Boris Johnson gives Sir Mick Jagger satisfaction
When news was leaked to The Sun earlier this year that Sir Mick Jagger was due to meet David Cameron at the World Economic Forum at Davos, the Rolling Stones singer was so angry that he cancelled the rendezvous.
Sir Mick, whose hits include (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction, retains his affection for Boris Johnson, though. “I got an email message from Sir Mick Jagger congratulating me on winning the mayoral race,” says Johnson. “It is not impossible that I could pay him back and offer to dance with him on stage.”
Tyrone Wood recently had to take down a photograph of a naked woman and a swan from the wall of his Mayfair art gallery after a police officer complained that it appeared to “condone bestiality”. Now, the son of the guitarist Ronnie Wood is considering emigrating.
“I might move to L A,” he tells Mandrake. “I love it in London, but the art scene in L A is moving forward in a lot of ways and I think I could really help to make a difference to it.”
Boris Johnson gives Sir Mick Jagger satisfaction
When news was leaked to The Sun earlier this year that Sir Mick Jagger was due to meet David Cameron at the World Economic Forum at Davos, the Rolling Stones singer was so angry that he cancelled the rendezvous.
Sir Mick, whose hits include (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction, retains his affection for Boris Johnson, though. “I got an email message from Sir Mick Jagger congratulating me on winning the mayoral race,” says Johnson. “It is not impossible that I could pay him back and offer to dance with him on stage.”
Tyrone Wood recently had to take down a photograph of a naked woman and a swan from the wall of his Mayfair art gallery after a police officer complained that it appeared to “condone bestiality”. Now, the son of the guitarist Ronnie Wood is considering emigrating.
“I might move to L A,” he tells Mandrake. “I love it in London, but the art scene in L A is moving forward in a lot of ways and I think I could really help to make a difference to it.”
The statist, defeatist and biased BBC is on the wrong wavelength
'So what do you think, eh?” I turned to the BBC’s art critic, the brilliant, bulging Professor Branestawm lookalike Will Gompertz. We were standing on the top of the ArcelorMittal Orbit in Stratford; London was spread beneath us like a land of dreams – was that France I could see in the distance? – and yet I was nervous. This sculpture is a masterpiece, far better and more rewarding up close than it appears at a distance. The steel loops are an arterial red, writhing and shifting against each other beneath the blue sky. Anish Kapoor already has many fans, but he has excelled himself with this vast fallopian ampersand, this enigmatic hubble bubble, this proud vertical invitation to London 2012.
The Orbit is a decisive assertion of the city’s status as the world capital of culture and the arts. That’s my view, anyway, and I am sticking to it, though I am conscious that not everyone agrees. There are plenty of people who absolutely hate the thing, just as most Parisians initially despised the Eiffel Tower (and didn’t Charles Dickens campaign against the building of Big Ben and the Palace of Westminster?). I have heard it compared to a catastrophic collision between two cranes, a mutant helter-skelter, a mangled trombone, and worse. So of course I waited with bated breath for the verdict of the BBC.
Did Gompertz like it as much as I did? My friends, he did not. Or at least, he liked it, but he had two complaints. “It’s not big enough,” he said, “and surely it should be free.” Not big enough! Free! There you have everything that is wrong with the BBC and with this country. The thing is already colossal – about twice the height of Nelson’s column. If we went much higher we would have to re-route the planes out of City airport. And yes, it costs something to go up – though less than it costs to go up the London Eye – but what is the alternative? The alternative is that the whole operation would have to be subsidised by the taxpayer when it is one of the (many) saving graces of this structure that it has been very largely financed by private sponsorship.
In his criticisms, Gompertz was revealing not the instincts of an art critic – but the mentality of the BBC man. Unlike the zany eccentric ArcelorMittal Orbit, the zany eccentric Gompertz is almost entirely publicly funded. It is up to you whether or not to go up the Orbit – though I thoroughly recommend it. You have no choice about funding Gompertz. Everyone who possesses a TV has to pay more than £145 to put him on air. The BBC is unlike any other media organisation in the free world, in that it levies billions from British households whether they want to watch it or not. No wonder its employees have an innocent belief that everything in life should be “free”. No wonder – and I speak as one who has just fought a campaign in which I sometimes felt that my chief opponent was the local BBC news – the prevailing view of Beeb newsrooms is, with honourable exceptions, statist, corporatist, defeatist, anti-business, Europhile and, above all, overwhelmingly biased to the Left.
Of course they are: the whole lot of them are funded by the taxpayer. Eurosceptic views are still treated as if they were vaguely mad and unpleasant, even though the Eurosceptic analysis has been proved overwhelmingly right. In all its lavish coverage of Murdoch, hacking and BSkyB, the BBC never properly explains the reasons why other media organisations – including the BBC – want to shaft a free-market competitor (and this basic dishonesty is spotted by the electorate; it’s one of the reasons real people are so apathetic about the Leveson business).
The non-Murdoch media have their guns trained on Murdoch, while the Beeb continues to destroy the business case of its private sector rivals with taxpayer-funded websites and electronic media of all kinds. None of this might matter, if we were not going through a crucial and difficult economic period. The broad history of the past 30 years in the UK is that the Thatcher government took us out of an economic death-spiral of Seventies complacency. Spending was tackled, the unions were contained, the City was unleashed, and a series of important supply-side reforms helped to deliver a long boom; and when the exhausted and fractious Tories were eventually chucked out in 1997, it was Labour that profited – politically – from those reforms.
The boom continued, in spite of everything Blair and Brown did to choke it. They over-regulated; they spent more than the country could afford; they massively expanded the public sector; they did nothing to reform health or education or the distortions of the welfare state. And so when the bust finally came, in 2008, this country was in no position to cope. We now have the twin problems of dealing with the debt, and recovering competitiveness – and neither of those is easy when the BBC is the chief mirror in which we view ourselves. If you are funded by the taxpayer, you are more likely to see the taxpayer as the solution to every economic ill.
If you are funded by the taxpayer, you are less likely to understand and sympathise with the difficulties of business; you are less likely to celebrate enterprise. I have sometimes wondered why BBC London never carries stories about dynamic start-ups or amazing London exports – and then concluded gloomily that it just not in the nature of that show. It’s not in their DNA. Fully 75 per cent of the London economy is private sector – and yet it is almost completely ignored by our state broadcaster.
Well, folks, we have a potential solution. In a short while we must appoint a new director-general, to succeed Mark Thompson. If we are really going ahead with Lords reform (why?), then the Lib Dems should allow the Government to appoint someone to run the BBC who is free-market, pro-business and understands the depths of the problems this country faces. We need someone who knows about the work ethic, and cutting costs. We need a Tory, and no mucking around. If we can’t change the Beeb, we can’t change the country.
The statist, defeatest and biased BBC is on the wrong wavelength
'So what do you think, eh?” I turned to the BBC’s art critic, the brilliant, bulging Professor Branestawm lookalike Will Gompertz. We were standing on the top of the ArcelorMittal Orbit in Stratford; London was spread beneath us like a land of dreams – was that France I could see in the distance? – and yet I was nervous. This sculpture is a masterpiece, far better and more rewarding up close than it appears at a distance. The steel loops are an arterial red, writhing and shifting against each other beneath the blue sky. Anish Kapoor already has many fans, but he has excelled himself with this vast fallopian ampersand, this enigmatic hubble bubble, this proud vertical invitation to London 2012.
The Orbit is a decisive assertion of the city’s status as the world capital of culture and the arts. That’s my view, anyway, and I am sticking to it, though I am conscious that not everyone agrees. There are plenty of people who absolutely hate the thing, just as most Parisians initially despised the Eiffel Tower (and didn’t Charles Dickens campaign against the building of Big Ben and the Palace of Westminster?). I have heard it compared to a catastrophic collision between two cranes, a mutant helter-skelter, a mangled trombone, and worse. So of course I waited with bated breath for the verdict of the BBC.
Did Gompertz like it as much as I did? My friends, he did not. Or at least, he liked it, but he had two complaints. “It’s not big enough,” he said, “and surely it should be free.” Not big enough! Free! There you have everything that is wrong with the BBC and with this country. The thing is already colossal – about twice the height of Nelson’s column. If we went much higher we would have to re-route the planes out of City airport. And yes, it costs something to go up – though less than it costs to go up the London Eye – but what is the alternative? The alternative is that the whole operation would have to be subsidised by the taxpayer when it is one of the (many) saving graces of this structure that it has been very largely financed by private sponsorship.
In his criticisms, Gompertz was revealing not the instincts of an art critic – but the mentality of the BBC man. Unlike the zany eccentric ArcelorMittal Orbit, the zany eccentric Gompertz is almost entirely publicly funded. It is up to you whether or not to go up the Orbit – though I thoroughly recommend it. You have no choice about funding Gompertz. Everyone who possesses a TV has to pay more than £145 to put him on air. The BBC is unlike any other media organisation in the free world, in that it levies billions from British households whether they want to watch it or not. No wonder its employees have an innocent belief that everything in life should be “free”. No wonder – and I speak as one who has just fought a campaign in which I sometimes felt that my chief opponent was the local BBC news – the prevailing view of Beeb newsrooms is, with honourable exceptions, statist, corporatist, defeatist, anti-business, Europhile and, above all, overwhelmingly biased to the Left.
Of course they are: the whole lot of them are funded by the taxpayer. Eurosceptic views are still treated as if they were vaguely mad and unpleasant, even though the Eurosceptic analysis has been proved overwhelmingly right. In all its lavish coverage of Murdoch, hacking and BSkyB, the BBC never properly explains the reasons why other media organisations – including the BBC – want to shaft a free-market competitor (and this basic dishonesty is spotted by the electorate; it’s one of the reasons real people are so apathetic about the Leveson business).
The non-Murdoch media have their guns trained on Murdoch, while the Beeb continues to destroy the business case of its private sector rivals with taxpayer-funded websites and electronic media of all kinds. None of this might matter, if we were not going through a crucial and difficult economic period. The broad history of the past 30 years in the UK is that the Thatcher government took us out of an economic death-spiral of Seventies complacency. Spending was tackled, the unions were contained, the City was unleashed, and a series of important supply-side reforms helped to deliver a long boom; and when the exhausted and fractious Tories were eventually chucked out in 1997, it was Labour that profited – politically – from those reforms.
The boom continued, in spite of everything Blair and Brown did to choke it. They over-regulated; they spent more than the country could afford; they massively expanded the public sector; they did nothing to reform health or education or the distortions of the welfare state. And so when the bust finally came, in 2008, this country was in no position to cope. We now have the twin problems of dealing with the debt, and recovering competitiveness – and neither of those is easy when the BBC is the chief mirror in which we view ourselves. If you are funded by the taxpayer, you are more likely to see the taxpayer as the solution to every economic ill.
If you are funded by the taxpayer, you are less likely to understand and sympathise with the difficulties of business; you are less likely to celebrate enterprise. I have sometimes wondered why BBC London never carries stories about dynamic start-ups or amazing London exports – and then concluded gloomily that it just not in the nature of that show. It’s not in their DNA. Fully 75 per cent of the London economy is private sector – and yet it is almost completely ignored by our state broadcaster.
Well, folks, we have a potential solution. In a short while we must appoint a new director-general, to succeed Mark Thompson. If we are really going ahead with Lords reform (why?), then the Lib Dems should allow the Government to appoint someone to run the BBC who is free-market, pro-business and understands the depths of the problems this country faces. We need someone who knows about the work ethic, and cutting costs. We need a Tory, and no mucking around. If we can’t change the Beeb, we can’t change the country.
Next head of BBC must be a Tory says Boris Johnson
The Mayor of London insists the corporation, which is funded by the taxpayer, must be run by someone who is “free-market” and “pro-business”.
Mr Johnson says the new appointment should know about “the work ethic, and cutting costs”. Writing in The Daily Telegraph today, he argues: “We need a Tory, and no mucking around.”
Decrying the attitude of a BBC art critic, who told him the new ArcelorMittal Orbit structure at the Olympic Park in Stratford, east London, should be “bigger” and “free”, Mr Johnson said: “There you have everything that is wrong with the BBC and with this country.”
With the licence fee levying billions of pounds from British households it is “no wonder its employees have an innocent belief that everything in life should be 'free’ ,” he says.
Speaking of his recent election campaign, Mr Johnson says: “I sometimes felt that my chief opponent was the local BBC news – the prevailing view of Beeb newsrooms is, with honourable exceptions, statist, corporatist, defeatist, anti-business, Europhile and, above all, overwhelmingly biased to the Left.”
Mark Thompson, who is due to step down from his role in the autumn after eight years, has admitted the corporation was guilty of bias in the past.
In an interview with the New Statesman in 2010, he said: “In the BBC I joined 30 years ago, there was, in much of current affairs, in terms of people’s personal politics, which were quite vocal, a massive bias to the Left … now it is a completely different generation.”
What football teaches us about creating a thriving jobs market
“Mr President,” I said, in tones of calculated self-deprecation, “how come England hasn’t won the Fifa World Cup since I was two? France, Germany, Italy, Spain — all our European rivals, but not England. What’s wrong with us?” Blatter figuratively stroked the white cat on his lap, and replied that it was very simple. The trouble with England was the Premiership, he said. You import all these players from around the world. It means that the local talent never gets the same attention, or the same investment. That’s the problem with English football, he said, and then I found that my time was up and that the blonde Ukrainian six-footers were heading me to the door.
I was much struck by his analysis, and relayed it immediately to one of my colleagues, an ardent Lefty and lifelong Arsenal fan. I wondered whether there could be a smidgen of truth in what Blatter suggested. Perhaps all these intergalactic imports — Brazilians, Nigerians, Russians, Croats, you name it — were depressing the growth of our autochthonous talent. Perhaps we should have some rule — as Blatter suggested — to exclude these superstars, or to limit their numbers, in order to protect and bring on the native English players.
Oh, ah, I said, and accepted the wisdom of his judgment. I have been thinking about this argument over the past few weeks and months, because our number one priority as a society is to boost growth — and get people into work. Some readers may have been following the London elections, and will have gathered that we have fantastic plans to invest in transport, housing and regeneration schemes — projects that will cumulatively help create 200,000 jobs. We are building a platform now for a more successful and prosperous city in 10 and 20 years’ time: high-quality family homes, a better Tube network, new river crossings, orbital rail; and we are addressing the immediate economic problems by getting Londoners into work.
The trouble is — as many people have pointed out to me at street corners — that London’s formidable job-creating powers do not always seem to involve the creation of jobs for native Londoners. Go into any coffee shop and talk to the staff, listen to the voices on the building sites — and you will see how the city is working as a magnet for talent and energy from outside the UK, many from the countries that have recently acceded to the EU.
There are plenty of people who take a Sepp Blatter-ish line about this phenomenon. There are some who say the immigrants are simply too talented and energetic. I was discussing the problem with a group of journalists not long ago, when a Guardian man — a kindly and distinguished fellow — started heckling me. It wasn’t fair, he suggested, that indigenous Londoners should be asked to go toe to toe “with Polish graduates”. I see his point. I see the unfairness.
But we are forced to ask what is the alternative, and what is the best way forward for the young Londoners who are not finding the work that they need. I suppose we could try to protect them by constructing Blatteresque barriers and quotas — though we would almost certainly find that such moves were against EU law. But surely the best approach now is to look at every stage in the chain of causation that results in a young Londoner losing out, in the jobs market, to a contestant from abroad. We need to hear an honest and unflinching account from the employers: just why is it that so many individual recruitment decisions seem to go against young Londoners?
Why do immigrant workers seem to look at a job in McDonald’s or Starbucks as a stepping stone, while some who were born here apparently regard it as a dead end? Is the problem just to do with pay and conditions? Is it really true that immigrants will work harder for less? Is there really a difference in the “work ethic”, or is that an urban myth? One of my first priorities as re-elected mayor is to analyse and expose the roots of this problem.
I have already launched an inquiry into education in London, and we will now extend this to include all the failures of the labour market — all the reasons Londoners are not getting the jobs they need. We will simultaneously expand our apprenticeship programme by a colossal 250,000 — to give young people that vital experience of competing in a workplace. So far, 84 per cent have gone on to full-time jobs. But should we go for the Blatter solution, and haul up the drawbridge?
Against illegals, yes. Against talent, no. In football as in the economy at large, you don’t make people more competitive by excluding the competition.
Friends: The One Where Boris Taunts Dave In Latin
Dave was too exhausted even to feel angry. Betrayed by his own people – after all he’d done for them! Just as he was trying to take in the news, his phone chirped, sounding out the opening notes of London Calling.
He stared at the screen, then gave a short bark of laughter. “It’s from Boris,” he announced. “It says 'Et tu, Oxfordshire?’”
“Nice of him to try to cheer you up,” ventured George.
“I’m not sure that’s the plan,” said Dave. The phone chirped again. “ 'Aegroto dum anima est, spes est’. What does that mean?”
Michael spoke up. “As long as a sick person has breath, there is hope.”
“Great,” said Dave. “He’s not only taunting me – he’s taunting me in Latin. What’s next? 'Sic transit gloria mundi’? Or maybe 'Remember, Caesar, that thou art mortal’?”
“No,” said George, peering at his own phone, which had just buzzed. “'Ut sementem feceris, ita metes’.”
“'As ye reap, so shall ye sow’,” muttered Michael, without being asked.
“Come on, Dave,” said Eric, nudging over the remnants of a platter of sandwiches. “Illegitimi non carborundum and all that.”
“Eh?” said Dave.
“Don’t let the b------ grind you down.”
“Quite,” said George, before inspecting his phone again. “And on the plus side, it looks like Boris has run out of Latin.”
“Well, that’s good, isn’t it?” said Dave.
“Not entirely,” said George. “He’s asking me to send him the measurements for the Downing Street curtains.”
Deep within Dave’s soul, a defiant spark flickered into life. He’d be dashed if he was going to take this from Boris, of all people. He’d prove he was still the Alpha Etonian.
“Right, that’s it,” he said. “Make a note – first thing tomorrow, I want plans on my desk for a fightback. I want an outline of the reshuffle. I want a new draft of the Queen’s Speech that’s tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime. I want Abu Qatada on the first plane out, no matter how long he has to queue at Heathrow. I want next week to be a fresh start.”
“Good plan, chief,” said Eric, loyally. “It might even distract people from watching Rebekah and Andy at Leveson.”
“Oh yes,” said Dave. “That.” As silence descended again, he slumped mournfully in his chair, and reached for the wilted egg and cress.
