Look to your failures, Boris

Published: 4th November, 2010

• THE Mayor of London made an official visit to Arlington House six months ago, to see the latest round of wasteful public spending on that particular project. 

This hostel’s rents have increased 3,000 per cent since    the 1980s but the number of its residents has decreased by 1,000 per cent.

Instead of singing from the same hymn sheet as the Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee when making disparaging remarks about the government’s proposed reforms of the housing benefits system, Boris Johnson should unburden his mind with his own failures in office.

For instance, 122 of his police community support officers have been sacked for disciplinary offences in the past five years. Seventeen teenagers have been killed in the capital this year, an increase on the whole of last year.

Transport for London organisation has become very careless with regard to public safety issues. 

And 5,500 front-line firefighters are threatened with the sack from November 26 if they refuse to accept new shift patterns – hence a series of walkouts by the Fire Brigades Union.

The 2012 Olympics logo looks all wrong – and soon Ken Livingstone will be rubbing his hands with glee.
James Redmond
Mornington Crecent, NW1