Vote Boris for London Mayor
- Thread starter Dj TAB
- Start date
Bernie Gunther
Fundamentalist Druid
Maybe London Boy or someone else will start a thread about it, given this thread ain't the place for it really.treelover said:
JHE
.
Well, the Boris thing is through to the 'primaries'. No surprises there.
TORY MAYOR SHORTLIST:
It must be annoying to the many other contenders to be excluded by the selection panel. If the Tories are going to have open 'primaries', why not allow all interested voters to choose from among all the people who've put themselves forward?
TORY MAYOR SHORTLIST:
- Victoria Borwick - businesswoman
- Boris Johnson - former magazine editor
- Warwick Lightfoot - economist
It must be annoying to the many other contenders to be excluded by the selection panel. If the Tories are going to have open 'primaries', why not allow all interested voters to choose from among all the people who've put themselves forward?
newbie
undisambiguated
Jean-Luc said:
I'm not sure about that, and Livingstone provides a very clear example of why.
In the old days we could vote for our local GLC member, largely by party, just the same as for MPs now. In 1980 Labour won, but the day after the election Livingstone mounted a surprise challenge for the leadership and won, on the votes of a very few, newly elected, members.
Whether or not you approved of his incumbency it's impossible to say that Londoners had any idea what we were voting for. We didn't vote for Fares Fair, for invitations to members of the IRA or for outright opposition to Thatcher, those policies were imposed on us after a party coup.
In 1999/2000 the Labour Party did everything it could to prevent Londoners having the opportunity to vote for Livingstone, insisting we had only a machine candidate, but he quit the party and stood, and we voted for him, knowing what he stood for.
Of the two voting methods it's hard to say the latter was not far more honest.
nino_savatte
No pasaran!
JHE said:
Boris Johnson - former magazine editor ?
I thought he was still at The Spectator. He won't give up that job in a hurry.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
He already has.
Guineveretoo
Mostly bewildered
Taxamo Welf said:now this is an interesting one - you see when he FIRST appeared on HIGNFY he was a fish out of water, couldn't crack wise and literally said 'i think i've been set up here' in reference to his appearance on the show. His recreation as a funnyman is entirely the media's doing. Apart from being a fat tory cunt who is responsible for the misery of millions and a representative of one of the most inexcusable political ideologies going, this idea that he is a funny and personable guy is fictitious.
He is at best a right-wing columnist, thats it. He has a week to come up with a few nasty, uninteresting ('challenging' 'against the PC police') words for The Spectator and then spends the rest of his time twatting about oxbridge, boarding schools and Henley.
what a fucking candidate.
I am unsurprisingly not going to ask anyone to vote for Ken or any canididate, but by comparison:
Ken has lived in london his whole life
Has extensive experience of running the city via his current office the GLC
Has enacted popular (yes) policies like free museums, free festivals etc.
Transport is through the fucking roof, but i have to admit by god it's there. Living in other UK cities is an eye opener. Oh yeah, and its fucking FREE for kids and over 60's!
Boris has a chance like i have a degree in arabic calligraphy.
PS can't wait or ken to fuck Kensington and Chelsea in the arse some more with the congestion charge. Logic? They never vote for him anyway
A couple of points:
Firstly, I saw Boris Johnson on HIGNFY, too, and he wasn't made funny by the media. He was made funny because although he was, indeed, set up on that programme, he laughed at himself and came back for more. He is funny. Get over it.
He is, however, also an offensive Tory bastard, and I would urge to be very, very cautious before voting him in as Mayor of London.
Also, on the Ken issue, the free museums and galleries has nothing to do with him. It was a decision of Central Government before he was mayor London.
Other than that, I agree
Guineveretoo
Mostly bewildered
Taxamo Welf said:
Actually, Ken has been killing them, not just by failing to feed them, but by sending sparrow hawks up!
He is right, though. They are a pest, and a smelly, disease ridden pest at that!
Guineveretoo
Mostly bewildered
nino_savatte said:
Not quite. The London Assembly replaced the GLC.
The Mayoral election is separate from that, and the Mayor could be from a different party to the ruling party on the London Assembly or, as in the early days of Ken as Mayor, from no party at all....
Guineveretoo
Mostly bewildered
Jean-Luc said:
Explain?
nino_savatte
No pasaran!
Guineveretoo said:
I know the GLA replaced the GLC, why are you telling me this?
Guineveretoo
Mostly bewildered
nino_savatte said:I know the GLA replaced the GLC, why are you telling me this?
Because you said that the mayoral election replaced the GLC.
Jean-Luc
Well-Known Member
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jean-Luc
Why should we vote for anybody for mayor? Elected mayors are not democratic anyway but were introduced by New Labour as a way of reducing even further the democratic functionning of elected local councils.
In the olden days, local councils used to be run on the committee system under which councillors from all groups were represented. This wasn't perfect from a democratic point of view, but at least it allowed all groups to have some input on local decision-making. New Labour found this not businesslike enough and so they introduced two alternative ways of getting rid of it. One was for the councillors to elect a cabinet of full-time paid councillors who would make all the decisions. The other was to have executive powers exercised by an elected mayor. Under both systems councillors not in the cabinet of other councillors or the mayor's cabinet now have very little chance to influence decisions.
I know that the situation in London is different because there hadn't been any elected London-wide council since Madame Thatcher abolished the GLC. But its substitute, the GLA, is just a toothless farce. I don't think I'd bother voting for them either since they can't do anything except talk. And even Ken isn't really the mayor of London just an elected minister of transport for London
Originally Posted by Jean-Luc
Why should we vote for anybody for mayor? Elected mayors are not democratic anyway but were introduced by New Labour as a way of reducing even further the democratic functionning of elected local councils.
Guineveretoo said:
In the olden days, local councils used to be run on the committee system under which councillors from all groups were represented. This wasn't perfect from a democratic point of view, but at least it allowed all groups to have some input on local decision-making. New Labour found this not businesslike enough and so they introduced two alternative ways of getting rid of it. One was for the councillors to elect a cabinet of full-time paid councillors who would make all the decisions. The other was to have executive powers exercised by an elected mayor. Under both systems councillors not in the cabinet of other councillors or the mayor's cabinet now have very little chance to influence decisions.
I know that the situation in London is different because there hadn't been any elected London-wide council since Madame Thatcher abolished the GLC. But its substitute, the GLA, is just a toothless farce. I don't think I'd bother voting for them either since they can't do anything except talk. And even Ken isn't really the mayor of London just an elected minister of transport for London
nino_savatte
No pasaran!
Guineveretoo said:
No, I didn't. This is what I said
The GLA came off the back of the mayor thing. The GLC was like any other local authority: it had a leader - who came from the winning party and council members who represented London far more effectively than the 12 or so who simply sit once a month to question the mayor.
newbie
undisambiguated
except, as I said above, in the specific case of the GLC a post-election party coup delivered an entirely different party leadership to what Londoners thought they were voting for.
I'm not a fan of Mayor + GLA, but let's not get too misty-eyed about the democratic nature of the GLC. Ken proved just how much power the leader had and how little say Londoners had in the process.
I'm not a fan of Mayor + GLA, but let's not get too misty-eyed about the democratic nature of the GLC. Ken proved just how much power the leader had and how little say Londoners had in the process.
Jean-Luc said:
why?
Jean-Luc
Well-Known Member
You mean why are elected mayors undemocratic? Basically, because they are meant to be Leaders. Compared with committee system that local councils used to have, electing a single person encourages people to think that some Leader can solve their problems for them, when these problems can only be solved by people refusing to follow leaders and acting for themselves -- which they can do to some extent within the committee system but can't do at all with the elected mayor system.guinnessdrinker said:
poster342002
PROPER leftwing socialist
But you still ended up with that leader-syndrome under the old committee system anyway to all extents and purposes (whoever is top of a commmittee usually gets their way) - but without any sort of public vote on who the leader was.Jean-Luc said:
In fact, it could eb argued that is actually worse - as the leader-elected-by-committee does not have to seek a mandate from (or have accountabilty to) the electorate but to a small handfull of self-perpetuating committee members all voting for each other ad-infinitum, year in, year out.
If we're going to have leaders in political authorities, I'd rather there was some possibiltiy for the electorate to throw them out directly and circumvent permanently-entrenched local cliques re-electing their mates over and over again.
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