Boris' vanity bus project costs London dear

Other bloggers, who have been admirable in their dissection of the vanity project that is Boris Johnson's new 'bus for London', have already pointed out the spiralling cost of the scheme.

The aim of the new bus project, for those not familiar with the background, is to continue Johnson's grand plan of replacing perfectly good and practical buses (that carry lots of passengers) with smaller ones that look nice from the outside for his core constituency of passing Chelsea Tractor drivers (and pretend journalist Andrew Gilligan, of course).

Anyway, in further developments shocking to those that have lived underground in a bunker for the last 4 and a half years:

• the cost of the scheme is now a pretty jaw-dropping £160 million for 600 buses - or over £75,000 more per bus than existing ones cost the London taxpayer. Oh, and unlike normal buses, London will be unable to sell these on, which means TfL - and not bus operating companies - will have to pay the costs upfront. 
• neither the Evening Standard and Taxpayers-and-definitely-not-a-Tory-Party-front-organisation-Alliance have made much of a fuss.
• the cost of having conductors on the bus will mean TfL will have to divert funding from other projects to the tune of £37 million per year to the scheme, on top of other costs. 

StandardWatch: bankers, fares and 'barons'

The last couple of issues have seen the Evening Standard continue its effortless impression of a very detailed Tory Central Office press release, with two new articles on why our Mayor is absolutely brilliant at everything and a few on why his opponent is really, really rubbish.

So, we get treated to a ratings agency and a 'financial commentator' lecturing us on why we aren't entitled to vote for lower transport fares. The 'commentator' in question is actually a merchant banker at the brokers BGC, to whom the Telegraph refers as the "man wheeled out often as the sole voice willing to justify the City's existence" during the financial crisis.

Now, there is something utterly baffling in hearing representatives of the City (hugely to blame for the financial crisis) and spokespeople from ratings agencies (so woeful in predicting the crash) lecturing the public on responsibility.

And, there is something quite galling about hearing the very rich and the even richer telling the public that they should have to pay ever higher public transport costs whilst many of the former wouldn't know what the inside of a bus looks like (we could go into the fact that many of these exact same people presume to lecture bus users on why a perfectly good and large bus should be replaced by a very expensive smaller one in the name of outside aesthetics, but we won't do it here).

Nevertheless, the irony of all of this washes right past Sarah Sands and her fellow true-blue travellers at the Standard, and instead we get a typically anti-Ken headline bellowing out at us. Like all good Standard headlines, this one is no doubt sandwiched between a set of articles fawning over the latest party held by the impossibly posh daughter of some impossibly rich daddy and/or a 'lifestyle' piece highlighting the tribulations of some impossibly posh young couple struggling to find a suitably expensive property in central London.

Hang on, you are probably thinking, just the one article in a few days backing Boris? Of course not - for the Standard has to fill its quota of Ken-baiting articles in the absence of the daily ramblings of Andrew Gilligan. So, onto a glowing piece about Boris, proud defender of the defenceless CEOs of large London-based multinationals, hedge funds and stockbrokers.

In this version of the reality, the Standard bemoans the "union barons" funding Ken's campaign "prompting concerns he could be held to ransom by the Tube unions if re-elected".

Never the mind the fact that the significantly larger sums Boris continues to receive from the City (no 'barons' there, of course) might beg the same question as to the willingness of Mayor Johnson to challenge vested interests in the financial sector.

No, never mind that. That would require a sense of proportion, of balance and a basic understanding of the lives of the millions of Londoners that the Evening Standard claims to represent.

Another reason to vote Ken...

There are many, good reasons to vote Ken in the 2012 Mayoral election; and, if today's YouGov poll is anything to go by, Londoners are beginning to warm to some of them.

There is his record as mayor, in which he dramatically increased the number of buses on London's roads; his numerous transport projects - from the extension of the East London line (now London Overground) to Crossrail; his backing of some dramatic changes - witness the pedestrianisation of the north of Trafalgar Square - that transformed key public spaces in London into continental-style spaces fit for walking.

Then there is his vision: for fair transport fares, for affordable housing (from rent caps to building more affordable homes) and for investment in public transport.

But there is one, overwhelming reason, why Londoners should support Ken Livingstone as Mayor of London. To annoy Andrew Gillian.

Gilligan, the obsessive, pompous, self-important ex-Standard and current Torygraph 'journalist', would hate nothing more than to see his arch-nemesis back at City Hall. It would devastate him. In fact, he would probably openly weep.

And that is a cause around which all Londoners can rally.