Politics Promises and Buses
Well, that didn’t take long. As many will be aware, we have the mayoral elections here in London this week. It’ll be the 3rd time that London has gone to the polls for this purpose; Ken Livingstone won on the first two occasions and Boris Johnson on the third.
I’m not going to get political, that is not what this is about, but I will say that when Ken got in the first time he said he’d bring in the Congestion Charge. Like it or hate it, he did exactly what he said he would and a politician that does that has to be credited for it in this day and age, where vacuous nothings are muttered to the electorate followed months and years later by excuses as to why whatever it was didn’t happen.
In the interests of balance, when Boris was running for mayor, he said he’d rid London of the “bendy-buses”. Fair play to him the idiot actually did it! There were some routes for which the bendy-bus was suited, both in terms of capacity and road types, but does he do a feasibility study? Does he look at each route on its own merits? No. So we’ve now got loads more buses clogging up the roads in the capital. Well done, Bungle! I’ll save my comments on the new “Routemaster for London” or “Boris Bus” for another day, but to be clear, I am a fan of our bus network, I just wish he’d looked before we were all forced to leap.
Anyway – prior to the last general election I sought out the e-mail addresses of all the candidates standing in my local area and wrote to them all, asking about policies and the like. I got a grand total of 0 responses, yet they want my vote?
I sent e-mails to both Ken and Boris’ respective campaign teams asking for details of the planned dates and locations that their “battle buses” would be stopping so that I could perhaps find one and ask some questions. I also asked this on Twitter and with 4 days to go have heard nothing – yet they want my vote?
I don’t expect a personal reply from either of the main men, but from what I see and hear they have enough flunkies walking two paces behind with their tongues hanging out, so I think it reasonable to at least be sent a link to the timetables for these buses?
At a more local level, I’ve not had a single representative for any party come to the door and do that thing formerly known as “canvassing”. Not one. I live in an area that, not too long ago, had a number of wins for the BNP, but even they seem to have tucked their tails in, this time.
So, the quandary – who do I vote for on Thursday?