A wonderful little video for your entertainment, sent in by a friend* with far too much time on their hands.
Remember Boris saying in the Mayoral debate that he couldn’t put a number on how much his imaginary new Routemasters would cost? (Well, obviously he couldn’t – they only exist in his head) well today he answered the question while out campaigning, telliing a dubious punter they’d cost a hundred million quid.
Trouble is, he’s been telling everyone else they’d only cost eight million.
See for example here, where the maybe moptop mayor says:
“It’s perfectly true there is a dispute between myself and the mayor about the cost of getting conductors once again on the 337 new Routemasters that we will be introducing to replace the bendy bus, and the mayor says that it is ten times our calculated cost of eight million pounds a year. I haven’t seen the mayor’s figures, I don’t know quite how he arrives at that statistic. I am told that it would only cost eight million pounds”
Except of course, it wouldn’t and Boris knows it wouldn’t as he admitted today.
Still, what’s ninety-two million between friends?
Well, quite a lot adctually, since Boris has been busy denying all over the place that his Bus plans would cost a hundred million quid, because that would mean he was spending a hundred million quid without carrying a single extra passenger. He’s even had the nerve to criticise Livingston for telling the truth about his bus costs.
Time for another grovelling apology Boris?
* by the way, I’m getting quite a few of these now, and I’m keen to post them. However, whether I post them or not, I salute the effort that goes into making them! Hopefully I should have a Ken tribute video from an anonymous contributor tmw!
The fact that he has taken so long to come up with a realistic estimated cost is bad enough, but what is worse is the fact that he wants to spend all of this money without actually providing any extra capacity. The whole policy is an expensive vanity project.
Boring
The whole policy is an expensive vanity project.
Bendy buses you mean. They were an utterly stupid idea they do not work and almost anyone could have told you it was a stupid idea before we wasted all this time and money.
I `m curious as to why you have taken your pro Brown posts down Hopi . What do you know , is he on the way out ?
Don;’t what you’re talking about Newmania- I’m as pro brown as anyone and no posts have been taken down!
‘almost anyone could have told you.’ Like the dozens of cities round the world where they are used without a problem?
The only reasonable criticism of them is that people can evade paying, in which case the best proposal is to employ more people to check tickets. But no, why do that when you can just throw them in the scrapyard and spend hundreds of millions on going back to the future.
*snide alert*
“what’s ninety-two million between friends?”
what indeed? is it for example a bigger deal, (between friends, you understand) than an unexpected £800m VAT bill for the olympics?
Who can tell…
I’m as pro brown as anyone
Arf arf…Plenty of wiggle room there . You mean you wish there was a painless way to get rid of him ?
Ok newmania let me rephrase it. I like Gordon a lot, think he’s a good PM – am aware that this is a very unfashionable opinion, couldn’t care less and want him to lead us to victory at the next election.