Thought I’d copy this from the smoking thread, since it’s just as relevant here:
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I’m becoming heartily sick of the petty point scoring by Livingstone and Paddick in this election, not to mention their supporters. Take this from Paddick:
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“How can Londoners trust someone who has received money from the tobacco industry to be objective about the smoking ban?” What tosh. Boris gave one speech to a commercial organisation and charged a fee, like most politicians. And he’s asking for a referendum, not singlehandedly overturning the law.
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“There are two possible explanations for Boris wanting to overturn it: either he is out of touch with Londoners or he is in the pocket of the tobacco industry.” No possibility of a third explanation, then? Like he believes the legislation was unnecessary, divisive, unfair, damaging to the trade, and contrary to the principles of market choice? And that he is, indeed, in touch with a great many Londoners who feel the same way?
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I’m not just sticking up for Boris here but expressing disgust at his opponents’ deliberate misinterpretation of his motives and distortion of his comments – a trick which, to his great credit, Boris has generally avoided.
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It surprises me that political commentators have not made more of the revelation that Ken has five children by three different women, two of them pregnant at the same time. He says people are not interested. Well I am; it is very much an issue when the mayor confesses to a lifestyle known as one of the prime causes of social breakdown. It must affect his thinking on a wide range of policies.
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One cannot help wondering if his excuse for turning up late at a radio interview the other day – “My children just wanted a little time with me, sorry about that” – was not another cynical ploy by the slippery little toad, this time to show that he is a responsible parent after all.
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As for the outrage over some light banter on the same programme where Boris quipped “You can’t out-ethnic me” to the presenter Nihal Arthanayake – all taken in good spirit – it makes you despair. Left-wing commentators pounced, frothing at the mouth, with their usual screams of “totally unfit to run a city.”
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I ask you, who’d want to run as a parish councillor in today’s hysteria-driven world of politics where a few impromptu words are given more weight than a lifetime’s work?
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Placing bets, Raincoaster? I thought you were skint.

Boris still leads Ken in London mayoral poll
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Boris Johnson holds a seven-point lead over incumbent London mayor Ken Livingstone, a poll suggests.
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The Evening Standard newspaper and pollsters YouGov give the Conservative candidate an increased lead over his Labour rival, while Liberal Democrat candidate Brian Paddick trails in third place on 12 per cent.

Actually, no.
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Prying the American’s heads out of their collective (or rather, federated) asses would require a crowbar larger than the solar system and stronger than the gravitational force of a brace of galaxies.
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There may be some coverage in Vanity Fair, because they’re fond of him and like to think themselves international. Otherwise, any coverage would be in the intellectual press only, because everyone there who’s not a Zionist is an Anglophile, and many are both. As far as mainstream coverage, nothing. They are entirely wrapped up in their own election.

WaPo counts as intellectual press (seen their circ figures?) but the Times coverage is a complete surprise to me. Normally Gawker would have made fun of the piece by now, so I’d have seen it. Sarah Lyall, however, is an American-born naturalized Brit, who writes from Britain on British things for Anglophiles. It’s sort of her brand. She’s pretty good at it, too. Still, puts it firmly in the “novelty article” coverage rather than political. She is or was a contributing editor to Vanity Fair (London’s not the only city with an incestuous media loop).
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Mind you, looking again I see the WaPo article is really Associated Press, the wire service, and that’s how it’s filed: washingtonpost.com > World > Wires , not Politics.
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I promise to let you know the INSTANT Nick Denton posts something. Who has time to read newspapers with all these damn blogs?

“There are two possible explanations for Boris wanting to overturn it: either he is out of touch with Londoners or he is in the pocket of the tobacco industry.” No possibility of a third explanation, then? Like he believes the legislation was unnecessary, divisive, unfair, damaging to the trade, and contrary to the principles of market choice? And that he is, indeed, in touch with a great many Londoners who feel the same way?

Well it is a bit suspicious when you see 60 pages of comments on "smoking".

e.g.

topic / number of comments
law & religion 8
men's right movement 13
poindexter 32
road congestion and future of transport 49
smoking 2383

I mean, is it that important Paul?

and that's not all...

I think Boris should try to think of a strategy for helping people to work from home so they don't have to commute to work. This would reduce transport congestion and emissions. It would also improve productivity as people will have 2 extra hours which would otherwise be spent staring at someone's armpit on the tube. It needs some sort of incentive for businesses to encourage this, like IT subsidies to set up home working. Another benefit would be that tube travellers would then comprise mainly people who are going out to play and are therefore happier than the commuters who are just fed up cos they're going to work or they've had a bad day at the office. London would be a more productive, cleaner and happier place. All because of working from home.

So Boris, have a think about that over the weekend, make a speech about it next week and I guarantee the mayor thing will be pretty much in the bag.

Think nothing of it.

Boris has already written about telecommuting and it’s in the archives somewhere, so search for it. Working from home has good points and bad points: for one thing, if it were widespread, you could say goodbye to decent public transit at a reasonable cost or road maintenance, such as it is. For another, I spent fifteen hours in the same damn chair yesterday. Like every damn day.
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Then,sitting in that chair, I ran across a “change your life perspective” suggestion thread. The very first suggestion was a seemingly radical one: spend all day in one chair, only leaving to go to the bathroom. Like this was a radical departure from the norm. At that point I gathered up my breakfast, lunch and dinner dishes from on top of the monitor and went to bed.

Okay, actually I spent two hours trying to make another post, but that is neither here nor there, nor such a good punchline, it must be admitted.
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Boris’s suggestion about devolving to boroughs the power to make decisions like the smoking ban is insufficiently understood; does anyone realize just how radical that is? And has anyone really probed to see if he’s serious about that? Because that would fundamentally change the nature of the office of the Mayor of London and the very nature of the city itself, wouldn’t it?
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In other news, here is an amusing but bad music video for Boris the Spider

Boris’s suggestion about devolving to boroughs the power to make decisions like the smoking ban is insufficiently understood; does anyone realize just how radical that is? And has anyone really probed to see if he’s serious about that? Because that would fundamentally change the nature of the office of the Mayor of London and the very nature of the city itself, wouldn’t it? – raincoaster
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Boris asked what the point of local government was, if decisions about smoking bans couldn’t be taken locally. And he had a very good point. It would actually be a rather neat move for government to devolve the power to ban smoking to local government, because this would allow central government to wash its hands of the matter. Antismokers however would hate it, because it would lessen their control. And what would happen would be that some councils would impose bans, and others would lift them, and smokers and their friends would start driving for miles to the nearest smoking pubs, as happens in the US at the moment. At the same time, non-smoking pubs would lose trade. But then, if that’s what people actually want, that’s what the government should permit.
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Better still, they should devolve the power to impose bans to individual pubs, and let the market – people’s preferences – decide the outcome.

Did anyone see Question Time last night with the three mayoral candidates? Ken was his usual slippery self, spouting obvious lies with total conviction and squirming his way out of trouble with clever-dick retorts. No wonder Jeffrey Archer described him as the most devious politician he has ever known (not bad, coming from Archer).
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Paddick came across as fair but not a man with deep conviction about things that matter to people.
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Boris did well enough, but is up against an almost insurmoutable problem at debates like this. In every audience there are people out to get him with a picaninny-type attack. At one point someone asked if the candidates thought there should be stricter limits on immigration. You could almost smell the audience waiting for Boris to say something that would have the Left frothing at the mouth and (mis)quoting him non-stop between now and election day.
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Unfortunately (perhaps not unwisely) he ducked the question with some woffle about doing what’s right for London. But he didn’t need to sell himself cheap. Let me write his script.
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“There are perhaps three billion people around the globe who would love to come to Britain to enjoy a higher standard of living, and with cheap long-distance travel such a scenario is theoretically possible. I would be delighted to have them if our island was large enough. But does anyone in this room believe we could accommodate even a fraction of this number? Of course not.
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“Only a dreamer would claim we can maintain a stable and solvent country without constantly reviewing qualifications for entry. And, as it happens, 80 percent of the population agree.”
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There you go, Boris. I’m available.
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Dimbleby did a fine job, asking uncomfortable and well-chosen questions but actually letting the candidates speak. He put Brillo’s earlier effort to shame. The Scottish inquisitor was too fond of his own opinions.

(Idlex) Perhaps you could tell one of my 75-year-old friends to “stop sulking” and “let things go”, because “it’s done now”.

I get enough ear-ache from a slightly younger set, but usually when I say "give it a rest" they do realise they've been banging on about it a bit too much.

(PaulID) What do you mean by suspicious, Ron? The word implies an improper motive.

When you look at the chart-topping attention the subject attracts on the forum I can see why people might wrongly have their suspicions aroused, as you mentioned had happened. I imagine Boris must cringe when he sees it still out-stripping every other topic on his forum.

(PaulID) Did anyone see Question Time last night with the three mayoral candidates? Ken was his usual slippery self, spouting obvious lies with total conviction and squirming his way out of trouble with clever-dick retorts. No wonder Jeffrey Archer described him as the most devious politician he has ever known (not bad, coming from Archer).

I spoke to my dad, who lives in outer London, yesterday and was surprised to hear that him and my step mother will be voting for Boris. His reasons: Ken seems too sly and Boris seems honest and good natured.

Ken must have an advantage in some of these debates as he's been paid to do the job for years. But the momentum is clearly with Boris, who is only going to get better as he grows into the job. For Ken, the only way is down and I think Londoners recognise that now. Basically, if Boris continues to show that he really wants the job and keeps the momentum going for one more week then I think it's there for the taking.

(PaulID) Paddick came across as fair but not a man with deep conviction about things that matter to people.

I thought he did ok on the first Paxman debate, but I went off him when I saw a picture of his home in a newspaper. It was a very modern flat with a minimalist and, I thought, pretentious feel to it with very few signs of having been inhabited by a human being. Perhaps paddick is in fact an android? I wonder what Boris's home looks like? I imagine it would show more signs of having been lived in.

Changing the subject to Routemasters, I was with my kids in Nottingham today and it seems they have started using them on a route (No 20) through Nottingham. I stood and watched smiling as it went by and my kids asked if we could go on one day. "Perhaps when we visit Grandad in London, when Boris is Mayor", I said.

I did read that routemasters result in just as many accidents as Bendy buses. I don't know if it's true, but in any case I picture those accidents coming about by someone taking a gamble and attempting to leap onto one at high speed, Frank Spencer style, only to miss and be flattened by a following steam roller. The over ambitious bus-user has to take responsibility there. Whereas I expect Bendy buses squash cyclists as they go round corners because of their poor design and unsuitability for shared highways.

Having conductors is going to speed things up a lot too surely. But doesn't the same apply to trains? I sometimes miss my train if there's a long queue and I have to wait 15 minutes to get a ticket. What about having conductors on Trains?

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iSx4K42LiR9jF3YomFt0qCvFiEEw

LONDON (AFP) — Labour candidate Ken Livingstone has narrowly pulled ahead of his Tory rival Boris Johnson as he attempts to win a third term as London mayor, according to the latest opinion poll.
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The Ipsos Mori survey puts Livingstone on 53 percent – six points ahead of Johnson on 47 percent – among those certain to vote in Thursday’s election, once second preferences are taken into account.
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But the study for trade union Unison found that some of those who said they were certain to vote had not registered, the Guardian newspaper reported Saturday.
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Livingstone’s lead shrunk to 4 percent once this had been factored in to the poll.

Talking of slimy reptiles, how about this for bare-faced lies?
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Bengali-language leaflets are being handed out at mosques saying that Boris “hates Muslims” and it is a “moral duty” for Muslims to support Livingstone.
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As evidence, they quote him as writing two years ago: “The proposed ban on incitement to religious hatred makes no sense unless it involves a ban on the Koran itself.” It fails to include the rest of the sentence in which, crucially, he describes such a ban as “absurd”.
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The whole story – exposing other astonishingly dirty tricks – is here in the Evening Standard. Interestingly, the scandalous passages are written in Bengali but the English version has been cleansed.
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Of course the Ken camp will dismiss it as Standard muck-raking, but Gilligan’s article does seem watertight. In any other circumstances this kind of distortion would be ripe for a libel action. He should not be allowed to get away with it.

SUE THE BASTARDS!

Come on, idlex. The smoking ban is, in my view, the most pernicious piece of legislation in half a century.

Is it now? Moreso than, say:

The radical curtailment of fundamental freedoms and mind-boggling expansion of government power in the anti-terror legislation?

Suspension of Habeus Corpus

You remember Habeus Corpus, don’t you? Here’s the full text

or good old-fashioned flagrant graft and coverups, for when you don’t have time to bend the law to your own will.

idlex, maybe you’d be happier in China. They’re almost required to smoke there.

Best of luck for Boris tomorrow!

You should have registered for a postal vote, Steve, and joined the other 50,000,000 Londoners who will be voting for Ken.

Raincoaster and Ron
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Going back to the question of why the “scientifically justified” controls on our behaviour, including smoking, are so important: Take a minute to read this.
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Some 60 per cent of researchers working for the Environmental Protection Agency say they have been pressured to distort their findings. Months or years of painstaking research is tossed aside if it does not fit their masters’ political agenda, “especially among scientists involved in risk assessment and crafting regulations.”
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And you do not find this frightening? To me, it’s bloody terrifying.

People might look at the forum and ask themselves “Now I wonder what is the most important subject to Boris”. On looking down the list of subjects and the number of comments they might wrongly deduce: “Hmmm… it seems to be ‘Smoking’ by a factor of 100.” But sadly, when people or forums develop obsessive behaviour they often can’t see it for themselves. – Ron Blanco
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People indeed ‘might’ look at the forum and consider that it reflects Boris’ opinions. But equally they might notice that none of the opinions expressed are by Boris, and accordingly conclude that they aren’t his opinions at all.
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And at what point are we to determine whether people are no longer expressing their rational concerns, but are engaged in ‘obsessive’ and irrational behaviour? I think that this generally happens when I find that people are concerned about things that I’m not concerned about: I often conclude that they must be ‘obsessed’. It saves the trouble of actually paying serious attention to them.
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It reminds me of when I was called an “obsessive-compulsive mathematician” for working out the correct probabilities of some event in a test. The organisers of the test had got the probabilities wrong, but clearly weren’t much concerned about it. So they called my concern to rigorously find the right answer “obsessive-compulsive”. I wouldn’t be surprised if they saw all mathematics, with its finicky, rigorous logic, to be “obsessive-compulsive”.

The Lady Macbeth Cleaning Company?

No vote for me as it turns out. The explanation is that my landlord also registered last September during a door to door canvassing campaign and that they have no record of the form sent recently with both my landlords and my details on. Apparently it takes three to four weeks to register the votes, but the deadline to send in the form is two weeks before the election. If what the electoral services guy just told me by way of an explanation, how's that for incompetence?

Steven, it’s your own god-damned fault for wearing a suit; you should have worn tie-dye and camo cargos. DUH.
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No, I’m serious. This is how it works.
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I got my ballot spoiled once by the supervisor who grabbed it out of my hand, opened it up and said, “oh, this is spoiled” to which I naturally replied “well, now it is.” I had the satisfaction of reporting her and watching her career falter over the next six months to the point where she and her husband left the city. All because I was rather visibly leftie (can you believe it of me? I knew I shouldn’t have worn my No Nukes shorts with the Death to Pigs tee).
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Maybe this is old news to y’all, but Guido is calling it for Boris, and I believe him. Damn, I could have gotten two to one at one point from Canadians who didn’t know who Boris was, but who felt sure people would go for the devil they knew.

Speaking as a former polling clerk, I believe the murmurs are correct; you can definitely tell when it’s a trend, and it very much looks like Boris has done it.
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Now I just need to decide if I should move over there or if I can make more money as an “offshore” consultant and roving ambassador for London. Hmmm…