11. BREAKING PROMISES, FAILING TO DELIVER

Friday, 01 May 2009 13:50

Boris Johnson carefully avoided pledging to do very much at all in his election campaign. He relied on the tide against Labors nationally sweeping him into City Hall with minimal commitments. Even so he has failed to deliver on many of the few things he did say he would do, such as:

 

* No news of his promise to keep the Tube open for an extra hour on Friday and Saturday nights

* No sign or news of his idiotic idea that he would negotiate a no-strike deal with Tube unions

* No appearance of the promised trial of express bus routes for outer London connecting key rail terminals initially across South London 

* Bring back Routemaster buses with a new 21st century design and conductors – this seems to be nothing more than a PR exercise with press releases, design competitions and bluster but so far no plan to actually deliver the promised result

* Bendy buses are still on the roads in spite of his 'top priority' pledge to scrap them – so far only three routes are to lose articulated buses; and in the case of two of these they will be replaced with smaller single-deck buses

* No funding for his promised 10,000 new bicycle parking stands

* Failure to deliver his promise to fully fund four more rape crisis centres

* Dropped his target of building 50,000 new affordable homes

* Suspended the third phase of the Low Emission Zone for London instead of his promised support for the zone

* No sign of the promised transparency in London government and Cabinet for London; promised to make City Hall more accountable but the first thing he did was cancel the Mayor's weekly press conference, largely avoiding any chance for the media to question him on the detail of his policies

* No account-based system making it easier to pay the congestion charge

* No ‘Payback London’ scheme requiring people who abuse their right to free bus travel to earn it back through community service

 

For more on Boris Johnson’s pledges, the Guardian has now retrieved his manifestos and published them online here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/page/2009/apr/27/111