Photo by Rooney
A month in the job and today was the day of Boris’ first regular press conference, an event that under his predecessor happened once a week, but which the new mayor would rather keep a little less often to allow him to spend more time ‘out there’ amongst Londoners. On the subject of Ken Livingston, he reserved praise for the ex-mayor’s appointment of an environmental officer, a move he intends to follow.
The questions kicked off with the Tube alcohol ban, following Saturday night’s ‘last round on the underground’ parties. 17 arrests were made on the night, when 50 staff were abused and spat at, three of whom were assaulted. Johnson said the party was “anthropologically misunderstood”, but to be honest he had little to defend. The moment that people began hurling abuse – and saliva – they won the anti-alcohol argument for the Mayor. Boris’ hopes that the move will become self-policing smacks of a little too much optimism however and won’t cheer many of the Underground staff.
Talking of whom, the Mayor reiterated his belief that a no-strike deal by Tube workers would be in the best interests of London, but doesn’t expand on the plan’s progress.
He was, meanwhile, more than happy to elaborate on language schools and his desires for Latin and Ancient Greek to be properly recognised in the Government’s language school programme.
More apposite for this journal, Boris replied to a question from the Financial Times on the progress of replacing London’s bendy buses, with a statement that it was a two step process, first losing the unloved Mercedes single deckers, before introducing a new ero of Routemaster. For the sake of London’s bus users I hope there isn’t two much of a gap between step one and step two.
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