Merry Christmas 09
Guido is like Santa Claus, or so he claims. See his very funny video with top ten political moments here
And further satire from our resident friend Dungeekin here
Inspired by Dungeekin is a brilliant ’cheery Christmas Song’ by Man Widdicombe here or with the lyrics here
The Challenge of Housing and Homelessness
Guest Blog by raincoaster - presenting a challenge
“The view is more beautiful now that it is mine.” Ran
Hendrik Gets His Chair by AHA Media
I can be challenging. Boris knows it, Melissa knows it, the nation of Albania knows it, I know it, you know it (well you know now, don’t you?). So I’d like to put this inherent challengenosity (a raincoasterism) of mine to good use and dare your city to match or beat my city in something that really matters. Read on, if you think your humble burb has what it takes:
We all know this blog belongs to the Mayor of London (although detached it is still his in spirit), and before that was based out of the cosmopolitan megalopolis of Henley, but for a moment I’d like to divert your attention to my own town, indeed my own neighborhood. I’d like to introduce you to Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. (More photos of Hendrik on his revolving chair here)
Queen of Hastings Street
With an average life expectancy in the mid-forties (thanks to disease, addiction, and the interlocking social and physical problems arising from substandard- or no housing), the DTES (Downtown Eastside) has been an archetypal skid row since the days in the last century when lumber was, in fact, skidded in the mud down the street on its way to the sawmill because wagons were for the rich folk.
Now, after more than a century of struggling with the issue, I’m proud to say that Vancouver has eliminated homelessness.
Image by Peter Davies, From the Hope in Shadows collection, COPYRIGHT: Pivot Legal Society, 2009
Yes, Homelessness is Over! Watch this amazing news story
Boris at Copenhagen for a greener future
With the right finance, Britain can lead the world to a greener future, says Boris Johnson.
By the time you read these words I will be airborne to Copenhagen. Why, you may ask, am I going to the climate change summit? Is it really worth discharging yet more greenhouse gases into the upper air?
As for the validity of the summit itself, I believe that it is of crucial importance for the world. We have a real chance to agree new targets for reducing CO2 emissions – and to bring in countries such as China and India which were, insanely, omitted from the Kyoto protocol. We also have a chance to do something about the politics of global warming, which are in danger of going seriously wrong. We won’t win this argument with the public, we won’t get people to change their lives, we won’t succeed in cutting CO2 if we continue to rely on a diet of unremitting gloom. It is time for a change in the psychological approach.
Jo Johnson is the Candidate for Orpington
Boris’s brother has just won the selection to stand in the safe Conservative seat of Orpington where the current MP, John Horam, is standing down.
Stanley, his father, recently described him as “taller and blonder than Boris” and he is the Financial Times’ South Asia bureau chief. Based in New Delhi since January 2005, he leads the team of FT journalists that covers India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan and the Maldives. In addition to his coverage for the print edition, he writes a regular online column, Engaging India.
A graduate of Balliol College, Oxford, from which he received a first class degree in Modern History, he has worked for the FT since 1997. His first job on the newspaper was on the Lex Column, which he joined after a a stint as a corporate financier in the investment banking division of Deutsche Bank.
He completed an MBA at INSEAD in 2000 and served as an FT Paris correspondent from 2001-2004. He is co-author, with Martine Orange, of The Man who Tried to Buy the World: Jean-Marie Messier and the Rise and Fall of Vivendi Universal (Penguin, 2003).
Many congratulations Jo and we look forward to hearing more about you in the coming months ahead.
What David Cameron can learn from Boris
By special request
Melissa C-W
To follow is the recent article in The Spectator I know many of you will find of interest and relevance. Can the Cameroons really learn anything from Boris? Look forward to hearing your views.
Boris says what he thinks almost without thinking. Cameron’s pronouncements are carefully calibrated. Work on Cameron’s conference speech began in July, Boris’s was written on the train to Manchester
As the most powerful Conservative in Britain, Boris Johnson has plenty to teach his old schoolpal, David Cameron. But, says James Forsyth, the Cameroons are too busy criticising the Mayor’s ‘amateurish’ approach to see what they’re missing
As a piece of political propaganda, the sticker issued by the Shelter housing charity at the last Tory conference came close to perfection. It had a picture of the Mayor of London in jogging gear, with the caption: ‘Boris is making the running on rough sleeping. Join the race, Cameron!’ This was how Shelter thought they could best get their message across: goading Team Cameron into action by comparison with Mr Johnson. It was a clever use of a fast-emerging narrative in Westminster: the great Boris v. Dave rivalry.
It is a point of fact, now, to say that Mr Johnson is the most powerful Conservative in the land. The idea, though, of the Mayor as a great pioneer, beating a path for the laggards in Westminster to follow, is one which annoys many people around Cameron. When I told one shadow Cabinet member that I was doing a piece on what Cameron could learn from Boris they looked at me with genuine concern before warning, ‘they’ll really hate that.’
This tension between the two camps makes the Boris v. Dave story irresistible to the media. But Boris has been busy seasoning this stew, outflanking Cameron and Osborne on those Tory staples of tax and Europe. Among the Tory grassroots, there are now a growing number of Conservatives who like to think of the Mayor as a lodestar: a man less apologetic in his conservatism, and indeed everything else, than the leader.
