Boris Johnson has his "cones hotline" moment

Boris Johnson has pledged to renew his "war on roadworks" by er, setting up a new version of the cones hotline. 

According to the Evening Standard:

"Under the Reportit scheme, signs are being put on roads encouraging people to identify utility companies they think are defying a new code of practice... A City Hall source added: "It's the ultimate in guerrilla tactics."

Yep it's the ultimate in guerilla tactics as practiced by that well known guerilla fighter John Major.

Major's Cones Hotline was labeled "the most ridiculed policy ever" after it emerged that just five of 17,000 calls made to it resulted in any cones being removed.

Boris's latest website will be hoping for a slightly better hit rate than that.

But if his other website-based schemes are anything to go by then Boris's new "war on roadworks" is likely to go the same way as John Major's.

Boris Johnson's "electric revolution" has more charge points than members

Boris Johnson's plan to "rapidly accelerate" the use of electric vehicles in London appears to have ground to a halt, after figures revealed the scheme has more charge points than members.

Launched by the Mayor last year, "Source London" now has 207 electric charging points but just 205 registered members.

The tiny level of interest in the scheme was revealed by the London Assembly following a question by Liberal Democrat AM Caroline Pidgeon.

Under the scheme, members pay an annual fee of £100 to use the Mayor's network of charge points. 

However, today's figures suggest that less than 1% of electric or hybrid owners in London have signed up so far.

Boris had originally intended to oversee the installation of 7500 new charging points in London but scaled back his ambitions to just 1300 new points following local opposition and cuts to the budget.

However, the public indifference to the scheme revealed today, suggests that even this modest aim may have been reaching too far.

Boris Johnson comes out against his own police cuts

Boris Johnson is hitting the headlines this morning for attacking the govenment's planned police cuts. 

He told The Today Programme:

“If you ask me whether I think there is a case for cutting police budgets in the light of these event, then my answer to that would be no. I think that case was always pretty frail, and it has been substantially weakened… This is not a time to think about making substantial cuts in police numbers."

Except it isn't the government that sets the police budget in London. It's Boris. And Boris isn't increasing the number of police officers in London. He's cutting them:

That's a 4% reduction in police officers and PCSOs in the past year alone.

He's also implementing cuts to safer neighbourhood teams and police station front desks.

If Boris wants to stop these things then he doesn't need to lobby David Cameron on the Today Programme.

He just needs to stop the very cuts that he himself is implementing.

Why we shouldn't dismiss Anders Breivik as a "lone wolf"

Right-wing pundits are now very keen to tell us that the Norwegian terror attacks were not caused by right-wing anti-multicultural ideology.

The fact that Anders Breivik quoted Daily Mail articles in his manifesto and forged links with the same anti-immigration groups lauded by our tabloid press is apparently neither here nor there. 

He was just a lone nutter okay? And besides, if it wasn't for multiculturalism, then there wouldn't have been a problem there in the first place.

Boris Johnson takes a similar tack today, telling his Telegraph readers that:

"It wasn’t about immigration, or Eurabia, or the hadith, or the Eurocrats’ plot against the people. It wasn’t really about ideology or religion. It was all about him... There is an important lesson in the case of Anders Breivik. He killed in the name of Christianity – and yet of course we don’t blame Christians or “Christendom”. Nor, by the same token, should we blame “Islam” for all acts of terror committed by young Muslim males."

We shouldn't blame right-wing politics for right-wing terrorism, says Boris, just as we shouldn't blame Islam for Islamic terrorism.

Right-wing politics isn't the problem. Islam isn't the problem.

Except that Boris used to say that Islam very much *was* the problem.

Here he is in The Spectator shortly after the 7/7 bombings:

"That means disposing of the first taboo, and accepting that the problem is Islam. Islam is the problem. To any non-Muslim reader of the Koran, Islamophobia — fear of Islam — seems a natural reaction, and, indeed, exactly what that text is intended to provoke. Judged purely on its scripture — to say nothing of what is preached in the mosques — it is the most viciously sectarian of all religions in its heartlessness towards unbelievers... What is going on in these mosques and madrasas? When is someone going to get 18th century on Islam’s mediaeval ass?"

Back then Islam definitely was the problem for Boris, just as he thinks that the right-wing fear-mongering pushed by the likes of his colleagues and friends definitely isn't the problem now.

The difference between the two cases is not one of principle but of politics.

Boris did not feel implicated by those who blamed Islam for the 7/7 attacks but he does feel implicated by those blaming right-wing politics for the Breivik attacks.

When Islam was in the dock, Boris wanted it detained without charge, but now that right-wing ideology is in the dock, he wants it released, no questions asked.

It's a sly trick, but it's one that he shouldn't be allowed to get away with. 

Islamic ideology had questions to answer after 7/7 and the hard-right ideology pushed by certain pundits in the press has questions to answer now.

The Anders Breivik of this world do not emerge from nowhere, just as the English Defence Leagues of this world do not emerge from nowhere. 

They are fostered by an ideology legitimised by screaming tabloid headlines and the fear-mongering of politicians who really should know better.

And unfortunately whilst Breivik's actions were the actions of a nutter, he is not the only nutter out there.

Three years ago 54 explosive devices and 12 firearms were found at the home of BNP member Terence Gavan.

Like Breivik, Gavan saw himself as defending his country from Muslim immigration, and like Breivik he was dismissed as a "lone wolf" whose ideology we didn't need to worry about.

And yet from lone wolves, larger packs are formed.

So whilst we shouldn't entirely blame right-wing ideologues for helping form those packs, we shouldn't entirely absolve them from their responsibilities either.