Adam Bienkov

At the New Statesman: Guto Harri, Boris and the Murdochs

2012-05-21T16:32:00.002+01:00

Read my latest piece for the New Statesman over here. If you haven't already you can also read my latest column for Snipe, on the end of Brian Coleman's reign over here.

Will Boris Johnson suddenly become a radical Tory Mayor?

2012-05-09T08:31:00.001+01:00

I was on BBC London News last night talking about what we can expect from Boris Johnson's next four years. You can watch it here.

Andrew Gilligan was also on the show. Both Andrew and Dave Hill believe that the appointment of Stephen Greenhalgh and the new role given to Kit Malthouse demonstrates that Boris is going to be a far more radical right wing figure in the next four years.

I have no doubt that this is the message the appointments were meant to send, but I have serious doubts that after four years of doing almost nothing, Boris is suddenly going to turn into a radically transformative Conservative figure.

Boris has spent a lot of time portraying himself as a "real Conservative" in his Daily Telegraph columns and has made countless right-wing interventions on national issues such as the top rate of tax and banking reforms.

But when it comes to his actual policies it is difficult to find much red meat at all.

His regressive fare rises aside, Boris has done almost nothing to either seriously anger the left or excite the right. Ideologically he's been something of a non-event.

If Boris was going to launch a Conservative revolution in London then he would have started it by now. If he had any great vision for the future of London then there would have been some indication of it in his manifesto. There hasn't been.

At the beginning of Boris's last term he hired radical figures like Tim Parker and launched an investigation into making big cuts to London government. But despite all the rhetoric, nothing much happened.

My own feeling is that Boris will continue to make vocal interventions on national issues whilst doing very little to materially alter London one way or another.

His recent comments on immigration and the economy indicate that he is now mostly concerned with manoeuvring into position to be the next leader of the Tory party. Any radical action in London, might help him in that aim, but it would also be very high risk. Boris has shown no indication that he is willing to take those risks.

He may yet prove me wrong, but I suspect that London after eight years of Boris is not going to be very different from London after four years of Boris.

At the New Statesman: Why Boris won and Ken lost

2012-05-06T08:24:00.002+01:00

Read my analysis of the Mayoral election result over here.

On BBC London

2012-05-02T11:04:00.001+01:00

I was on BBC London radio this morning talking to Paul Ross about the Mayoral election campaign. You can listen to it here:

On the Today Programme

2012-04-30T17:02:00.000+01:00

I was on the Today Programme this morning talking to Andrew Hosken about the benefits of having a Mayor in London, alongside Sonia Purnell, Tony Travers and Christian Wolmar.

I wrote more about the need to increase the Mayor's powers last year

For some of the obvious downsides to having a Mayor, head over to The Scoop.

Michael Portillo says he won't vote for Boris Johnson

2012-04-20T09:52:00.000+01:00

I wrote recently about how the Conservative Party have been amazingly loyal to Boris Johnson despite his own repeated disloyalty to them, and despite holding many misgivings about him.

One notable exception to this rule, is the former Conservative Defence Secretary Michael Portillo. Last night he explained on the BBC why he won't be voting for his own party's candidate:

And here he is four years ago on why Boris Johnson is an "embarrassment" to his party:

Portillo is very rare in saying publicly what many other Conservatives will only say privately.

Labour on the other hand seem to have no such misgivings, with Lord Sugar being the latest member to urge people not to vote for his own party's candidate.

The other diference between the two parties of course, is that whilst Alan Sugar's comments have been very widely reported, Portillo's comments almost certainly won't be.

At the Guardian: Ken and Boris's reunion bus battle

2012-04-19T17:23:00.003+01:00

You can read my latest Guardian piece on the Mayoral race over here.

At the Guardian: the state of the Mayoral race

2012-04-06T13:25:00.002+01:00

I've written a comment piece at the Guardian about what the tax returns story says about the London elections and the state of British politics. Read it here.

Does anyone on Boris Johnson's campaign understand social media?

2012-03-22T14:14:00.000Z

If they do, they should probably have a chat with their campaign chief Lynton Crosby.

Earlier this week Lynton's team launched a ham-fisted attempt to steal the Mayor of London's official twitter account.

This resulted in a full blown Twitter storm, official complaints and reports in those well known radical outlets The Daily Telegraph, major tech websites and even the local press.

After accusing the mayor's followers on Twitter of "hysteria" they backed down and deleted all references to the campaign from the official feed.

Next, for reasons best known to himself, Lynton decided to launch an attack on the strictly impartial MayorWatch website.

MayorWatch's crime? To politely request that Boris's campaign send them some press releases.

Rather than contact Mayorwatch and apologise for failing to send the releases he'd requested, Crosby instead took to Twitter.

This jibe was apparently based on the fact that Guardian Journalist Dave Hill had earlier highlighted Mayorwatch's request on Twitter.

Mayorwatch, who has been covering City Hall for over a decade, has since received messages of support and disbelief about Crosby's response from right across the political spectrum.

If Lynton wanted to have a crack at one of Boris's critics then he chose completely the wrong person.

Instead of engaging with an impartial and influential news outlet, Crosby has instead chosen to alienate them. Bizarre.

As if that wasn't enough, Boris's campaign have since been highlighting "Londoners" who have come out to wave placards at Ken on one of his campaign visits.

They've even posted a video titled "Londoners confront Ken Livingstone in Croydon"

The thing is, if you want to pretend that something is coming from ordinary Londoners, it's probably best not to have the cameraman telling them to shout "louder."

It's probably also wise not to have previously posted pictures of these same ordinary Londoners wearing campaign t-shirts whilst sitting on a campaign bus:

Online campaigning has yet to be a major factor in winning UK elections.

If Crosby's attempts this week are anything to go by then it's unlikely to be so in this Mayoral election either.

Boris Johnson's bus fare rises in full

2012-03-22T12:11:00.000Z

Boris's record in office has been pretty meagre. So meagre in fact that he's taken to inventing achievements.

Recently he claimed to have saved London households £445 in council tax over four years, rather than the £3 he's actually saved us this year.

That was ludicrous, but at least had a kind of internal logic to it: imagine Ken would have raised taxes by X and then claim Boris's freeze as a saving from that imaginary figure.

However, speaking on BBC 94.9 this morning Boris boasted that "bus fares are still lower in real terms than they were in 2000."

Now bus fares may well be lower in real terms than 2000 but they're significantly higher in real terms than they were in 2008, when Boris came in.

Here's the facts:

Single Oyster bus fare in 2008: 90p

Single Oyster bus fare in 2012: £1.35

Percentage increase: 50%

7 Day bus pass in 2008: £13

7 Day bus pass in 2012: £18.80

Percentage increase: 44.6%

Monthly bus pass in 2008: £50

Monthly bus pass in 2012: £72.20

Percentage increase: 44.4%

Annual bus pass in 2008: £520

Annual bus pass in 2012: £752

Percentage increase: 44.6%

Source: bus fares 2008, bus fares 2012

Even the cash fare (which TfL today told me that only 1.2% of bus users actually pay) has risen by 15% over the last four years.

So when Boris claims that bus fares are lower than 2000, what he's really saying is that bus fares went down by so much in Ken's time in office, that even his own 44%-50% rises haven't managed to cancel them out.

As TfL themselves put it:

"Over the last decade bus fares in London have reduced in real terms although the trend over more recent years has been upwards"

Upwards by as much as 50% in fact.

At the Guardian on London's cable car

2012-03-20T13:12:00.000Z

The Guardian asked me to write a short piece on a local landmark, building, or piece of infrastructure that had seen changes under either Boris or Ken. I chose the new cable car at Greenwich

Head over to the Guardian to read the whole piece plus other contributions from Darryl at 853, Brixton Blog, The Barnet Eye, The Shepherds Bush Blog, and Mayorwatch.

You can also read some of my recent contributions on London politics to The Scoop blog and Snipe Magazine over here.

Camerawoman confronts Guido Fawkes bloggers

2012-03-14T13:54:00.001Z

A female journalist this morning confronted bloggers Paul Staines and Harry Cole of the Guido Fawkes blog after they rushed into a crowd at a mayoral campaign event causing her to be knocked over.

The camerawoman for ITV was kneeling down to sort out her equipment when a man dressed in a chicken suit accompanied by Cole and Staines barged into them.

She later told me that she was "shocked" by what had happened and had received a bash to her leg as they rushed in.

I managed to get some footage of her confronting Cole and Staines telling them that they "nearly broke my neck."

They didn't seem majorly concerned as you can see below.

(I've had some difficulty embedding this so you may need to click through to Youtube on some browsers.)

The footage also shows Paul Staines shouting "c***" at a Labour staffer.

For some reason Cole's and Staines' own footage of their stunt doesn't include any of this. I wonder why?

Did Boris Johnson sign off a tax dodge?

2012-03-06T23:38:00.000Z

Dan Ritterband (pictured right)

It's good to see Boris Johnson campaigning against tax avoidance all of a sudden.

Not least because he has spent the past few years campaigning to avoid more tax himself.

Still let's not underestimate the zeal of the convert. On Sunday Boris was on fine form telling the Andrew Marr show that:

"I want a crackdown on tax dodgers and tax avoiders of all kinds."

Perhaps he could start his crackdown at City Hall where some cad named Boris Johnson signed off a payment of £22,912.50 to a limited company called "DJR PR" in 2008.

Could this be the same DJR PR whose sole director is Daniel James Ritterband, Boris's former campaign chief and current Marketing Director?

Oh yes so it is:

The 'transition' here refers to the first two months of Boris's term when we paid a team of consultants and former campaign workers over half a million pounds to help get him started.

Some of this team, including Ritterband, subsequently went on to become full time GLA employees.

I emailed Daniel asking him whether he had paid full income tax on all of the £22,912.50 that taxpayers paid him to transition Boris (and himself) into his new job.

Shortly afterwards I was contacted by a spokesperson for the GLA who told me that:

"DJR PR has not conducted any business since June 2008. All applicable taxes have been paid on fees paid to the company."

"Applicable taxes" rather than income taxes.

The spokesperson also confirmed that the £22k consultancy fee was paid solely for the services of Ritterband.

However, despite apparently doing no business since 2008, Ritterband's company continued to accrue considerable assets. I've uploaded the company's accounts here. See what you think.

So what's going on here? Can Ritterband be labeled a "tax dodger" who set up a company in order to pay less taxes out of the money taxpayers gave him?

Or did he just legally do what many thousands of other people who are self-employed, freelancers or consultants currently do?

Under Boris's logic the answer is pretty clear. Time for another crackdown I think.

Also in The Guardian Diary

At Channel 4 News

2012-03-02T13:17:00.000Z

Channel 4 News interviewed me about Boris Johnson's record as part of their introduction to the Mayoral race. Read all about it.

Boris Johnson's imaginary council tax savings

2012-03-01T14:49:00.000Z

Boris Johnson's claim to have saved the average household £445 in council tax, is based on comparing his record to what he imagines Ken Livingstone would have done instead.

In an email to supporters, Boris's campaign chief Lynton Crosby claims that Boris is:

"Cutting council tax, having frozen it for the last three years saving the average household £445"

They repeat this claim on their campaign website [and in Boris's 9 point plan for London]

However, Boris campaign today told me that this is based on how much they assume Ken Livingstone would have raised the GLA precept by, had he won in 2008.

They say they have calculated the average rise under Ken's previous time in office and applied it to Boris's time in office.

According to one Conservative Party website the 'saving' is calculated by:

"the cumulative impact on a band D household of the average increase under Ken Livingstone of 12.58% had it been applied between 08/09 and 12/13, including taking account of this year's cut."

So they are assuming that Ken would have raised the GLA precept by a total of 60% between 2008 and now.

However, in Ken's last four years he only raised it by less than half of that.

GLA precept on Band D 2004 - £241.33
GLA precept on Band D 2008 - £309.82 (total rise 28%)

They're also ignoring the fact that Boris's precept freeze has been substantially paid for by a central government grant which went to all local authorities that implemented a freeze.

As a result of this grant every local authority in England froze their council tax last year and most are expected to do so again this year.

Ken could also have benefited from such a grant had he won.

Of course it's possible to imagine that Ken could have instead raised his precept by 60%.

But Boris's claim that he has 'saved Londoners £445' is just that: imaginary.

-Update- The £445 claim is now point two in Boris's "9 point plan for London"

Boris Johnson's 'cycling revolution' visualised

2012-02-26T07:07:00.000Z

Source: Travel in London report 4 (TfL)

The Metro newspaper wants you to work for free

2012-02-17T09:33:00.000Z

An exciting offer arrives by email from the Metro newspaper:

Hi Adam,

Metro are searching for writers and bloggers that have got something to say about the Olympics to contribute to our 2012 coverage. With the biggest sporting event to be held in London on the horizon we want to share your opinions and insights with Metro’s large audience.

Having looked high and low, reviewing blogs and searching out sport professionals, we found your website and would love it if you would like to get involved. Whilst you will not be paid for your posts, you will be set up with a profile page linking to your blog or website and your social media accounts - with the potential to reach thousands of readers under the Metro brand, the opportunity to grow your own following is there.

If you would like to be considered for this opportunity please reply to this email expressing your interest and we will get back to you with further details. If you know anyone else that might be suitable please let us know too.

Kind Regards

Emma

EMMA MILLS METRO.CO.UK

To which I replied:

Dear Emma,

Thank you for your kind offer to work for the Metro for free. Sadly, in Britain we have this thing called the national minimum wage act, that requires employers to actually pay the people who work for them. You may find the following information useful:

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/paye/payroll/day-to-day/nmw.htm

If the Metro is willing to comply with the law and pay at least the minimum wage, then I will of course reconsider your offer.

Yours sincerely,

Adam Bienkov

The Metro is a highly successful and profitable newspaper that can easily afford to pay its contributors.

If it wants "writers, bloggers and sports professionals" to cover the Olympics for them, then maybe it should consider employing some.

Boris Johnson to save households 15p a week

2012-02-16T14:21:00.001Z

Boris Johnson has dramatically upped the stakes in his bid for re-election by offering London households a whopping 64p off their council tax every month.

According to the Evening Standard:

"Savings of £150 million could potentially translate into a cut of around 10 per cent [off the GLA precept] over four years, though City Hall sources said some of that money could be spent elsewhere."

Boris Johnson's previous offer of 26p saving a month has so far failed to excite many voters, but the extra 38p could make all the difference.

A man queuing up to buy some peanuts told this blog:

"To be honest I thought Boris's offer of £3 a year for me to vote for him was pretty derisory, but now that he's offering me £7 a year to vote for him I think I might.

Boris's plans to raise public transport fares by 2% above inflation every year for the forseeable future are expected to remain.

Boris Johnson has bet all his money on a loser

2012-02-14T09:27:00.002Z

So the results are in. After spending an entire month campaigning on a cut to his council tax precept, Boris Johnson now knows what Londoners think of it.

According to YouGov:

So Boris's "game-changing" £3 giveaway is the least appealing of all the major policies proposed so far. Even Brian Paddick's 'early bird' fares policy is ranked higher.

Meanwhile Ken Livingstone's proposal to cut fares (which Boris described as "the last thing that Londoners want or deserve") is ranked as the most appealing.

Asked whether they support or oppose a cut to bus fares, 68% of Londoners give it their backing with just 16% saying they're against it.

It would seem that Tony Arbour's claim that fare rises don't matter because most Londoners don't use public transport was slightly off the mark.

And while Boris's campaign have made much of Ken being untrustworthy, the poll shows that even more people mistrust Boris Johnson to fulfil his promises than Ken Livingstone:

The character questions are also bad for Boris with just 13% believing that he is "in touch with the concerns of ordinary people." A disastrous score.

However, there is one area in the poll where Boris is still massively ahead of Ken and that is "charisma."

In a personality-based contest like the Mayoral election this is incredibly important, and does more to explain Boris's headline lead than anything else.

On policies, Boris has put all of his money on a loser. The only thing that's keeping him in the race is his personality versus Ken's.

If Ken's campaign can turn that around then they can win the election. If they can't then they won't.

Ken Livingstone's dodgy knife crime claims

2012-02-13T11:04:00.000Z

I've spent the past week trying and failing to get Ken Livingstone's team to prove their claims that "knife crime has risen every year" and that "Knife crime is up 13.6%" under Boris.

The only source they will point to is this page on the MPA website which does show that knife crime has risen by 13.6%.

However, this only refers to the period between November 2010 and October 2011. No previous years are listed.

The Metropolitan Police don't publish knife crime statistics on their crime figures website and so I've had to search through their annual reports.

For previous years I've found that:

In 2010/11 "Overall knife crime increased by 5.7%"
In 2009/10 "knife crime showed a slight increase of +2.2%"

So there does seem to be a significant rise in knife crime in recent years. However in Boris's first year as Mayor there is a very different picture:

In 2008/09 "Number of serious violent knife crimes per 1,000 population" went down 13.3%

So there was actually a big fall in Boris's first year, possibly related to the crackdown launched by the Met that year and also possibly due to a spike in knife crime the year before.

Therefore Ken's claim that "knife crime has risen every year under Boris" is not true.

And his claim that knife crime is up 13.6% under Boris is also misleading. Taken on aggregate the total rise in knife crime appears to only be somewhere around the 6% mark.

That's still a significant rise for a man who's campaign to be Mayor relied so heavily on tackling knife crime, but it's nothing like what Ken's team are claiming.

Boris Johnson meanwhile also continues to mislead the public, by claiming that "knife crime is down 8-9%" under his Mayoralty.

Where he's pulled this figure from I've no idea, although presumably it's using the same dodgy counting methods I exposed before.

However looking at the Met's own statistics it's clear that knife crime is up and significantly up under Boris.

This is even more the case when you look at knife crime involving young people, as Dave Hill has reported.

These are powerful facts for an opposition candidate to throw at the Mayor.

However, rather than use those facts, Ken has oversold his case and missed what should be an easy hit for an opposition politician.

In order to win, Ken needs to beat or at least run Boris very close, on crime.

This is more than possible as I shall spell out later, but in order to do so Ken should stick to the facts. So far he hasn't.

More at The Scoop: Why Ken has won on transport but is losing on crime

Tory AM: Most Londoners don't use public transport

2012-02-09T12:31:00.002Z

Most Londoners don't use public transport, a Tory London Assembly Member has claimed in defence of the Mayor's fare rises.

Speaking at a City Hall debate on Boris Johnson's budget, Tony Arbour claimed that:

"It is a fact is it not that relatively few Londoners use London transport in any way. Most people don't use London transport with any sense of regularity."

He went on to tell the Mayor that it was a "principal of conservatism" that "those [people] who receive a service are those who should pay for it."

Boris Johnson replied that he would "need to get the figures" Arbour was referring to.

Transport for London's statistics show that the majority of trips are made by private transport although the majority of "journey stages" are made by public transport (42% to 36%).

However, there seems to be little evidence beyond Tony Arbour's own peculiar personal experience that "few Londoners use London transport in any way."

Arbour is an outspoken and right wing member of the Conservative party and a councillor in Richmond upon Thames.

He previously caused controversy when he described council housing as "housing for the riff raff."

At the Guardian: Astroturfing: what is it and why does it matter?

2012-02-08T15:39:00.001Z

Astroturfing: what is it and why does it matter?

Boris Johnson: taking over suburban trains is "not politically liveable"

2012-02-07T12:35:00.002Z

Boris Johnson's plan to take over every rail service in London is "not politically liveable" according to er, Boris Johnson.

Asked a year ago whether he supported taking over suburban rail services he told the London Assembly:

I have to tell you, and I am going to be totally frank with you, in my conversations with Government and with the Department of Transport, I do not think I have yet received any kind of indication that they are anywhere near giving us control of all the railways, total control of all the railways, in London, because I am afraid there are implications for other passengers beyond London, and that is a difficult argument. I prefer to go down the route of saying that what we want is a stake in the franchising arrangements. For us now to say that we want to take over every single railway in London and throughout the Greater London area is, I am afraid not politically liveable at the moment.

So what's changed in the past 12 months to make the unliveable now liveable?

Has the government suddenly decided that they want to give control of the suburban railways to Boris?

Well if they have, they're keeping it very quiet. So what else could it be?

Could it have anything to do with a certain election coming up that Boris is trailing in?

Surely Boris wouldn't risk making another load of wild transport promises before an election that he can't keep?

When Boris Johnson denounced Britain's wealth creators

2012-02-06T11:10:00.000Z

"Britain won’t create a Facebook until we learn to praise success" roars the headline to Boris Johnson's latest (£250,000) Telegraph column:

"It is not as though we lack potential Zuckerbergs. Our universities are pullulating with brilliant young men in T-shirts who like playing Call of Duty and have slight difficulties with girls. We are fantastically fecund at coming up with new games and new apps. The very concept of the World Wide Web was devised by London-born Sir Tim Berners-Lee. So why isn’t there a British Facebook? Why aren’t these billions about to explode into the pockets of people in this country?"

Yes why haven't our "brilliant young men" yet reproduced the success of Facebook?

Why has our video game industry, the one area of the computer industry we excel in, not fulfilled it's potential?

Could it have anything to do with the total lack of support, and even condemnation it has received from the UK establishment?

The same establishment, one member of which has repeatedly told people to er, smash its products:

"It is time to garrotte the Game Boy and paralyse the PlayStation, and it is about time, as a society, that we admitted the catastrophic effect these blasted gizmos are having on the literacy and the prospects of young males... Summon up all your strength, all your courage. Steel yourself for the screams and yank out that plug. And if they still kick up a fuss, then get out the sledgehammer and strike a blow for literacy."

But surely Boris must have at least realised their wealth creating potential?

"what we fail to grasp is that these possessions are not so much an index of wealth as a cause of ignorance and underachievement and, yes, poverty."

Perhaps not then.

Boris Johnson to save Londoners three whole pounds

2012-02-01T14:08:00.000Z

In a truly momentous announcement, Boris Johnson today said that he would cut his share of the council tax by a whopping 1%.

Thousands of Londoners were set to storm City Hall in jubilation as they realised that Boris could save them an earth-shattering £3 for the entire year.

One commuter queueing up at one of London's lesser-spotted ticket offices told this blog:

"I was pretty angry about the hundreds of pounds Boris has cost me in fare increases, but now that he's offering me £3 back I think I can forgive him. I could almost afford a single tube ticket with that."

At almost one penny's worth of saving per household per day, Boris's precept cut is likely to transform the Mayoral race and possibly even the UK economy.

A spokesperson for Boris's campaign said:

"This shows that Boris Johnson is truly in touch with the pressures that ordinary Londoners face, unlike that Commie, North Korean, extremist, liar Ken Livingstone."

A source close to the Mayor denied that Boris will now also reverse his plan to raise fares by 2% above inflation every year for the foreseeable future.

"No of course we're still going ahead with that. What are we, made of money?"