City Bosses Want Idiot Politician - No Change There Then

A survey of 100 City bosses suggests that 64% of them want Boris Johnson as the next Mayor of London – nearly three times the level of support enjoyed by Ken Livingstone, trailing at 24%.

At the same time, however, 63% said that the blond-haired Henley MP did not “seem serious” and 65% thought him “too much of a buffoon” – yet 55% think he would present a good image of London.

We asked our resident statistician to make sense of these apparently contradictory figures - but he just laughed, threw us a calculator and invited us to find the ‘accounting for human nature’ function. Reading between the lines, it seems that many of the best business brains in the world want an idiot running London.

Mr Johnson has come under attack over the weekend from the incumbent Mayor over his plans to reintroduce Routemaster buses and conductors. Mr Livingstone claimed the plans were wrongly costed, and would lead to a 15% fares increase, or £2 on a weekly pass.

Boris was unrepentant, however, and stoutly maintained that bendy buses were unmanouevrable, dangerous and, above all, unspeakably foreign. He said that once he had taken buses back to the 1950s, he would put steam engines and open carriages back on the Tube, replace the city’s taxis with horse-drawn hansom cabs, and tear down London’s bridges and bring back the traditional waterboatmen.
”Er, yes, quite,” said Mr Johnson. “Umm, steam engines and wagons and smoke and all that – pooh, crikey! Terrific stench, soot everywhere - peak-time congestion down, though, er probably. Of course! Er… right…er… where was I? That’s it, waterboatmen, yes, that’s the stuff! Rowing, that’s the chap, no pollution to speak of at all, you see? Jolly hard work, too - get some of these layabouts back to work - chop, chop, no standing about there! Horse-drawn cabs, indeed, very good for the environment, all that nonsense, votes in it though - also job creation, all that you-know-what, horsey stuff, draw a discreet veil over the details, needs to be swept up post haste, and very good for the roses too, say I. So… crumbs… er… yes! Vote Conservative! Carry on.”

And we hope to bring you a translation of Mr Johnson’s speech in plain English in tomorrow's bulletin.