Golden Age

[darmstadt]

It's a glass of wine not popcorn.

But you know London did well when he was mayor in general....

But I guess we'll just have to wait and see

[emoji2957]

- In 2009, Johnson promised to end rough sleeping within three years. Over his tenure, rough sleeping rose by 130 per cent.

- “We are recruiting 5,000 constables over the next three years” He failed to mention that the Met expected to lose 5,000 PCs over three years through natural wastage – all he was promising to do was replace the ones who left. The Met had the equivalent of 33,404 full-time police officers (not including PCSOs or special constables) in November 2009. That fell to 32,125 officers on March 31, 2016, shortly before Johnson left office.

- His 2012 manifesto promised to ‘double the number of special constables to 10,000′. At the end of his tenure in 2016, there were just 3,271 special constables in the Met, less than a third of his target.

- Johnson set himself a target of building 100,000 new affordable homes in London between 2008-09 and 2015-16. But he only get elected as mayor in May 2008, and the budget for the financial year 2008-09 had already been signed off by the previous mayor, Ken Livingstone.

- In 2014, Johnson agreed in a live radio interview to be blasted by water cannon to show their safety. The demonstration never materialised, and in 2018, the machines were sold off at a £300,000 loss to the taxpayer. They had never been used.
- Johnson ran twice for Mayor of London on a ticket of opposing expansion of Heathrow, famously saying that he wouldlie down "in front of those bulldozers and stop the building, stop the construction of that third runway." Not only did Johnson not lie down in front of the bulldozers, but when the House of Commons vote on Heathrow expansion took place, Johnson engineered himself a foreign trip to ensure he wouldn't be able to take part in the vote. Following the trip, which cost taxpayers some £20,000, Johnson has now reportedly told Conservative MPs that he will not scrap expansion at Heathrow.

- In 2008, Boris campaigned heavily against Ken Livingstone's plans to close a number of ticket offices on the London Underground, even going so far as to sign a pledge never to close them. His 2008 manifesto promised there would "always [be] a manned ticket office at every station." Johnson went on to close all of the ticket offices remaining on the London Underground

- In 2008 Boris promised to negotiate a "no strike deal" with the Tube unions to ensure that no strike action ever took place again on the London Underground. Boris did not even attempt to broker such a deal and consistently refused to meet with Tube union leaders while he was mayor. The strikes continued.

- Boris was first elected mayor in 2008 on a manifesto bemoaning the fact that Londoners "pay the highest fares in Europe," before immediately introducing a series of inflation-busting fares increases. Despite this record, Boris in 2012 promised to "bear down on fares" adding that "under my approach fares will be lower in the long term". In a debate on the BBC, he even went so far as to say that fares would "go down in an honest and sustainable way" if he was re-elected. In the first year after being re-elected, Boris increased fares by on average 4.2% and then raised them in line with inflation in subsequent years. Overall the cost of a single bus fare increased by two-thirds since Johnson was first elected.

There is plenty more, bus conductors, Garden Bridge, Congestion Charge, bike hire, fire service, black cabs, and so on...Go on believing he did well

[AtW]

All politicians are liars and Boris first among the equal politicians