and West Ham – have expressed an interest in moving to the stadium after the Games, but Spurs are not keen to keep the athletics track. I don’t blame them, frankly – athletics tracks around the edge of football stadia mean the crowd are so far away from the action that they might as well stay at home and watch the game on the telly.

Bozza rejected the chance to rule out bids for the stadium that involved pulling up the running track. “I don’t want to get into the detail of the bids and how it’s all going to work,â€? Johnson told City A.M. “There are discussions to be had. But you’ve got to be in conformity with the bid and I’m sure that they will be. Everybody at the moment is.â€?

The centrepiece of the Olympic Park is, of course, the giant Arcelor Mittal Orbit, a gigantic sculpture commissioned especially for the Games. Whilst it presumably is designed to capture the inherent spirit of the Olympics, Boris had a more prosaic description of the tower, calling it a “giant mutant trombone”. Continuing his appreciation of the capital’s skyline, Boris later in the day had this to say about London’s 1950s tower blocks.

“A lot of them are in need of blowing up.”

Prince Charles has never had that level of architectural eloquence, has he?

Boris has been at the Conservative Party conference this week. On a day which saw tube strikes cripple London, Boris showed his support for Londoners having to find alternative methods of transport by starting his day at the Conference with a run.

[Do you think someone should point him in the direction of a sports shop so he can buy some proper gear? - Boriswatch sports Editor]

The Mayor used his speech to call for changes to the law to prevent 3,000 people holding ‘the city to ransom’. As The Guardian reports, Boris launched his attack as thousands of members of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) and the Transport Salaried Staffs Association (TSSA) downed tools in a 24-hour walkout on the underground. They are striking over Transport for London plans to cut 800 station jobs and the resultant threat to safety on the network.

Boris is having none of it, mind.

After accusing the unions of making a ‘nakedly and blatantly political gesture’, the Mayor said: “It cannot be right that 3,000 people should be able to hold the city to ransom, stop people getting to work and jeopardise the economic recovery when the measures we are taking to reform ticket offices are an inevitable consequence of the success of the automatic Oyster [smart card] system … and when we are able to make these changes with no compulsory redundancies, with no loss of earnings and with no station unstaffed at any time.

“So I must tell the union leaders that the time has come now to ignore their lackeys in the Labour party who seek to foment unrest for their own dismal political ends. It is time to come to the negotiating table and sort this thing out.”

Bozza also called on his colleagues in government to “consider a law insisting on a minimum 50% participation in a strike ballot”.

The leader of the RMT union, Bob ‘the’ Crow, and Gerry Doherty, of the TSSA, told Prime Minister David Cameron: “This strike is not about ‘irresponsible militants’ taking on the coalition – it is about London Underground staff giving up a day’s pay to put safety first.

“Indeed, if the mayor simply kept to his election promises regarding adequate staffing on London Underground, there would be no dispute.”

So, then. You’re in the Dog and Duck on a Wednesday night, waiting for Quizmaster Dave to arrive and get this week’s event under way.

Whilst you’re sipping your Malibu and coke, you get involved in a discussion about who would form your fantasy Pub Quiz team. Who would you pick?

Well, it is a question that St John Ambulance has asked 160 City of London firms. To drum up support for its black tie City quiz, they have done a bit of research to find out who City types would most like on their quiz team.

You won’t be surprised to know that the absolute runaway winner (with 57% of the votes) was raconteur, author and general genius Stephen Fry. You may also fail to raise an eyebrow that academic clever-bloke Stephen Hawking came in second place (although I bet he knows nothing about Coronation Street or the Mercury Music Prize.)

In third place, however, beating the likes of Carol Vorderman, Jeremy Paxman and Clive Anderson came none other than the Mayor himself. With 7.3% of the votes, Boris is a more sought after quiz team-mate than either the Countdown maths woman or Newsnight‘s grumpy host. He also beat BBC business editor Robert Peston (a slightly surprising option, if you ask me) and Martha Lane-Fox.

It would be quite an intimidating team – Fry, Hawking and Johnson – but I reckon we could have them in the music round.