Last week we heard the final death knell of New Labour. According to Gordon Brown anyone earning over £20,000 is a fat cat. It was the most aggressive raid on the middle classes since the ’70s and comprehensive proof of the failure of his government.
George Osborne was right to highlight a new and incontestable golden rule – you can’t trust Labour with your money.
But you can trust Conservatives. We put value for money at the heart of everything we do. That’s why I want to tell you about my budget, which I put out to consultation last week.
For the second year running – and I’ve only been in 19 months – I am freezing what City Hall takes from council tax payers. Over the eight years as Mayor, Ken Livingstone increased his take of council tax by 153 per cent. I promised to stop these steep rises and have delivered.
Londoners are reaping the dividend they deserve after electing a Conservative as Mayor.
But it’s not just been about easing the burden for people hard up during a recession but also providing more with less.
My predecessor presided over a shocking decline in rape crisis centres in the capital and I’ve allocated money for a fourfold expansion. We will be announcing where they will be soon in the New Year.
Cycling in 2010 will see a revolution – 6,000 hire bikes in central London, with the first 30 minutes free. I am probably the world’s slowest cyclist and if I can cross central London in that time, anyone can. You’ll also see a safety blitz and the first cycling superhighways.
We will continue to make the investment needed to modernise our transport infrastructure. I know some of them have been delayed because of the moronic PPP contracts forced upon London by Gordon Brown but they will hugely increase capacity and reliability of the Tubes.
If you go online you’ll find out more about housing, the environment, skills, childcare – the list goes – all to make London the best big city in the world.
That is Conservatives in action.
I don’t fear the views of the public. I’d love to hear them. Tell me if you would like a hike in council tax. I’d be surprised but I’d definitely listen. I think we all know that Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling don’t want to hear your views. They’ve been avoiding them for years.
But there’s a chance in the next few months to send them a message they can’t ignore. Any thoughts on my budget let me know in the next few weeks.
Any thoughts on Gordon Brown’s. You know where to put the X.
( 19 comments ) Tags: budget
Comment by Mark Beaumont on December 18, 2009 at 12:51 pm
Your campaign slogan should read.
LABOUR – hasn’t worked.
End
Comment by Tony B on December 18, 2009 at 12:56 pm
Damm I’m glad I helped to vote you in Boris. Just keep up the efforts and don’t let them grind you down – especially those wasters at TfL. Your passion and determination to do a good job for us Londoners is a joy.
Comment by Robert on December 18, 2009 at 1:00 pm
I Like the things you have done and consider you a very able Mayor- vast improvement on Mr Livingstone. I live in a one bed room flat with my teenage son, I have around £150 spare a month to feed, clothe and transport us that is after paying all the bills and taxes, I earn a fair bit more than 20K – Its just too expensive to live or carve out a living in this country. Actually we just subsist, does class come into it, it seems its just money which unfortunately is what we need to have a better standard. It makes me sick to hear again recently about the way politicians maon about expenses and think spending on bell towers, food and cleaning bills are a passage of right, I bet there are people who will read this who work far harder for their crust than politicians of all parties. I would vote Blue If I thought it made any difference-unfortunately I feel they are all the same. Perhaps Boris for PM would be the answer. Anyaway tis season of good cheer so I will stop moaning and wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and more positive new year! Cheers !
Robert
Comment by Donald YULE on December 18, 2009 at 1:41 pm
I’ve nothing against hire bikes it’s just that I want to know how Boris is going to stop them cycling on the PAVEMENT!
Comment by Patti Lee Salter on December 18, 2009 at 1:50 pm
I think you are brilliant, Boris, and like almost everything you have done for London. Am a bit peed off though with all the concern about cycling – super highways for cyclists, now come on, thats not fair, while cyclists do NOT pay road tax I do not think they should have valuable road space given up to their sole use. Its bad enough for us who drive cars and DO pay road tax and all the other inherent charges of owning a car, without having to give up space dedicated to non road tax paying cyclists, not to forget non paying congestion charge cyclists!!!!
Comment by Peter Thurgood on December 18, 2009 at 2:09 pm
I pushed hard for you to get in Boris, and up to yet I am very pleased with what you have achieved.
There are however, a few exceptions; the first being your cycling scheme, which I think will slow London up and cause more congestion, and consequently, more pollution. As I am sure you know, London is one of the oldest, if not the oldest, City in Europe. Many of its streets are barely wide enough for two vehicles to pass each other. We only need one cyclist pedalling down such a street to cause other road users to be held up, and with your new scheme, there will not be just one cyclist, but hundreds of them.
Unfortunately, we need cars and other motorised vehicles to keep London moving and the London economy turning over. Introducing more cyclists to our ancient streets, will definitely not achieve this.
On the subject of keeping London moving and cutting emissions, I thought we would have seen the last of the bendy busses by now, but they are still there in force. Why is this?
And speaking of cutting emissions, your electric car scheme is also a big NO-NO. How much is it going to cost to install enough power charging points throughout London, and where are we going to get the power supply from if we are trying to cut down on emissions? One will more than cancel out the other!
Lastly, I have been bombarding your office since you have been in power, with advice regarding placing refuse bins underground, as they do in many Spanish cities, especially in the Malaga region. With the forthcoming Olympics about to be staged in London, don’t you think it is about time we showed visitors a cleaner London, not one littered with masses and masses of filthy and overflowing plastic bins everywhere?
Comment by Barry on December 18, 2009 at 2:18 pm
I forgot to ring the congestion charge people last week. Another fine from a system which is designed to penalise and rob us. You have had plenty of time to put in an automated charging system but I suppose, like Livingstone, the thought of all those fines is too appealing. Along with the clampers, wardens and other bandits who seek to rob those who have to work in London you are taking a goodly share of fines and penalties off us. I heard on LBC this morning that one camera is charging the equivelant of £280,000 per hour in fines. Spying, thieving, jobsworths everywhere, things are as bad if not worse than under Livingstone. Coming into London is like coming into some sort of Mafia controlled area where the slightest transgression involves paying a disproportionate fine or “protection money” might be a better name. I am sick to the teeth of being robbed by politicians for every imagined “crime” which their nasty, authoritarian brains hve dreamed up.
As for hire bikes. £9mill for 6,000 bikes = £1500 per bike. Only a politician would pay such high prices whilst using others money. Value for money it ain’t. Stop taking our money and leave us alone, we are sick of your “I know best” attitude and that of the thousands of people in non jobs we are forced to pay for. Just go away the lot of you, things will run better without your interfeing in every aspect of our lives and robbing us blind into the bargain.
Comment by David NW3 on December 18, 2009 at 2:31 pm
The cycle hire scheme is costing £140M for 6,000 bikes. That equates to over £23,000 per bike. If you had gone to Halfords you could have bought Londoners some 777,000 bikes (with 18 speed, suspension, etc.); that’s over 100 times more and at retail. Can you please explain the meaning of the phrase “value for money” to me?
Comment by Stewart Andersen on December 18, 2009 at 2:35 pm
Well done on your first 19 months as Mayor. May there be many more. Just keep going as you are so that we never have to suffer another term of the menace known as Ken Livingstone. We have to get rid of a government that spies on our every move, that is determined to take away a 1,000 years of rights and that is incompetent into the bargain. We’ve never had a written constitution because we didn’t need one – until Blair, Brown and, dare I say it, Bush came along.
Comment by William Forbes on December 18, 2009 at 6:57 pm
Barry on December 18, 2009 at 2:18 pm has an interesting point reference congestion charges. The system does appear to penalise and rob us. There’s a man who lives overseas whose accountant received on his behalf a request for the £80 fine and a surcharge for not paying the fine. As this was the first time he had known he had invaded the zone on that day he telephoned to protest. One helpful lady passed him onto another helpful lady who said that they knew he had not received the original notice because the envelope had been returned marked as “not known at this address”. He said that while he was willing to accept that the camera and computer were working properly, he saw no reason to pay the surcharge, and he was advised to submit two statutory statements, the first to explain that he had not received the original notice, and the second to explain why the first statutory statement was late. He explained that as he was not living in England the statutory statements would be difficult to arrange, and that as the Congestion Office had the envelope he could not see why this procedure was necessary.
That was over a year ago. Since then the accountant has been visited several times by bailiffs, the car owner has written to complain of the harassment, and the situation has become farcical. He has told the Congestion Office that if he has to defend himself on the surcharge he wants to use the envelope and would like to have it or to be given a photocopy. This, he has been told, is not possible because the matter “is before the court” — which, he says, is why he needs the evidence of the envelope.
That is where the matter stands today. The bailiffs harass the innocent accountant, the Congestion Office has ticked all its boxes and accepts no responsibility, the court has made its judgment on the basis of false evidence (that the first notification had been ignored), and the car owner awaits being attacked by bailiffs when he returns to England. What can he do? I’ve suggested it is a case for the Ombudsman.
I write this post to advise you, Boris, that this is typical of the mad socialist, Kafkaesque society, your predecessor’s legacy, you were elected to eradicate. We are being ruled by boxtickers. You, Boris, must stop them before they destroy our sanity.
Comment by UsedToLoveThisCountry on December 18, 2009 at 8:21 pm
Cycling on the pavement? A broom-handle through the front spokes usually discourages repetition,
Comment by Road_Hog on December 19, 2009 at 10:31 am
All good so far, but please don’t jump on the green bandwagon in giving over the city to cyclists. As has been mentioned, they don’t pay road tax or have insurance, there are plenty more of us that have cars than push bikes.
Comment by Simon on December 19, 2009 at 4:49 pm
Not one word from you about the English,what do the Conservatives propose in maintaining our native culture?Why is an Englishman made to feel a racist in his homeland?
Comment by john h on December 21, 2009 at 9:11 pm
Not being a Londoner, we do not have the congestion charge.
I avoid London like the plague, and although lots of people seem to approve of Boris, (anyone who walks out of a Hof C committee after being grilled by Labour timesavers is ok by me), I wonder if he is aware of what “democracy” is supposed to stand for??
Politicians are PAID by the electorate, so are EMPLOYEES.
Yet, as a previouspost has stated, they still manage to run London like the Mafia ran Chicago.
We are allegedly the 7th richest nation on earth. No wonder!! the effrontery of tax gathering makes your eyes water.
One final point: If traffic wardens annoy you, next time you park, photo the yellow lines, and measure the distance between the signs posted to warn (and I use that tern loosely) you .
If the line is broken at any point, or does not have a “return” line at each end, or if the signs are incorrectly spaced, the traffic warden COMMITS AN OFFENCE under traffic regulations.
From what I have seen of London`s roads (on tv), I would be surprised if all yellow lines comply.
Also, a camera is useful if the warden decides not to wear the hat, for the warden is then NOT a traffic warden. (The Ministry rules say so). So next time you feel aggrieved about their conduct, take a pic. them remonstrate with a COPPER, that some idiot is pretending he is a traffic warden!
We have these idiots where I live also. Last week one of the brain dead actually BOOKED FATHER CHRISTMAS!!!
All the people in the street clubbed together and paid his fine, and the local rag had the warden on the front page as the biggest scrooge ever.
But the frightening thing about these people, they LOVE their job as much as the East German Stasi loved theirs.
See the connection between left wing authoritarian governments??? The worst one is British!!
Comment by michael carroll on December 22, 2009 at 10:36 pm
CONGESTION CHARGE:
The congestion charge is a rip off Boris.
It changes nothing. My company secures many contracts in the city and our vans are up and down on a regular basis.
Its chockablock getting in and out. We are paying £8.00 per day for the privilage of sitting in the traffic. Its no more different now than it was ten years ago.
Just another money making scam.
And when the hell are you going to get rid of those dangerous bendy buses. The indicator is not Gods gift to the right of way. They just pull out with no consideration at all.
On another point why should we have to give way to buses. We pay our road fund licenses and we all have a right to drive on the highway. ALL vehicles merging with traffic are in a GIVE WAY situation AT ALL times ITS IN THE HIGHWAY CODE.
Comment by Dean A K on December 31, 2009 at 9:27 am
I am an entrepreneur who over the last 7 years has developed solutions and resource tools to help deal with people and skills issues within Education and Children services. Both of these areas are rife with bureaucracy, needless measures, pointless paperwork and procedure enforced by a labour government. We now find price, rather than quality is the call of the day. Therefore we have poorly skilled, unassimilated public sector staff trying to delivering necessary services and failing badly under a protective cloud of wrongly assessed stats. This will only create issues for the future and develop systemic problems that will eventually cost £billions to correct. BUT, this is a labour government, backed by Unions and one too weak to cull where necessary, so we, I, and others servicing the sector, have had to adapt. But, However onerous the task of working with procurement lead, inept authorities is, the double whammy of being blamed and suppressed for this opportunity is outrageous. Business people, entrepreneurs and wealth generators, feel stifled by the lack of incentives to start or grow our businesses, the lack of assistance by the banks and the huge amount of red tape involved in creating a business. We have been de-incentivised by the two-faced approach to the private sector by this government. Wealth generators are targets for ‘bleeding dry’ with the removal of taper relief, the introduction of the 50-60% income tax band, the mooted wealth tax and CGT rise etc,etc. It is sheer folly to think that high taxation will bring around a better economic position, the present government pushed out interest rate control to the BoE, aggregated credit to the Treasury, then told everyone to spend like a ‘drunk man’, no more bust just boom?? Transient taxes from housing booms, commodity booms, internet booms, M&A, low unemployment etc….loaded their ‘every ready’ credit line to pay for non-jobs in Public sector, an area that has decreased in productivity by 3.7% since 1997 against the private sector that increased by over 22%, it was government hubris at its best and an acquisition of voters as well as a huge public deception. Now those that help create wealth are to be punished, in what is a complete turnaround by the instigators, the labour government. If you really want to make a dent on this recession and climb back to normality, the money cycle needs to start again, entrepreneurs need to be embraced and listened to, they are the country’s saviors; they create jobs, pay taxes and therefore invest in the future. Bureaucratic policy requires some defining changes, the removal of silly policies such as positive discrimination is a must, as by definition it is discriminative, employers should not be guilty until proven innocent, it cost thousands for them to defend ‘fake, unfounded’ claims, in most cases they pay because it is cheaper than a defense, remove minimum wage, drop pointless business quangos with their army of non-achievers. Squash the latest line of Whitehall privatisation, the starting of government Limited companies that are suddenly winning public sector tenders in specific areas! Our Public sector is a huge antiquated machine that absorbs billions of pounds in order to give relatively weak outcomes, therefore more needs to be done to help private business, especially new businesses, work directly with the public sector. A huge win for both, the private sector can bring about innovation and efficiency while working with a client that would relax the banks and their creditors. Serious thought and engagement is required in order to switch on the next generation of entrepreneurs, otherwise I believe them and those that are already up and running will be lost to more receptive lands.
p.s. A little advice: The conservative party requires a more realistic public connection to the average person. An Eaton contingent doesn’t always go down well with those who don’t understand the benefits of a good education, nor does a strong Northern accent backed with the aesthetics of stereotypical Tory. I am from a poor London council estate; I went to a good school but didn’t attend University, choosing to start the career ladder early, I have seen and do see both sides of the fence and all though you have the edge on intellect and policy, if the face doesn’t fit, its very hard to sell the service….Blair proves the point!
Comment by Liz Sutton on January 24, 2010 at 2:28 pm
Am a great fan of yours .. have been for many years. Have subscribed to the DT (and read all your columns – for more years than you are old! Also the Spectator.
Much like your style of leadership…
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Comment by Tom on March 31, 2010 at 4:00 pm
Today I read in the Daily Mail that al local government used a child to catch a grandmother selling goldfish to a 14 year old.
Local governments, up and down the country are spending manpower and resources on spying or entrapping law abiding citizens while thugs and bullies rule the streets of the Greater Manchester police region for instance.
The whole thing stinks, these councillors should be thrown out of office for allowing this to happen. We need people at the next election standing for the rights of honest working people.
It also seems too neat that our Armed Forces are abroad imposing “democracy” in foreign lands whilst their own country is oppressed by tyranny. Witness today the DT report that we have seen the first trial without jury for a major crime and witness too the deathly silence from our “defenders” of freedom, the “free” Press, a voice that is only too willing to fill column yards with fluffy comment on ephermeral tosh. And to those who are possibly correctly convinced of the guilt of these Heathrow robbers I say that that is not the point. It might be anyone of us next and perhaps for as little as selling a goldfish. Take note of who dishes out judges’ jobs and ask yourself whether you could in those circumstances ever be jailed for holding the “wrong” political opinion.
We are on the downward slope of a new political and cultural reality which threatens to overturn the hard won outcomes of many historic struggles for safety and liberty. The liars and traitors who run this country, contrive to confuse and mollify the unthinking masses while feathering their own privileged nests and are creating a two-tier society which will take us back to Norman feudalism.
My question is what is the Conservative Party going to do to reverse these numerous attacks on our democracy?