Song for song

The Daily Mail is as baleful today as ever.

It hit upon a story that — in its peculiar parallel universe — has everything. Try it:

• Romany Blythe, 45, created ‘The Witch Is Dead Party’ Facebook group
• Works with ‘potentially criminalised individuals’ in drama workshops
• ‘They danced in the streets when Hitler died too,’ she said today
• Previously claimed her PIP breast implants caused a miscarriage
• Special needs teacher Craig Parr, 27, works at Miliband’s old school
• Organised Brixton ‘death party’, holding ‘Rejoice. Thatcher is dead’ placard
• Invited people to celebrate death of UK’s first female Prime Minister

The drama teacher behind one of the vile Thatcher ‘death parties’ today compared Britain’s greatest post-war prime minister to Hitler as it was revealed she had breast implants on the NHS.

Romany Blythe, 45, who helps troubled children at schools in Brighton, has created an internet page called: ‘The witch is dead’ and encouraged thousands to ‘p***’ on the Iron Lady’s grave.

Miliband’s  old school … a  finishing school for the Labour  politicians of the future and tits!

Hanging’s too good for ‘em!

Then we have the rather silly business about:

The BBC is facing a difficult decision about whether it should play a Wizard Of Oz track which has had a surge of popularity in the wake of Baroness Thatcher’s death.

An online campaign has driven sales of the song – today midweek placings released by the Official Charts Company show Judy Garland’s Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead is now at number 10.

The corporation will now have to decide if they will play the 1939 tune during Radio 1′s top 40 countdown when places are finalised at the weekend.

Perhaps someone (in this case the Daily Mirror) should let the Mail in on even worse tidings:

Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead has rocketed to number one in the iTunes download chart following the death of Margaret Thatcher.

The Judy Garland version of the Wizard of Oz song hit the top spot last night following an online campaign by the Iron Lady’s critics.

It had already reached the top spot on Amazon’s sales charts on Tuesday night.

In the midweek Official Singles Chart it was listed at number 10 and is on course to be number one after selling more than 10,600 copies.

So Malcolm offers a simple solution to the Mail‘s trauma.

Fight fire with fire.

Campaign to promote a rival song:

That’s Someday my Plinth will Come. As in:

A political row erupted today over plans to erect a statue of Margaret Thatcher in central London.

Boris Johnson and Defence Secretary Philip Hammond have backed the idea, with the vacant fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square emerging as a frontrunner for a site.

Malcolm already has the crapulent pigeons in training.

Honour Hizzoner!

Compared to the ball of inertia that is the Mayor of London, there’s a lot going for Michael R. Bloomberg, the mayor of New York City.

And here’s why:

… the plastic-foam container may soon be going the way of trans fats, 32-ounce Pepsis, and cigarettes in Central Park.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, whose regulatory lance has slain fatty foods, supersize sodas, and smoking in parks, is now targeting plastic foam, the much-derided polymer that environmentalists have long tried to restrict.

On Thursday, Mr. Bloomberg, in his 12th and final State of the City address, will propose a citywide ban on plastic-foam food packaging, including takeout boxes, cups and trays. Public schools would be instructed to remove plastic-foam trays from their cafeterias. Many restaurants and bodegas would be forced to restock.

In excerpts from his speech released on Wednesday, Mr. Bloomberg rails against plastic foam, even comparing it to lead paint. “We can live without it, we may live longer without it, and the doggie bag will survive just fine,” the mayor plans to say.

Nobody would argue that NYC’s air quality is “good” (no city air quality is “good”), but what is remarkable is that it is by no means the worst across the USA — ten of the worst dozen ozone-polluted,  and seven of the worst dozen counties for particle-pollution are in and around LA, so no surprise there.

It’s a live and populist issue in NYC. Meanwhile BoJo is failing to come to terms with London’s air pollution: he postures whenever his past mis-steps trip him up.

We know that BoJo and Bloomberg live on the same land-surface, though it might as well be on different planets:

… some of his more high-minded policies, like soda limits, have left the [London] natives bemused.

When the mayors met for the first time, Mr. Johnson recalled, Mr. Bloomberg kept talking about trans fats.

“I didn’t know what trans fats were,” Mr. Johnson said, a glint in his eye. “I thought it had something to do with transsexuals, obese transsexuals, or something. Anyway, he made a great deal about that.”

That went down like a 2-pint cola with the UK pink press.

 

Three degrees of falsehood, and ten degrees of the Eighth Circle

Last summer, from the web-site of the University of York’s Department of Mathematics (of all unlikely places to find any lit.crit), there was an exhaustive history of who and how the cliché originated about “lies, damn lies and statistics”. The conclusion, if somewhat fuzzy, declared the begetter was Sir Charles Dilke, but deriving it from many earlier variants.

Somewhat conveniently, if only for regional pride, was:

A query in Notes and Queries (7th Ser. xii) (1891 Oct. 10), p. 288, reads as follows:

DEGREES OF FALSEHOOD. – Who was it who said, “There are three degrees of falsehood: the first is a fib, the second is a lie, and then come statistics”?      ST. SWITHIN

According to Folklore 41 (3) (1930), 301 and 63 (1) (1952), 4–5, “St. Swithin” was a pseudonym used by Mrs Eliza Gutch (1840–1931), of Holgate Lodge, York.

They’re still at it!

The most blackened liar is the politician who twists a statistic to support a point. Here, from the letters page of this week’s Ham&High in front of Malcolm, we have a prime specimen:

Stephen Greenhalgh, London’s deputy mayor for policing and crime, writes:

Crime has fallen, but we want to boost public confidence and make London safer. [etc., etc.]

A Google search suggests Greenhalgh issues, and re-issues press releases on this line, regurgitates similar statements on public occasions, quite indefatigably. There’ll probably be another one along in the morning. That’s why the grateful citizens of London pay him something around £100,000 a year, plus expenses and pension rights.

Let him who is without sin …

Meanwhile, Greenhalgh is himself not above suspicion, and Dave Hill has him in his sights:

As the police watchdog considers whether to investigate Boris Johnson’s policing deputy Stephen Greenhalgh over alleged illegal conduct by public officers of Hammersmith and Fulham council when he was its leader, it is instructive to consider the passion with which Greenhalgh supported the ambitious redevelopment scheme at the heart of the affair – the Earls Court project.

And then, lest we forget, there was the City Hall groping:

Boris Johnson‘s deputy mayor for policing has apologised “unreservedly” following an allegation that he molested a female member of staff in a city hall lift.

Stephen Greenhalgh, the former Tory leader of Hammersmith and Fulham council, who now holds day-to-day responsibility in the mayor’s office for policing and crime, allegedly patted a female member of staff on the bottom while in a lift last month.

Last seen above Lenin’s tomb

Put Greenhalgh into an ill-cut Soviet era suit, and one instantly lines him up alongside the Bulganins,  Malenkovs and Berias for a Red Square May Day parade:

So, for the occasion, let’s adapt a Stalinite apothegm:

It’s not the crimes that count, it’s how, and by whom they are counted.

In the exact case of crime statistics, the Guardian‘s Datablog, Facts are sacred, ran the slide-rule over the official numbers a while ago. It noted all kinds of jiggery-pokery:

• A concurrent but separate ONS publication shows that the rate of police recorded crime has fallen more quickly than the rate of reported crime found in the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW).
• It’s important to bear in mind that today’s release focuses on police recorded crimes. These are provided to the Home Office by police authorities and forces, not all of whom collect data with the same precision according to a 2007 audit. This is problematic because it means that a higher number in a given area may indicate an improvement in reporting by police rather than a rise in criminality.
• … crimes recorded by police are unlikely to represent the total number of crimes that take place. To understand this better, it’s useful to also consider the CSEW which asks people face-to-face about their experiences of, attitudes about and perceptions of a range of crimes.
• The gap between police-recorded and survey-reported crime has always been significant, but the distance between the two has widened. In 2004/05, there was an effective recording rate of 52.8%, while in the latest statistical release, this figure has dropped to 42.4%

And even this:

• Another of the more interesting figures is that of the perception of crime. The CSEW asks people whether they think crime is getting worse where they live and nationally. So, people think crime is getting worse – but not where they live. It’s the gap between what we know is going on and what we think is going on.

That last one, where Malcolm is sitting, means that the propaganda of stooges like Greenhalgh may be working.

Put the whole shebang together, and the only reasonable conclusion is:

Crime figures aren’t worth the ink used to print them.

Conjugation: I’m usually a law-abiding citizen, you’re a bit dodgy: that bloke ought to go down for a long stretch.

Meanwhile the really big crimes — Harry-the-Horse and  the multinationals who don’t pay taxes, the fraudsters who exploit concessions for charity to rip us all off — are officially not crimes at all.

Then there’s the little stuff:

It’s illegal to ride a motorcycle or drive using hand-held phones or similar devices.

The rules are the same if you’re stopped at traffic lights or queuing in traffic.

It’s also illegal to use a hand-held phone or similar device when supervising a learner driver or rider.

Malcolm would give fair odds that at least the second of those requirements is not known to the average driver. Yet — note — all are “illegal”, which means “against the law”. And Malcolm, waiting for a few minutes at bus-stops in north London, counts five, six or more drivers quite blatantly disregarding the law, frequently in full view of that CCTV camera that collect fines if you pause for thirty seconds to allow a passenger to get out (£50 free and for nothing to the local authority).

Here’s a writ that goes unenforced on a daily basis:

Bernard Hogan-Howe [the Met's Commissioner] indicated that he believed the current punishment of three penalty points and a £60 fine was not a strong enough deterrent for drivers.

By increasing the punishment to six points, drivers would be banned from the road if they were caught twice for the offence within three years.

Writing on the Met’s website, the commissioner said this would make drivers take the law on driving while on the phone more seriously and improve road safety.

That interprets as we don’t bother to enforce the law. We expect you, the potential offenders to understand and obey the law. But if we’re forced to apply the law, we expect it to have teeth. If only because it makes us look as though we’re doing our job. And, if the offence was significantly up-graded, we’d have more motivation, and look even better. Oh, and by the way, if you’re phoning and driving, don’t mow down that child, because — if you do — we have to check your phone records, which is a real fag.

That makes all the more remarkable the coincidence, nay the the assiduity of the Met Police, in catching (and so banning) Chris Huhne for driving the Old Kent Road while phoning. And that, by coincidence, within weeks of him avoiding a ban for speeding by having his wife take the points.

Where does this place the Office of National Statistics, Deputy Mayor Greenhalge, and others? —

Destination: Malebolge

Ticks every box

Malcolm, in bedroom-decorating mode, has been attempting to formulate a pertinent comment on the Tory conference. It is a depressing distraction — though he was tempted to pursue the Scottish Tory leader’s daftness over this one:

Almost nine in ten Scots receive more from the state than they pay in tax because of a ‘corrosive sense of entitlement’ north of the border, a top Tory said yesterday.

Ruth Davidson, leader of the Scottish Conservatives, said it was ‘frightening’ only 283,080 households – 12 per cent of the total – pay more in taxes than they get back in public services.

She told the party’s annual conference in Birmingham that Scots are now so reliant on ‘the gangmaster state’ that the public sector accounts for more than half of the nation’s wealth.

Miss Davidson said the ‘rotten system’ of state patronage had been fuelled by Labour and the Nationalists.

The Scottish National Party, led by Alex Salmond, described her comments as her ‘Mitt Romney moment’ …

For once Wee Eck found a proper response at the end there.

Alex Massie, for the The Spectator, said all that needed to be said in a succinct headline:

Scottish Tory Leader to Scots: Drop Dead

It looks even better on the web-page in pillar-box red.

But there’s still that lurking problem: what to say about the Cameroon-fest? Well, Max Hastings knifed Mayor BoJo very effectively — so much so that yesterday’s Mail piece gets re-cycled in today’s Guardian. Mmmm … how often do you get that kind of cross-over?

Ah! but facing that, here’s the best comment on the whole charade, in the letters column:

I am not a millionaire. I am not a tax avoider. I am not a banker. I work (proudly) in the public sector. I do not hate immigrants. I recognise that most people are poor because of obscenely low wages and a chronic lack of jobs, not because they are lazy or “scroungers”. I believe that, on balance, the EU is a good thing. I fully support a woman’s right to choose whether she wishes to terminate an unplanned pregnancy, and that no one else should try to control her body or fertility. I believe that trade unions are vital to protect workers from unscrupulous employers, and that employees need statutory protection and rights in the workplace. I believe that it is ordinary working people who actually create Britain’s wealth, not a handful of business tycoons. I believe that far too much of this country’s wealth is concentrated in the hands of the top 1%.

Sorry, Mr Cameron, but the Conservative party is definitely not for people like me; never has been, never will be (The Tories are for everyone, Cameron to tell conference, 10 October).
Pete Dorey
Bath, Somerset

Or, as those with a “privileged” education would recognise: verbum sapient sat est.

 

And now trending on Twitter

Peter McKay, at the Mail, (otherwise “McLie” or “McHackey” in Private Eye) puts a boot in:

This is not how it was supposed to pan out for Cameron & Co. They might have expected to bask in public satisfaction over the Diamond Jubilee and 2012 Olympic Games. 

But the dreadful early summer weather and BBC TV presenters’ inane commentaries during the Thames river pageant reduced any prospect of the Jubilee being a plus for the Coalition. 

As for the Games, the crass commercialism and embarrassing collapse of the multi-million-pound, private sector security arrangements created another ordure storm.

Now the Games are upon us, cheerleaders have replaced whingers. We’re urged to forget the maladministration and get behind the athletes. But this doesn’t translate into getting behind our ruling politicians.

To which Malcolm would add that, say about 5pm on Friday, exercising a Freeman’s right to drive a flock of sheep across London Bridge would generally add to the prevailing hilarity and mirth.

Those who have any doubts about the very bridled enthusiasm of Londoners over the next dose of bread-and-circuses should resort to the Twitter hashtag #disobeyboris. There you will find such gems as:

• Head to Heathrow. Wear an Olympics t-shirt. Tell everyone that the games are cancelled and they’re not allowed in #disobeyboris
• #disobeyboris make pepsi stickers and stick them on every 2012 coca cola advert you see
• Tell American tourists that Boris Bikes are ‘I Speak Your Weight’ machines. #disobeyboris
• Do not get ahead of the games. Get behind the games and follow them around. Whistle nonchalantly whenever they look at you.#disobeyboris
• Go to work using public transport & ultimately live your life like your hometown hasn’t become a pyre on which to burn £11bn#disobeyboris

For those who haven’t got it, the Mayor of London, Blasted Boris, tells us:

… concerns over security and transport before the Olympics is a “necessary pre-curtain up moment of psychological depression”

Not sure whether that grammatical infelicity is pure BoJo or the BBC.

Cylonic irritation

James Dyson is, quite literally, a household name: his vacuum cleaner is the object of choice in so many bourgeois under-the-staircase glory-holes.

He is also a good North Norfolk-born lad (Cromer, as it happens), which is fair enough reason to hear him.

Here he was today, with the Thunderer opinion-column in The Times [£].

His gripe, which we have heard before, is the UK’s failure to maintain and improve the infra-structure:

With Britain’s population having grown by nearly four million in ten years, we need to match that extra demand with long-term investment in roads, rail and airports. The coalition’s plan to electrify the spine of Britain is exactly what is needed. The spin doctors may tout it as a £9 billion investment in our railways, but split over five years it’s £2 billion a year. Slow and steady investment will win the race.

Despite our British tendency to form a well-mannered queue, we cannot delay decisions on infrastructure in the world’s seventh largest economy. The delay in deciding how we could add more capacity to our overstretched airports in the South East is infuriating. The IMF has downgraded the UK’s growth prospect to 0.2 per cent, so as the home market struggles British businesses will have to look abroad in order to grow, At Dyson four fifths of our machines are exported. Without strong links to foreign markets, british business suffers. Indecision over a third runway for Heathrow or a Thames Estuary airport is bad for business and bad for government coffers too; Dyson pays 85 per cent of its taxes to HMRC.

The problem is not confined to the air. Our roads seem to be crumbling just as we expect some of the heaviest traffic into London. The M4 has been closed for emergency repairs to cracks in the supporting pillars. Investing in our ageing roads is as important as spending on big new projects. A constant flow of funding is required to prop up an economy worth £1.4 trillion.

OK, fair enough. Not cutting-edge stuff. No Nobels for Literature there. But we feels your pain, James.

Let’s do a quick check-back:

The population may not have increased by those four million in ten years. Local authorities in the big cities have been banging on for the last decade that the 2001 Census was a long way less than perfect.

£2 billion year is about what we’ve been chucking at the Olympics. It might buy you a decent aircraft carrier, or pay for a small war. It’s not open-wallet time.

There is no way that Borisport-on-Thames is going to happen. That leaves us with a third runway for Heathrow, second runways at either Stansted or Gatwick, and developing feeder sites (such as Eddie Stobart is doing at Southend) linked to much improved rail links. Currently a coach service ambles along the congested M25 from Heathrow to Gatwick. For half of the Olympics budget, less than a sixth of the Borisport back-of-an-envelope accounting, we could achieve “Heathwick”, with a 15-20 minute transfer time.

But all of that, and more, would amount to “Plan B”, and Gids he say no.

It’s good news week …

We’ve been here before?

Decca F12241, issued September 1965, kept off top spot in the charts by the likes of the Stones (Get Off My Cloud, Yaaay! and Ken Dodd, Tears, Ugggh!). As Malcolm dimly recollects, the significance of the group’s name, Hedgehoppers Anonymous, was that they were RAF guys at Wittering.

MAD irony

One doubts that the RAF top brass would have encouraged lyrics like that:

It’s good news week —
Someone’s dropped a bomb somewhere,
Contaminating atmosphere,
And blackening the sky.

It’s good news week —
Someone’s found a way to give
The rotting dead a will to live,
Go on and never die.

So, how are we doing?

Thinking big, there’s an unreasonable chance of violent death, by bomb, by fire, by gun, in many areas of the Islamic world (which includes the Islam/Christianity interface in West Africa). More bombs, more guns, more deaths and even chemical weapons in Syria.

On a smaller scale, as for contaminating everywhere, London is reputedly the worst European city for air quality. As that must include Athens, it’s no small achievement. Our beloved BoJo is doing something about just that, gluing the worst to the road — but mainly in close proximity to the air-quality measuring sites:

A fresh political row has blown up over London‘s air pollution, with the capital’s 34 Labour MPs complaining that mayor Boris Johnson has been trying to hide the pollution problem by gluing particles to the road. They accuse Johnson of using pollution suppressants in front of official air quality monitors in order to bring down their readings and present a rosier picture of the air quality…

Under the mayor’s cleaning and application of dust suppressant trial, calcium magnesium acetate has been used on the Marylebone Road and Upper Thames Street, two key sites for air pollution. The chemical traps pollutant particles. The initial trial found the suppressants could reduce pollution levels by up to 14%, and in late 2011 it was announced that the programme would be extended to more than a dozen other monitoring sites.

If you can’t, or won’t cure it, resort to fraud. Good Tory ethics, there.

Present fears Are less than horrible imaginings

Though only just.

Today we had the two warlocks (well, you can’t manage the full Macbeth analogy every time) of the ConDem Treasury —

• Gids, the putative 18th baronet and (under present dispensations) guaranteed his retirement home in the House of Lords

and

• Beaker — doubtless equally sure of his ennoblement as Lord Badenoch of the Cairngormless Ski Lift.

And here they trot, escorted by Wing Commander Porky and the Royal Flying Piggeries display team, telling us of goodies to come.

Time to revisit the Wobblies’ Song Book:

Now, peerages are given for a reason
And that reason is simply understood:
For Chivalry, and Honesty, and Bravery
And for being so very, very good!

Oh …
Put it on the ground
Spread it all around,
Dig it with a hoe —
It’ll make your flowers grow!

Stephanie Flanders ran her rule over what was gushing forth, and was less than convinced:

Read the details of today’s guarantee scheme, and you see it has been written by an organisation determined not to take on one jot of unnecessary risk – and equally determined that private sector contractors not get a penny more than they need, even if the pennies in question are not going to show up in the public accounts.

Put it another way, it is a scheme that has been written by and for the UK Treasury.

It is unlikely to go down as another costly infrastructure fiasco. But it’s possible it won’t result in an enormous amount of new infrastructure either.

On Monday we had the other marriage-of-convenience — Cameron and Clegg — spreading future largesse across the rail network. Sadly, much of it was re-announced expenditures — how often has the Swansea electrification been mooted and then shelved?

A few pence for Copperopolis

The previous Labour government was committed to electrification back in 2009. At today’s prices, it involves the grand sum of £600M — hardly the Big Bazooka. Even more of these jam-tomorrow projects won’t start much before the next (2015?) Election.

• Why is Wales in the same league as Albania and Moldova?
• Because they are the three European nations without a single millimetre of electrified railway.

There is a violent ConDem U-turn here. As recently as March 2011 Hammond, then Transport Secretary was resolved against the Swansea extension:

I have received representations calling for the electrification of the Great Western main line to be extended as far west as Swansea and we have looked carefully at the arguments. The business case for electrification is heavily dependent on the frequency of service. Services between London and Swansea currently operate at a frequency of only one train an hour off-peak. There is no evidence of a pattern of demand that would be likely to lead imminently to an increase in this frequency. Consequently, I regret to have to say that there is not, at present, a viable business case for electrification of the main line between Cardiff and Swansea.

All that despite, as Maria Eagle noted in her response:

the case for electrification was previously approved by the Treasury … Anybody who has dealt with the Treasury, as we now all have, knows that the rate of return would have had to meet its tough criteria … if Swansea is not a part of the single roll-out construction programme, the Government will incur 20% additional costs to stop construction and then take it up again.

Finally (for the time being)

Politicshome gives us one further belly-laugh:

Why now?

From the BBC web-site:

London Underground is to be prosecuted by the rail regulator over a runaway engineering train.

An engineering train ran for four miles and ploughed through six stops on the Northern Line at the start of a morning rush hour in August 2010.

As a result, a passenger train had to be diverted.

Maintenance firm Tube Lines and Scheerbau, the train’s owner, are also to be prosecuted by the Office of Rail Regulation.

Transport for London (TfL) said it was “very disappointed” with the decision.

Some dates for your diary:

• The runaway happened on the morning of Friday 13th August, 2010.
• The Rail Accident Investigation Branch issued its report on June 15th, 2011, ten months and 2 days later.
• Eleven months and a day further on, the Rail Regulator pronounces.

Is it conspiracy theory to see the Mayoral Election of Thursday, May 3rd, just a fortnight ago, as a good, highly-political reason for the timing and delay?

Two glaring inaccuracies in this BBC website item:

1. Location

The engineering train became uncoupled as it was towed on the Northern Line near Archway station.

Whereas the official report puts the start of the incident a considerable distance further north, between Highgate and East Finchley stations:

At about 06:42 hrs, after passing through Highgate station, the coupling device fractured and the grinding unit began to run back down the gradient towards central London.  The crew of the grinding unit, who had no means of re-applying the brake, jumped off the unit as it passed through Highgate station. 

2. Name

The firm’s name is Schweerbau GmbH, and boasts: We are proud of the fact that our employee turnover is negligible. So the guys did standing jumps, no rolling, when they landed on Highgate’s platform?

Not a new river crossing

Walter Raleigh was rather OTT at the best of times, including:

There are two things scarce matched in the Universe — the sun in heaven and the Thames on earth!

As far as Malcolm can see, that is an ascription, without definitive provenance. William Dunbar had waxed lyrical forehand:

Above all ryvers thy Ryver hath renowne,
Whose beryall stremys, pleasaunt and preclare,
Under thy lusty wallys renneth down,
Where many a swan doth swymme with wyngis fair;
Where many a barge doth saile and row with are;
Where many a ship doth rest with top-royall.
O, towne of townes! patrone and not compare,
London, thou art the flour of Cities all.

Much as Malcolm admires Dunbar as a makir [= poet] he must have caught the Thames on a good day to observe it as a “precious blue-green color-of-sea-water stone”. And swans swimming with their wings, fair or not?

Still, such extravagances are totally in line with what follows.

As recently as a month ago, you could have read this in your Boris Johnson-loving Daily Mail:

The new cable car is due to start carrying passengers this summer, just in time for the Olympics.

Gondolas will glide over cables suspended between 300ft white pillars and ferry Olympics spectators between two of the Games venues – the 02 Arena on the south bank of the Thames and the ExCel exhibition centre in east London.

And the puffery continued:

Alas! There is an update:

Transport for London said it would be ready for people to use by the summer but there were no plans for it to be open before the Olympics.

Now, Malcolm is confused. The Olympic horror is on us in late July. the funfest runs the full length of the school summer holidays. So, when is “summer” this year? Or is this a Theresa May calendar?

All good home-grown stuff

The cable car (sorry, “the Emirates Air Line”, as it already features on London tube maps) — as right) links the O2 arena — it’s origins as the Millennium Dome are now lost in time — with the ExCeL expo-centre. One of those is leased by the Anschutz Entertainment Group of Los Angeles (which, by no coincidence, also owns the Thames Clipper catamarans). The other is owned by the Abu Dhabi National Exhibitions Company.

In short, this not-great, non-innovation in restricted-public transport links one commercial wasteland with another. Or, as BoJo burnished the jobbie, with inventiveness and accuracy not far short of Raleigh or Dunbar:

In terms of demand, the cable car is predicted to carry in excess of a million passengers in its first year of operation. The demand for the system is expected to come from 3 principal sources: people living and working in the surrounding area; people who may use the cable car to visit surrounding facilities such as Excel/O2 and people who choose to use the cable car as an attraction in its own right, drawing new visitors to the Royal Docks and Greenwich Peninsula. 

Another fine mess …

This is not the first cock-up clocked by the cable car project:

This from Martin Hoscik in October last year:

In a statement issued in July 2010, Johnson said: “The aim is to fund the construction of the scheme entirely from private finance and discussions are ongoing with a number of private sector organisations that have expressed interest in the project.”

The Mayor also told Assembly Members that Transport for London “does not have the budget to implement this scheme itself.”

Despite this he later confirmed that Londoners, via TfL, would provide the scheme’s “upfront funding” which would then be recouped “from a range of sources including the appointed commercial partner, fare revenue and sponsorship.”

That back-of-an-envelope £25 million, had become £45 million within two months, and now the money was coming from the TfL budget, at the expense of rail improvements. The latest figure seems to indicate something in excess of £60 million.

What would an austerity-mongering Tory (obviously not BoJo) call a Labour-sponsored project which over-ran estimates by 240% in just one year?

What would an efficiency-not-austerity Cameroonie say about a project which duplicates existing provision, for no great consumer advantage, at this ridiculous cost? Tom at Boriswatch, admitting that the cable car had flown under his radar, considered the fares arrangements in some detail (calculations which seem to have come first via Rachel Holdsworth at Londonist), with the conclusions that this was yet another of [BoJo's] expensive boondoggles … involving carrying fresh air across the Thames. 

£15: who’s getting screwed?

Sorry: it may be clever, it may be “art”, but — to Malcolm (who sees it from Muswell Hill) — it’s plain ugly.

… and that’s the idealised, blue-sky, thronging crowds, “conceptual” image.

Now there’s this:

Artist Anish Kapoor has given a preview of his Olympic Orbit tower sculpture, but admitted the £15 ticket price was “a hell of a lot of money”.

The twisting red steel tower – known as ArcelorMittal Orbit – was officially unveiled to the media on Friday.

Designed by Kapoor and structural designer Cecil Balmond, the Orbit is the tallest sculpture in the UK – twice the height of Nelson’s Column.

Let’s put that into monetary context. When it was first floated, Boris Johnson put out a statement:

The Funding for the Orbit consists of a £10 million cash donation and £6 million in underwriting of capital costs which could be potentially recovered from post games profits. 

Was that dissimulation? For, soon after, another costing appeared: £19.1 million. £16 million was contributed by Lakshmi Mittal, chair of ArcelorMittal, which is why his name is so prominently on the thing. Malcolm is still not clear whether £6 million of that is merely a loan from Mittal. The remaining £3.1 was coughed by the London Development Agency, a wholly-owned BoJo subsidiary (now defunct).

Ars non gratia artis

Boris Johnson, who could polish any turd, especially his own, finessed thus:

Johnson also insisted the tower would be a money-making venture as well as providing a “perfect iconic cultural legacy”. He said: “We think we will be amply recouped after Games-time from the proceeds of renting out a very attractive dining facility at the top. It will be a corporate money-making venture.”

Just like those £1.2 million-apiece Boris Boggler buses where the development costs would be recouped on royalties earned in other markets. As if …

Hard Times for These Times
(Which is the full title of what may be Dickens’s best novel.)

Obviously the corporate types are permanently out-to-lunch elsewhere. Certainly newly-coined London, E20, doesn’t seem their natural habitat. Or perhaps their community chests were cleaned out by subscribing to BoJo’s re-election fund.

Swift re-think, a bit of market re-positioning, and now it’s down to the coach-parties and pensioners’ outings, and Jane and Joe Bloggs queuing with their fifteen quid.

For an view of Hackney Marshes and the Lea Valley Industrial Estate?

Helpful hint

Better views across London are to be had from Parliament Hill, Primrose Hill, and Greenwich Park. And all for free.

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