Racist toff Boris Johnson managed to keep his racist toffery out of sight for much of his election campaign, and has probably been warned not to be too overtly arch-Tory, yet, for fear of alerting people to the threat they pose and jeopardising the predicted general election victory in a couple of years. Nevertheless, the scumbags just can’t quite resist their smug, gloaty urge to make up for 11 years lost Torying time:
(thanks Rick for the video). We’ve got so used to New Labour’s enthusiastic application of the Tory anti-union laws that it comes as a shock to be reminded how far the Tories themselves will go. Shadow chancellor George Bastard Osborne wants to further curtail the right to strike, while Tory ideologues enthuse that the time has come to smash the NUT, one of the few unions that even approaches being effective. This is, to an extent, bluster, but it will contribute to an atmosphere even more hostile to working class organisation - and no-one hates the working class more than BoJo the clown.
Can you guess, by the way, the substance of his first policy announcements? Go on, I’d give you three guesses but really one should be enough. Here it is, in all its Toriffic beauty:
For non-Londoners (I spend probably one weekend a month in London), let me explain: London buses are now free in effect but not on paper. Their design makes it so easy to hop on and off without paying that it becomes automatic. If Ken Livingstone had been on the ball, he would have made it official: the costs would be the same, and he would have come off as spectacularly munificent rather than ineffective and easy to defraud, but it’s a bit late to be giving him advice.
Anyway, Boris has been able to turn this into a wonderful gift to his upper-middle class voters. He inflicts a massive effective price-hike on working class bus users in such a way that it is them, and not him, who come off as theiving grasping bastards. He has criminalised the users of public transport, and especially the poorer users of public transport, and especially - God love our Tory-backed boys in blue - the black people with their “gang culture” and “lack of role models” and all the rest of the racial defects that can only be cured through the liberal application of the truncheon.
LOL! OMFG WHAT A LEGEND!!!! LOL!!!!!!!!
Paul Merton and Ian Hislop have a lot to answer for.
Think you’re reaching a bit here, Dave. Criminalising users of public transport? No, he’s just promising to go after people who are defrauding the system. My heart isn’t exactly bleeding here*. I’m sure he’ll give you plenty of much better ammunition sooner rather than later - remember who we’re talking about here; even if he manages to be cleaner than a matron-controlled ward of the idealised 50s, he’s still a notorious scatter-brain when he opens his mouth - so why not keep your powder dry and wait for the moment?
*There are better targets as fraudsters go - everyone involved with certifying liar loans as AAA quality would be a start - but I think they fall more under the jurisdiction of national government rather than city mayor and the fact that someone’s out there commiting a greater crime doesn’t exonerate a lesser criminal anyway.
When a law is systematically unenforced for a long period of time, then suddenly coming down hard to enforce it is something of an attack. You know we’re not supposed to download films on bittorrent, but if they suddenly arrested everyone who did it I hope you’d still be shocked. I was shocked the first time Radhika suggested we ride the bus for free - felt like stealing to my non-Londoner brain - but there comes a point where you’d be mad to pay and subsidise everyone else.
Unenforcable laws are always problematic, and ideally the system with the buses needs to be regularised. I’d like it to be through an official free bus system (since, as I say, they’re more or less paying for one anyway) but if it was to be enforcing the fees so be it. I wouldn’t get too het up if they went about putting conductors or ticket inspectors on every bus - although it would be a hefty effective price hike now we’re used to riding for free - it would create employment and probably make people feel safer too, so why not.
But the police are different. Boris has tarred everyone who slips through the massive hole in the net as “a scourge of petty crime” and has sent the police after them. Now the police have always been a bit racist, especially since the application of the stop and search laws, and this gives them a new sphere in which to intimidate the “lesser criminals”. In fact, there’re never going to get a cop on every bus, so the intimidation will have to be quite harsh if he’s expecting any kind of result.
So yeah, regularising the system is one thing, but not through police intimidation.
I don’t plan on making Boris’ future excesses a priority of mine, although I’m sure there are other sites devoted to that sort of thing. I just thought this set the tone - superficially uncontroversial, but with an all-Tory agenda underneath.
See, they’re at it again: http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/david_shariatmadari/2008/05/boris%20butts%20in.html
Banning alcohol on public transport, again, seems like an idea we could go for. On the Tube on a hot day, I’m inclined to despise most of my fellow travellers, and those who are drinking probably do account for a disproportionate amount of the dickhead-ish types. So go Boris…
…except that this will inevitably mean more cops on public transport, which will inevitably mean more police harrassment, especially of the poor and the black, which is a BAD THING.
It will go down well in the Tory heartlands - nothing wrong with intimidating and loathing the lower orders - and, if he picks the type of behaviour being criminalised astutely enough, the rest of us won’t kick up too much of a fuss.
But, now that Tony and Ken and all have filled Britain and London with CCTV, Boris is going to send the coppers in after the cameras, and you have to be alert to the pattern that is emerging.