Oh dear, I liked Ken. Now he’s gone from office. Ken Livingstone really understood public transport and did something about it. And the congestion charge…(which was my idea!!!*)… took someone with real guts to push it through. We need more people like him to fight the car lobby – to get people to change their behaviour and do something for their environment.
Thanks, Ken.
-cvj
(Image from “Underground Etiquette”. Worth a read.)
(*By which I mean I’d been fantasizing some years before his election about the idea of taking out lots of cars from the core of the city, pedestrianising more areas, thereby reducing traffic and emissions and noise and fumes and so forth. They said it couldn’t be done…)
I am truly disappointed that Ken did not have the chance to see through the Olympics project which he admitted and did not have to admit that he fought to bring it to London to redevelop the East London and to use the housing budget wisely. He has done a lot for London and we will miss his input. I hope that putting Boris in charge will not backfire on all of us who live and work and support London. I wait impatiently to see what he does.
I like the congestion charge too. I’m no fan of Labour (and even less a fan now that they have screwed poor people over even more by scrapping the 10p tax band), but I’m even less happy about the big Tory gains in the election.
–IP
Well, I didn’t much like Ken, but he has been a net good for the city, and I would have preferred to keep him than get Boris J. The latter just wasn’t very convincing on transport, I thought, what with all that stuff about “his beloved Routemasters”. I don’t care whether he loves them or not, would it be money well spent? I don’t think so. Oh, and Durham had the first congestion charge in the country – were you responsible for that one?
That anti-semitism charge doesn’t stick.
Ken, along with many other people, is no fan of Israeli policy and the frequency with which that position is purposely conflated with anti-semitism is quite troubling.
🙂
-cvj
There is an interesting proposal for introducing a congestion zone in Cambridge. It has the Park & Rides inside the congestion zone. D’oh!
bluechip said:
Sure, you feel strongly (and maybe rightly so) about some aspect of him that I know nothing about, but can you really conclude what you did from what I wrote? Come on.
I was just talking about the aspects of him I know about – his actions and results on transport in London. Sorry to hear that he had objectionable views on other things. The fact remains that he did some good things for London. That’s all I was talking about. Nowhere did I say that there were things he did or said that were not incorrect. Ok?
Cheers,
-cvj
As Neil Kinnock said – everybody likes Ken, except those that know him. Boris, however, is a gentleman, a scholar and an acrobat. Cripes, are we in for some larks!!
I take it that his anti-Semitism wasn’t really an issue for you then?
Hmm. Nice to know that having buses run on time is more important than stamping out racism…