Plenty Of Room Up Top On Boris Johnson’s Battle Bus
Boris Watch – Anorak’s look at Boris Johnson, Tory candidate for London mayor. (Pic: Beau Bo D’Or)
DAILY TELEGRAPH: “Boris Why Londoners should vote for me.”
Boris Johnson uses his Telegraph column to outline his vision for the future, a vision, it should be noted, as seen through his trademark custard fringe.
“It is one of the most tragic sights of the London streets. There she is, exhausted, in high heels, weighed down at either hand with heavy shopping,” says Boris.
Boris observes “bus-driver sadism” as the woman, gasping and perspiring like Jane Eyre on the plantation, arrives at the bus door just in time to see the leering driver hiss it shut in her face.
A vote for Boris is a vote for busses waiting for you. A vote of Boris is a vote for sitting on the bus and waiting for the old crone to reach the doors. Boris will alter bus life forever.
Says Boris of the driver: “…They are simply paid to ply the route, and they are paid according to a formula that depends on the number of miles travelled during the day; and so the buses’ real incentive is to whizz around London as fast as possible with as few passengers as possible, and certainly not to linger for a straggler.”
They are not callous swine. They are just doing their jobs.
And of that bus. Boris is aboard.
Says he: “I have just driven a Routemaster bus for the first time, and everything about it is a joy: the riveted aluminium so redolent of Second World War aircraft, the indestructible floor of compressed rubber and cork; the way its flanks heave like a warhorse as it throbs into the life, the efficiency of its engine that can do 11mpg, as opposed to the 3mpg of its heavier successors.”
It’s a thing of beauty. Take her up, Blondie.
“Someone once said that ‘only a ghastly, dehumanised moron would get rid of the Routemaster’, and that someone, of course, was the man * who got rid of it.”
* Ken Livingstone (the overarching reason to vote for Boris).
DAILY MAIL: Keith Waterhouse tells us: “Here’s why I shall back Boris the Card.”
Never before has Waterhouse voted Tory. The peers of his youth believed thinking Tory a capital offence.
But in the London’s mayoral election, Waterhouse will be voting Tory. That’s assuming the other three Tory contenders for the post are turned down.
(In the Times, Boris’ three agonists are billed by Tim Hames as “Mr Neverheardofhim, Ms Neverheardofher and Mr Neverheardofhimeither”.)
Says Waterhouse: “Once or twice in recent years, when spotting a politician who shows signs of not having come from outer space, I have quoted the last paragraphs of Arnold Bennett’s The Card in which he chronicles the audacious rise and rise of Denry Machin to become the youngest mayor ever of the Five Towns.
‘And yet,’ demands one of his embittered rivals, ‘what’s he done? Has he ever done a day’s work in his life? What great cause is he identified with?’ ‘He’s identified,’ comes the reply, ‘with the great cause of cheering us all up.’”
THE TIMES: Tim Hames (see above) says Boris is Spike Milligan.
“For instance, when he was asked by an officer who found him lurking in an ‘inappropriate’ place ‘Milligan? What are you standing there for?’, he replies: ‘Everybody’s got to be standing somewhere, sir.’
“It can be on this logic alone that Boris Johnson is standing for Mayor of London.”
Boris Johnson is not Ken Livingstone.
Posted: 6th, September 2007 | In: Politicians Comments (4) | TrackBack | Permalink
