LondonSays

Archive

Boris’ Met

Published by Simon on October 3, 2008 in LondonSays. 1 Comment

The resignation of Sir Ian Blair as Metropolitan Police Chief comes five months after Boris Johnson first expressed dissatisfaction with the direction of London’s policing. As such it shouldn’t be seen as a surprise. However, the nature of the resignation, and the surety of purpose from Mr Johnson as he takes over as Chairman of the MPA, marks a final step in his politicising of crime in the capital.

During his evolution as a candidate and then in his early days as Mayor, Mr Johnson spoke repeatedly of his belief that there should be a “democratic mechanism” to hold the head of the Met to account. His push for the introduction of crime maps was greeted wearily by the Met, and his focus on crime tonally different from that of Sir Ian.

Having watched crime fall in New York under the tenure of Mayor Rudy Giuliani, the Mayor outlined his strategy as: “that if you tackle petty crime and deal with the so-called quality of life offences, then the serious crimes begin to diminish”.

The resignation of Sir Ian marks a tectonic shift in power from the Mayor and Home Secretary (who actually holds the hiring/firing power), and from the Labour Government to the Conservative administration in City Hall.

Sir Ian has set a dangerous precedent, tacitly admitting that without Mayoral backing his post is untenable, but doing so without a democratic mandate in place to hold the mechanisms of London to account for such a move. His successor will have a difficult task in tending to three masters - the Home Secretary, the Mayor, and the popular opinion of Londoners.

The Government must urgently move to fill this deficit, ensuring that the Mayor’s power is not allowed to trample unchecked over the supposedly independent police chief. We have covered moves to ensure that this is done earlier on this blog.

On Monday the Mayor will chair the MPA for the first time. One can only imagine that the pre-published agenda will be changed in light of yesterday’s moves. Meanwhile, the Mayor must work with Sir Ian until Dec 1st, and then his Deputy, Sir Paul Stephenson, until a successor is chosen.

Relations with the Home Secretary, cool at best, will now be increasingly difficult. Jacqui Smith has already attacked the Mayor over Sir Ian’s resignation.

Boris Johnson has shown a sure touch in his attitude to crime. In his campaign for Mayor he realised that it was many Londoners’ number-one concern and forged policies which would address the “slow creep” of small crime. He has increased numbers of community support officers, transport police, introduced crime maps, and made genuine efforts to understand and tackle knife culture.

The Mayor should be applauded for these efforts. The clean sweep which Sir Ian’s departure offers is a chance for the Mayor to shine further. However, the politicisation of the Met should be stemmed, and the Mayor’s powers in this area not allowed to run unchecked.

A significant plank of the Johnson election platform lay in the belief that Ken Livingstone had overreached himself and relied too much on his own judgement and that of a coterie of advisors. Mr Johnson should remember that accusation and ensure that he lives up to the standards which his own campaign tacitly endorsed. The Met must remain apolitical and Mr Johnson’s dealings with it transparent.

Transport Manifesto Published

Published by Simon on September 23, 2008 in LondonSays. 4 Comments

As you may have noticed from our front page, we published the Transport Manifesto today.

The document has been updated since the core articles were featured in this blog, with some of the ideas within timely given City Hall’s statement of intent regarding a new estuary airport.

Please download the full thing and let us know what you think.

The Business Case for Immigration

Published by Andrew on September 15, 2008 in LondonSays. 0 Comments

London First has produced a briefing on the benefits immigration brings to London’s economy. While the debate tends to polarise between the advocates of a fairer and more flexible system, and those who see it as an emotive issue, the briefing does contain some hard facts and figures to chew on. It briefly touches on the resource pressures on the public services as a result but leaves how to cope with this through better fiscal arrangements for the capital to another debate.

London’s Film Festival

Published by Greg on September 12, 2008 in LondonSays. 227 Comments

On the 15th October this year the brash, populist, deliciously unwieldy London Film Festival will roll into town, trumpeting its wares like a mountebank trying to peddle Agent Orange in the guise of Dr. Humpington’s Miracle Cure Spectacular. For make no mistake, London is the Danny Dyer of film festivals -all sound and fury, but signifying very little.

It doesn’t have the glitz and glamour of Cannes, the intellectual suffocation of Berlin or the zeitgeist-surfing nostalgia of Sundance. Though it was never meant to - from its genesis in 1956 the London Film Festival was designed to give public fora to a variety of hoity-toity Euro-smut that wouldn’t traditionally find a home in the fleapit cinematic basements of a derelict city that preferred whelks to Wilder and cockles to Cocteau.

But London long ago emerged spitting and kicking out of those dark ages - the Curzon chain, including the excellent Renoir, brings an outstanding variety of foreign films to Central London, while even monolithic chains like Odeon and Vue have their outlets for movies that sit just outside the mainstream. The Film Festival has, admittedly upped its game accordingly, with an extraordinary breadth of themes and events available to Joe Public during the two weeks of autumnal madness in 2007, from the tender bestiality documentary “Zoo” to Werner Herzog’s frankly baffling dip into flag-waving Americana, “Rescue Dawn”.

And it is pleasing that the Mayor is up to his neck in all this filmic tomfoolery. Ken Livingstone, god rest his soul, pumped £100k from the London Development Agency into ensuring that the Film Festival has the facilities befitting such a famous fandango, and also towards making it possible for cinemas outside of the traditional ground double zero of Leicester Square and the South Bank to show LFF films. The Mayor of London’s annual gala at the Festival is one of the few glimmers of glamour in an otherwise rather downbeat coupe of weeks, although exactly why it involved a screening of the resolutely non-London based “Lust, Caution” in 2007 is anyone’s guess.

But despite its purportedly accessible credentials, the London Film Festival still smacks of exclusivity to the vast masses who still balk at the idea of paying £12.50 to see a film and who can’t really afford to take the time off work to see the half-price matinee of “Bee Movie”, no matter how tempting Jerry Seinfeld’s animated shtick.

And here lies Boris Johnson’s big opportunity. London has demonstrated that is has myriad open spaces suitable for showing films to the masses. My first Saturday upon moving to London was spent in gleeful harmony with enough communists to fill a long march watching “Battleship Potemkin” in Trafalgar Square, accompanied by some truly painful drivel by the Pet Shop Boys. Somerset House hosts the Summer Screen season in its romantic grounds, and our multitude of parks offer endless possibilities for a tent, a screen and maybe a bottle of 2005 Clos De Papes to keep the gloaming chills at bay.

The idea of offering free screenings of unusual filmic fayre may well be anathema to distributors and to the culturally disinterested, but to the thousands of film fans who embrace the idea of communal cinema this would be a wonderful way of opening up the Festival and returning it to the roots envisioned by James Quinn and his cabal of film critics in the post-war London gloom.

The London Film Festival should be the talk of the town and spread the excitement across the capital. Community groups should be encouraged to enhance screenings of foreign films with talks, exhibitions and stalls. The London boroughs should be identifying areas in their locality where communal cinema can be established and helping to provide the facilities and the advice that will be necessary to take this project forward. The Mayor should be taking the lead in demonstrating that he is a champion of British film, but also of bringing international cinema to one of the most diverse and welcoming cities in the world.

2008 will be the London Film Festival’s 52nd year. While the organisers will undoubtedly do a laudable job of concocting an eclectic, joyous celebration of world cinema, it is time to simultaneously blaze the trail and go back to the very heart of what the London Film Festival is all about - bringing the magic of cinema to the people of London. All of London.

Coming soon…

Published by Simon on September 11, 2008 in LondonSays. 0 Comments

Tomorrow we post the first article by a new LondonSays blogger, Greg Taylor.

Greg’s bread and butter is local government, but his passion is the cinema. His blog tomorrow takes the Mayor to task for under-promoting the British film industry, and failing to take full advantage of the London film festival, which his office sponsors.

The culture of London, thankfully no longer Cool Britannia, is a large part of what makes the city so great. We have a vibrant theatre, film, art and social scene - Greg’s article will be the first of a series on LondonSays which examine them, and their impact, further.

—

If you can think of any areas which you feel the LS blog should be examining but isn’t, please drop us a line. Contributions are always welcome!

Mind the (Funding) Gap

Published by Simon on September 11, 2008 in LondonSays. 1 Comment

We’ve been following the story of the Tube upgrade shortfall on LondonUnlocked for the past couple of days - below is an edited version of the article which appeared on that site earlier today:

—

Following the news of the funding gap now faced by TfL, the Department for Transport (DfT) has given short thrift to suggestions that it should make up the shortfall:

“We have already agreed a generous long-term settlement with TfL, providing more than £40bn for London transport over the next 10 years.

“This took into account the possibility that the costs for delivering tube improvements could be higher than originally envisaged, as well as providing funding for Crossrail. It is now for TfL to manage this to deliver the high quality transport its users expect.”

At the time of the original settlement negotiation (by Ken Livingstone’s administration), concerns were expressed over a possible funding gap. Those concerns have now become a reality.

Where this leaves TfL, its passengers and London rate-payers still remains unclear. The DfT’s statement can only be the opening salvo of the public negotiation which will now take place. Already, in The Guardian, TfL has shot back by painting a picture of a London which doesn’t meet the funding gap:

Either the bill must be met, or less work will be done. The result, according to tube boss Tim O’Toole, would be that “the tube will become less reliable and capacity will shrink” - which means stations being shut down to prevent overcrowding and fewer trains to carry record numbers of passengers.

Quite obviously this is not the vision which the Government would want to promote of Britain as the first tourists start arriving for the Olympics in 2012. Someone has to step up.

As we stated yesterday, cost-cutting is the order of the day. In City Hall the Mayor is throwing everything which is not buckled down overboard, whilst long gestating projects are being shrunk and diverted in scope. These measures, whilst admirable in their aims, are short sighted, and will not make a dent in the “up to £3bn” funding hole faced by TfL.

Make no mistake, the plug for this hole will be found - the real question is how much of a hit Londoners will take in supplying their part of it. That is the negotiation which is playing out now.

UPDATE: Londonist has a great editorial on the same subject here.

Crime Maps

Published by Simon on September 3, 2008 in LondonSays. 0 Comments

Boris Johnson’s election pledge of making crime maps of London available to the public has been met. You can now access the maps here and drill down for information on your area once on the site.

Deputy Commissioner Paul Stephenson said about the scheme:

We have found that in some cases Londoners’ perception of crime is higher than the reality and the crime maps may help to reassure communities about the general safety of their local area.

LondonSays has argued in their favour in the past - what Mr Johnson and Sir Ian Blair do with them is now the issue. Electorally, this is going to be a mixed bag for anyone facing re-election, providing a wealth of “under x’s tenure this has gone up” statistics for their opponents.

A bold move by the Mayor and the Met.

Parish the thought?

Published by Andrew on September 2, 2008 in LondonSays. 0 Comments

A brief taster of a project to come at London Says…

As blogged about before on London Says, last year’s Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act lifted the 40 year ban on the creation of parishes in London. A technical piece of legislative housekeeping but one that affects the capital’s communities nonetheless. The Government explained its reasons for doing so earlier this year in guidance issued to local authorities (PDF):

The Government’s view is that Londoners should have the same rights as the rest of the country. The 2007 Act corrects this anomaly to allow London boroughs the possibility to exercise the same community governance powers as other principal councils including being able to set up parishes and parish councils. Similarly, local electors in London boroughs will, as elsewhere in England, be able to petition for a community governance review.

In London, there will be the same possibility to choose a style for a parish perhaps to reflect better the local urban area like “community” or “neighbourhood”. Whilst some parts of London are populated by people who may be more transient or mobile than elsewhere, there are equally areas of the capital where there are stable populations who may wish to see the creation of a parish council for their local area.

In essence, this began with the 2005 Labour Party manifesto, which promised:

“Good parish councils engage communities and make a real difference, so we will extend the right to establish parish councils to communities in London.”

The subject had been the matter of debate a year earlier in the Commission on London Governance hearings at City Hall, with London Borough councillors and the National Association of Local Councils (which represents the 8,000 or so parishes outside of London) in disagreement over whether or not they would work in London. While the matter is largely settled by the passage of the Act, here’s what the commission said in its report:

- Many roles and responsibilities of parish councils were already managed by area committees and neighbourhood arrangements in the boroughs;

- There would be confusion over roles and responsibilities of parish and ward councillors;

- There was evidence from other parts of the country of antagonism and negativity between the tiers, turf wars and a refusal to compromise;

- The structure empowered ‘Nimbyism’ and could undermine attempts to equalise access to local services and advice across London;

- There would be significant capital and running cost implications;

- In terms of capturing communities, some inner London wards were only a few streets big and the Boundary Commission already took into account cultural factors and geographical boundaries when setting up ward boundaries.

(London Councils’ report by Alan Pike (PDF)

It’s a list of negatives alright but largely unproven ones. The community councils in existence in London were introduced before the Act and largely driven by the fact that many local citizens feel disconnected to the political process in town halls and in structures which don’t reflect their actual community (as we’ve blogged before, this vexes even the boroughs.) Similarly, London Councils’ recent efforts to secure greater participation in running for office at council level might be better addressed at the community tier, where a number of barriers which prevent/deter people from coming forward would be less evident. But it generally boils down to what level is best for the provision of services? While education and social services might even be better off being pooled between neighbouring boroughs, public realm/street scene issues are best handled at neighbourhood level. Many of the new aspirations contained in the recent but largely ignored Transforming Places, Changing Lives regeneration strategy could be delivered on at neighbourhood level in London. A community tier is the best chance of making that happen.

Over the next few months we’ll be gauging opinion on the creation of parishes in London at borough level and hearing from a number of figures in the capital’s political community why they might or might not be an idea who’s time has come.

If you’re interested in this work then drop me a line.

A Doomed Campaign?

Published by Simon on August 28, 2008 in LondonSays. 0 Comments

Posting is light over the summer as we work on other projects, but this story dragged me back to the laptop:

Former London mayor Ken Livingstone is to work as a consultant for Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez… The BBC’s James Ingham said the two men, who share left-wing political views, hugged each other like old friends.

Given the interest placed on Boris Johnson’s other jobs in the run up to the last election, for his rival (who wasn’t discrete in pushing the idea that Mr Johnson would be too distracted to do the role justice) to take such a high-profile and controversial contract seems like electoral suicide. Doing so in public shows the (slightly arrogant) surety of purpose which, I believe, put many Londoners off when they reached the ballot box last May.

Whilst the ex-Mayor continues to float his ‘not ruling out’ running again, I fail to see how this move can do anything but harm any attempt to return to power. Your thoughts?

A Lack of Narrative

Published by Simon on August 22, 2008 in LondonSays. 5 Comments

Boris Johnson’s teams should be worried about the recent editorials on his mayoralty found in the FT and Economist. Both come to the same conclusion - that his administration is lacking direction. From the Economist’s article:

Even Mr Livingstone’s critics concede that he had a vision for London: he championed growth, introduced the congestion charge and modernised public transport. It is less evident that Mr Johnson has a similarly clear sense of direction.

If this impression is allowed to become received wisdom then Mr Johnson will face the same trouble as the Prime Minister - seen as able but directionless, keeping the boat afloat rather than taking it anywhere. That is not a compelling narrative for re-election.

Mr Johnson has taken the admirable step of personally taking charge of the MPA and TfL - tasks which even his most fervent backers believed he would delegate to his army of deputies. He now needs to focus on proving that he has a vision for London which extends beyond running the Olympics on the cheap.