Prince of Darkness - BEGONE! Tim Parker resigns!
August 19, 2008
Oh happy day! (Oh happy days!), Ohh…happy day (Oh happy day!)!
Tim Parker, commonly referred to as The Prince of Darkness because of his reputation as a mass firer of staff, has resigned from being Boris Johnson’s Deputy Mayor, after they both realised that *gasp* many of the decisions involved in being Mayor of London really had to be taken by the Mayor himself.
Well surprise surprise, Ray Lewis has resigned, the day after Mayor of London Boris Johnson defended him fully and denounced the allegations as a conspiracy because he had the guts to go work for Boris Johnson.
However, it’s not the accusations that made his position untenable, but the lies he’s been telling. The key moment came when the Ministry of Justice issued a statement (and I imagine Jack Straw was quite gleeful about it) saying that, contrary to what he says, Ray Lewis has never been a Justice of the Peace. Lewis tried to clarify his comments by saying he’d been ‘considered’, but by that point the game was up.
Ray Lewis is being investigated over claims of fraud and possible sexual ‘misconduct’, but in the meantime will keep his job as unelected Deputy Mayor for Mayor Boris Johnson, who denounced the charges as a witch hunt driven by the political correctness lobby (somehow led by the Church of England, hmm…).
What struck me as familiar though, and it’s something Dave Hill also spotted, is the similarity of the response to Ken Livingstone’s when Lee Jasper was facing his own allegations about improper conduct, giving money to causes he was affiliated with and so on. In fact, the ‘it’s a smear’ defense was used by Livingstone, and also by Lewis, which is astonishing when you think of how Boris Johnson really hammered at Livingstone (or as he unwittingly called him 26,574 times, ‘Leavingsoon’) for how he wouldn’t drop Jasper and insisted he was innocent.
As much as we’d like to see Boris sink, I think his adviser is more an idiot than a racist.
June 22, 2008
Again and again we see things nowadays where comments will be willfully interpreted as proof of someones racism or sexism when nothing of the sort was intended. The other day is was Andy Burnham taking the piss out of David Davis and Shami Chakrabati, now it’s an advisor of Boris Johnson being pestered about something someone else had written to the extent of ‘if Boris becomes Mayor, black people will emigrate from London’, and giving a curt reply along the lines of ‘well let them if they don’t like it’.
Now I understand that it may not have been the most sensitive thing to say, but I see no actual evidence of racism in this comment. It’s obviously more that the guy is being asked a stupid question and is batting it aside with disdane.
Read it here. It’s genuinely funny and makes him sound very human, knowledgeable and likeable. Many of the things he didn’t come across as during the campaign to be Mayor of London. I geuinely feel sorry for him after reading that, and the Lib Dems certainly don’t come out of it well.
That said, it was still pointless for him to vote for Left List as his 2nd pref.
My favourite entry is the flirting between him and Will Self, very funny. And Will Self sounds like a right slag. Good on him.
Did people properly understand the London voting system - and my first prediction for Boris as Mayor
May 5, 2008
I’ve just read a run down of all the votes in the London Mayoral elections, and I’m really surprised at how many people have given 2nd preference votes to candidates who simply had no chance of winning.
It’s too late to be checking now Boris-watchers
May 4, 2008
I don’t mind freely admitting that, as a new blog, I don’t have the viewing figures of well known and rightly respected blogs such as Hopi Sen’s, Recess Monkey, and - not so rightly respected - Iain Dale (bleh) and so I was quite surprised when logging on today to find a sudden surge in views on my blog, 99% of them related to Boris Johnson.
It seems to me, looking at the press converage on the campaign for London Mayor, a large amount of attention is paid to Johnson and whether or not he has commited any ‘gaffes’ yet. And the fact that he hasn’t on a massive scale - like offending all of Liverpool - seems to be a justifier for him becoming Mayor of London, as if ‘not making gaffes’ was the number one quality needed when running a team of 109,000 people, with an £11billion budget, presiding over a city of ten million people that is one of the most ethnically diverse in the world.
The Conservative Local Election Launch.
April 17, 2008
It really annoys me every time David Cameron wheels out his ‘Vote Blue Go Green’ line, which is only around election time funnily enough.
Ken Livingstone - Saviour of New Labour?
April 16, 2008
It occurred to me, following the race for London Mayor, that if Ken manages to win and it steadies the good ship New Labour, and we go on to win a general election, would May 1st prove to be the turning point? And if so, how ironic it would be that the man who New Labour tried to crush in 2000, ended up saving them from destruction in 2008-2010.
Obviously even if Boris ‘Some of my best friends are picaninnies’ Johnson wins the election there is nothing to say Labour won’t go on to win the general election. Boris might even help us in his own gaffe-prone way. He won’t be chained to Lyndon Crosby forever, surely.
The irony is that rumour has it the Tories would like Johnson to lose, only finishing close enough to claim progress and momentum, while not having the huge liability that is Boris Johnson running the entire city of London in the name of the Conservatives. So if he does lose, which I think he will, expect both parties to be quite pleased to some level. That said, if Boris does win it will more or less be the Tories running it from behind the scenes, the real danger for them would be in situations where he has to be in the public eye, such as the Olympics.
The best line in the whole election so far is when David Cameron recently said of Boris, ‘He might even win it’.
PS The ‘Some of my best friends…’ joke I nabbed from the Recess Monkey blog, check it out at www.recessmonkey.co.uk
