The Tory Breath Of Fresh Air......

DAY 65. July 4th 2008
Sunny Ray Lewis Takes The Bullet.
Ray resigns in confusion, blaming the media, who are spoilt brats who cannot 'defer gratification', apparently. Tell it to the Daily Mail, Ray, they say on today's front page that the wheel has already come off the Bojo cart, and they got him elected almost as much as the Evening Standard, so they should know all Boris's failings by heart, having concealed them throughout the period when they might have been of some democratic use to London's electorate.
Co-incedentally, Channel 4 says that the Bishop of Barking told Raymond that he was on the Lambeth List less than 12 months ago. As Raymond was denying all knowledge of this fact last night on BBC, that makes him (or his Grace the Bishop of Barking) a big fat liar, whatever comes of the dozens of other allegations about his financial and sexual principles, and his alleged tendency to beat up the kids in his care. Whether he is any good at deferring gratification only the expensive enquiry into Boris's first 64 days in office will tell.
 The antics of minor buffoon Ray Lewis should not be allowed to overshadow those of his maestro. As widely predicted months ago, Boris is looking like a harrassed horsehair sofa at his first test. Some predicated this fatal discombobulation would come sooner, some later, but everyone with an ounce of sense saw that this was not a natural statesman or administrator - who was sure to bungle it sooner or later on a momumentally farcical scale, and then just as likely to adopt the Billy Bunter defence as any other.
"I never stole your rotten cake - it didn't have many plums in it anyway!"
I think it's cruel to watch a dumb animal suffer like this. Will David Cameron not put him out of his misery? But then, who will put Cameron out of his? After all, he was one of The Few who did not have the required ounce of sense. So who else has been given the Dai Cameron seal of approval - that we don't know about yet?
Only time will tell.
Perhaps Cameron's biggest fan (on and off) Kelvin McKenzie, can now tell us whether this masterstroke of judgement means Cameron is 'an idiot' as McKenzie once called him, or some sort of genius. Do tell, Kelvin.
 And then we have this 180 degree reversal from the Daily Mail. More lies from a multi-billion pound business. So new? The Mail is obviously in a moral and intellectual free-fall as hopeless as that of the Boris administration and the bankrupt reactionary tory ideology itself. As the most powerful tory in Britain, Gordon Brown should be watching these events and learning, not laughing.
DAY 64In a 180 degree U-Turn from his position of a few months ago, Boris Johnson now tells us not to Have A Go but to Run Away. But why doesn't he say what we SHOULD do to help a woman being attacked in an alley?
Mr Johnson, who lives a few streets from where16-year-old Ben Kinsella was attacked, revealed what one 'very nice ex-jailbird' had told him -

 'If you see a fight in the street, don't risk it because someone might have a knife.' The mayor added: 'I'm afraid that may sound like a lack of public spirit if someone is being badly attacked. But if I was giving advice to my kids and there was a bar brawl in Islington, it would be to look after themselves.'Everybody is shocked by the level of violence we are seeing, particularly towards young people, and we must all work as hard as we can to reverse this dreadful trend.' says the Daily Mail 

Which is simply restating the potential dangers of helping others and can only have the effect of making people more afraid, and by doing so, hand over control of the streets to the real criminals. But that doesn't seem to bother the Mail, which doesn't offer any constructive suggestions either.
Boris's job as mayor is to raise the morale of Londoners and offer constructive suggestions to making London a better place. Making people more afrid than they need to be is not the way to do this, something which a genuine mayor would know instinctively. In the event of an emergency facing London, a genuine mayor would offer ways in which we could all help and feel that we were acting together to counter the threat.
Something like a certain speech by Ken Livingstone on July 7th 2005, which made every Londoner feel more of a Londoner - not more afraid of London, and even made many non-Londoners feel like Londoners.

Instead, all Johnson can do is tell people to run away, which may be interpreted as evidence of Bojo's Born Again Beatnik credentials, or maybe not. True, if we all ran away, there wouldn't be anyone to rescue or anyone to rescue them from. But a genuine beatnik would at least urge people to dial 999 as they ran...
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DAY 64 ctd.

One Gilbert Deya! There's Only One Gilbert Deya!

And now it seems Boris has a scandal to deal with. Ray Lewis, his choice as deputy turns out to be a dodgy disciplinarian and skypilot who is almost as tongue-tied and musclebound from the neck up as his boss. He is not even in post and The Mayor has to call an emergency press conference to announce the enquiry to clear his deputy of serious financial and sexual allegations.
Briefly, it appears that for several years, after serious complaints were made to the church about him in the Caribbean, Sunny Ray has been on the so-called 'Lambeth List', which is an episcopal Directory of Vicars deemed too dodgy to be allowed a parish. . Ray denies any knowledge of any complaints, or of being on the list, claiming that he retired from the church in 1997. Coincedentally. Time will tell, both for him and the Johnson administration - if that isn't to abuse a noble word.
Now all we need to know from the compilers of the Lambeth List is whether they told Sunny that he was blackballed or not. Be rude not to. So is there an Evening Standard hack out there with the grey matter and pep to call someone at C.of E .HQ and ask:
"Did you tell Ray Lewis that you'd banned him from office?"
If they did tell him, he is a liar.
If the Standard doesn't ask, it is the liar - by concealing the truth. But we knew that all along.
At least Lee Jasper took two terms of office to give the Standard enough half-truths to set them on his tail. Surely he also deserves the privilege of an enquiry to clear his name of the smears published in the gutter press..
By the way, whatever did happen to the mountain of corruption Boris promised to reveal at the heart of the Livingstone administration? Same thing that happened to Saddam's WOMD presumably. After all, the gutter press of Gilligan and other broken-backed right wing hacks was printing a 'Dodgy Dossier' on Ken every day. Gilligan could even have cut and pasted previous famous efforts of his, knowing that in this case, his bosses would supply even less scrutiny than at the BBC. After all, there was an electorate to mislead, and a Fool to place in Office.
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 DAY 63
Boris claims today to be "expeditiously expiditing the no-strike agreement as expeditiously as possible."
"Never heard of him", said head of the main union involved, Bob Crow, on Ken Livingstone's LBC radio phone-in a few minutes later. And he should know. According to Crow, Johnson has not talked him, or offered a meeting of any sort, and what's more, if he had done, Crow would have told him where to stick his no-strike agreement. So what is this 'expedition' Bojo claims to be embarked upon? In his pith helmet, possibly.
Boris is making London up as he goes along. God help us all. Still, three years of this will serve to take some of the glitter off the embryonic Cameron regime.