Boris Johnson and his lies

Are you really saying that anyone who votes for the Tories has no morals? Do you have a link for that?

You can’t link to an opinion - an opinion many of us share.

I think you can see just how brainwashed those who read the daily Tory propaganda are and how destructively far we have moved to the right. What Labour have suggested will bring our percentage spending a little above Germany's (who haven't had our sort of austerity measures) and roughly the same as France. It would be interesting to know how the debt we were supposed to be repaying through austerity compares to those too countries too.

One thing I am aware of is that the far-right Tory policies have created huge personal and household debt. There message is seen as "normal" but for many countries of our size and stature it is much further to the right and away from centrist thinking than ever thought of by Thatcher.

I certainly think that many who vote Tory are amoral at the least when it comes to the actual lives of of others. The idea that the biggest thug, whether they are using their fists, their political power or their financial power should take the greatest share, putting others into poverty, has never seemed moral to me.

It is always a short-term solution in any case as a bigger bully always comes along.

Austerity was a political choice and never actually needed so I'm surprised that some people still think it was. GracesGran is quite correct in that, compared to France and Germany, we have failed abysmally.

The media have a lot to answer for and it's a great shame that they influence public opinion with their lies. I feel that they have undue influence. There is very little trust in politicians or manifestos either - due to past let downs. What we could/should consider is 'progress' so far with our government. What have they done for us, for our country?

''You can’t link to an opinion - an opinion many of us share.''

indeed, but it is based on tons of evidence. Those who support a party that only cares about the very rich, and has total disregard and scorn for those who, for many reasons, have fallen on hard times, for the future of the NHS that ensures that all are treated irrespective of wealth, for the educations of the vast majority of children, for those who live in high rise building clad with flammable material- therfore deathtraps, etc, etc - can't possibly have morals.

That ghastly word " austerity" implies some sort of pain followed by some sort of gain.

For many people it's all pain.

There is a difference between morals and moral compass.

I'm sure that many who intend to vote for the tories have their own working set of morals. I'm fairly confident that they would use their 'moral set' to make judgements on people or situations which they encounter in everyday life. That is 'moral compass' - using your set of morals to judge whether some-one or something is 'right'.

I wonder how many of the Johnson supporters would, in their everyday lives, employ someone in a highly responsible task (say, building them a new house) who is known to be a liar (sacked from a job for it in the past), a cheat, lazy, incompetent (with a string of failed past projects), corrupt (all that public money heaved in the direction of women he was sleeping with) and totally incontinent in their private life (though this might not be so critical if they were actually good at the job)?

Would they employ this guy, knowing his history, just on the strength of him saying with utter confidence ' I can do this job'?

I suggest they'd say "What a wide boy" and avoid him like the plague...

I think if he’s a good brickie and well recommended for his WORK I’d employ him MaizieD

His private life would be of no concern to me.

Johnson's private life isn't the main issue.

You've missed the whole point, Ug

He's not a good brickie, He's a cowboy and I'm not talking about Johnson, I'm talking about someone you want to build a house for you who is notorious for all the things I've itemised and all your friends are saying 'don't touch him with a barge pole'.

If you'd properly read what I wrote I did say that if they were any good their private life wasn't particularly relevant.

I think as far as people having morals who vote Tory I am prepared to believe there are people who bought in to the scam 10 years ago that austerity would sort things out. But they should look at where we are now and remember my GM's dire warning "The Road to Hell is paved with good intentions."
As for Boris the word morals shouldn't appear anywhere near him. He has consistently lied about everything in his private and public life.

P.S Ug. It's not just your friends who are warning you off him, it's other builders who know the job and know exactly what they are talking about.

Whitewavemark2
As there are those who would support 'We will nationalise the whole of the UK' head in the sand Corbin??

It's a bit of an exaggeration to claim that Corbyn would nationalise the whole of the UK!

It's not really the point of the thread anyway. Just because somebody doesn't support nationalisation of utilities (and some people do), it doesn't mean that Johnson's lies don't matter.

Wow, double standards or what? But so predictable. I ask for a link, but am told it's "just an opinion". Yet when I "give an opinion" on political threads, I have been constantly asked for a link! Hypocritical b******t!

opal

You’ve misunderstood.

Tories who vote for Johnson May or may not adhere to a personal moral standard, and behave accordingly.

Tories who vote for Johnson knowing him to be a liar, misogynist, racists, incompetent, lazy and fraudulent amongst many of his other qualities lack imo a moral compass.

Simples?

Bit of a daft analogy MaizieD if you keep having to drip feed me more information about the brickie P.S Ug. It's not just your friends who are warning you off him, it's other builders who know the job and know exactly what they are talking about

On this I’d not employ him, obviously!

But only because others in the trade said he wasn’t up to it. That’d settle it for me.

As there are those who would support 'We will nationalise the whole of the UK' head in the sand Corbin??

Don't be ridiculous, sarahellen. That's not what Labour is proposing at all. Hysterical hype is not a good look.

I didn't have to drip feed you information Ug. It was all there in my first post. You just chose to ignore it and fasten on the most irrelevant bit.

But excuse me for assuming that you knew all these things about the dodgy builder because it was common knowledge... I didn't think I'd have to explain that in words of one syllable.

Urmstongran ''I think if he’s a good brickie and well recommended for his WORK I’d employ him''

well yes, and that is the massive IF - he is not a good brickie- and anyone who has ever employed him has said he is useless, cannot be trusted and a liar- and his record of spending on many projects which have turned to be massive waste of your money and mine - is there for all to see.

I am not sure if you refuse to see it- or if you are blind, or ...

Actually, if I employ anybody I want them to be a decent human being. For some reason a lot of workmen seem to think casual racism is fine and that I will be happy to nod and smile.

I won't have anybody near me or my who I don't trust.

I didn't think it was necessary to make a list of the blunders and millions he wasted as the Mayor of London- but as you insist, here it is:

The scrapping of Boris Johnson’s Garden Bridge project has exposed a £940m bill for his “vanity projects” as London mayor and prompted a senior Labour figure to say her party was partly to blame.

The figure is the total spent on eight projects closely associated with the former mayor, including the pedestrian bridge for the Thames that was abandoned this week, which either failed or whose value for money has been questioned.

His office insisted that the schemes represented important investments and that to describe them as vanity projects was “ignorant and wrong”.

Three Johnson projects ended in failure at a cost of more than £57.5m: the Garden Bridge; the purchase of water cannon; and the Thames estuary airport.

Five others: the new Routemaster bus; hire bikes; the Emirates Air Line cable car; the conversion of the Olympic stadium and the ArcelorMittal Orbit helter-skelter, all did go ahead at a combined cost of more than £900m. They have run into problems after turning out to be far more expensive than promised.

The former Labour minister Margaret Hodge, whose review of the Garden Bridge project led to its abandonment, said she was shocked at how “irresponsible” Johnson was with public money. But during her review she was also struck by the lack of scrutiny of his profligate spending decisions when mayor.

“I kept thinking how the hell was he allowed to get away with this,” Hodge told the Guardian.

Hodge, a former chair of the Commons public accounts committee, said the Labour government she served in should have put in place more checks on mayoral powers when it set up the post in the late 1990s.

“When Tony Blair and [local government minster] Nick Raysnford set it up they didn’t want it to have the bureaucratic constraints of a local authority. So in a sense we gave him [Johnson] the opportunity.”

Johnson’s office contrasted his legacy with the lack of achievement to date of Sadiq Khan. “He has no vision for the city whatsoever … Ken Livingstone [when mayor] blew £34m on a West London tram and £24m on a cross-river tram. Both of them turned out to be wholly impractical but at least he had ambition and guts.”

Labour assembly member Tom Copley said that now Johnson was foreign secretary there was even less scope to scrutinise past decisions. “I don’t think we’ll know the full cost of Boris until a few years down the line,” Copley said.
Johnson projects: the list in full
An image of the Garden Bridge project, which was abandoned this week.
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An image of the Garden Bridge project, which was abandoned this week. Photograph: Thomas Heatherwick designs

Garden Bridge £52m

Johnson said the Thomas Heatherwick-designed bridge was a beautiful project and accused his mayoral successor, Sadiq Khan, of cancelling it “out of pettiness and spite”. But few others, beside the actor Joanna Lumley who conceived the idea, have mourned its demise. Instead attention has turned to how £52m of public money was to be squandered on a project that was never started. About £37m has already been spentand the government will have to fork out another £15m for underwriting the project, according to campaigners.
Mayor Boris Johnson unveils a life-size mock-up of the new bus for London inspired by the old Routemaster.
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Mayor Boris Johnson unveils a life-size mock-up of the new bus inspired by the old Routemaster. Photograph: Linda Nylind/The Guardian

New Routemaster £321.6m
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This was another costly Heatherwick-Johnson co-production. Transport for London paid £282.6m for a fleet of 800 of the hop-on, hop-off buses that were billed by Johnson as an environmentally friendly version of the old Routemaster. This was considerably more per bus than the mayor originally suggested. The vehicles were first dubbed “Boris buses” but then “saunas on wheels” after temperatures of 38C were recorded on board. New windows had to be put in at an extra cost of £2m. According to Martin Hoscik, editor of MayorWatch, the new Routemasters “have no market outside London”. Johnson’s office says: “The new Routemasters came out of existing TfL bus budgets and are already classics of UK manufacture and design. They are made in Ballymena and are to be contrasted with Ken Livingstone’s cyclist-menacing bendy buses that were made in Germany.”
Boris Johnson takes one of the first rides in Emirates Skyline in June 2012.
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Boris Johnson takes one of the first rides in Emirates Skyline in June 2012. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/AFP/Getty Images

Emirates Air Line £24m

The cable car across the Thames from the Greenwich Peninsula to the Royal Docks turned out to be much more expensive than Johnson promised. Emirates airline did stump up £36m towards the cost of the project which, at £60m, is the world’s most expensive urban cable car. But it left TfL to mask up the £24m difference for what critics said amounts to little more than advertising gimmick for the airline. Sky-high ticket prices of £7 for a return, more than double the equivalent bus fare, means the project does now pay for itself. . Johnson’s office is unrepentant. “The cable car was mostly funded by sponsorship and has helped considerably to regenerate the docks,” it said.
Rosenbauer Wasserwerfer 9000 (WaWe 9).
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Rosenbauer Wasserwerfer 9000 (WaWe 9). Photograph: German federal police/Gov.uk

Water cannon £323,000

Johnson’s decision to buy three Wasserweffer 9000 water cannon in 2014 was made to address police concerns about dealing with any repeat of the 2011 riots . But it turned out to be a rash one, as he had not cleared it with the then home secretary, Theresa May. In the face of public opposition she outlawed the use of water cannon, leaving London with three expensive but useless items of police hardware. Last year the mayor, Sadiq Khan, revealed that Johnson had spent £323,000 to buy, maintain and modify the vehicles. The cannon have still not been sold.
London Cycle Hire scheme court caseFile photo dated 28/5/2010 of Mayor of London Boris Johnson stands among Barclays Cycle Hire bikes. The High Court will rule today on a bid to bring a legal challenge over Johnson’s flagship cycle hire scheme.
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Boris Johnson stands among some hire bikes. Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA

Hire bikes £225m

The term Boris bikes was one of the Oxford dictionary’s words of the year when the scheme was launched in 2010, despite initial sponsorship by Barclays and later Santander. Johnson’s office says: “The hire bikes are a triumph for the city. Their cost has been greatly reduced by sponsorship from Santander.”

However, they were meant to come in at no cost to the public but by last year had cost taxpayers a cumulative £225m.

There were also concerns about the lack of transparency around the initial sponsorship deal, which was kept secret for three years before it emerged that Barclays was able to claw back £2m it put in. A new sponsorship deal with Santander covers only part of the costs, leaving TFL with an £11m annual bill, according to a figures unearthed by the Taxpayers Alliance in 2013. An equivalent scheme in Paris makes £12m a year for the city.
Foster + Partners’ artist impression of the Thames Hub.
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Foster + Partners’ artist impression of the Thames Hub. Photograph: Foster and Partners/PA

Estuary airport £5.2m

Transport for London set aside £5.2m on a feasibility schemes for an airport in the Thames estuary that few others thought feasible as ministers examined how to expand airport capacity in London. Johnson backed a glossy vision by the architects Foster + Partners for a four-runway airport island in a key conservation area for birds but it was never a realistic prospect in a battle won by Heathrow over Gatwick.
Boris Johnson walks past seats after an official switching on ceremony of the floodlights at the London 2012 Olympic stadium in 2010.
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Boris Johnson walks past seats after an official switching on ceremony of the floodlights at the London 2012 Olympic stadium in 2010. Photograph: Getty Images

Olympic stadium conversion £305.5m

Johnson may have inherited the Olympic stadium but its subsequent conversion to a football stadium happened on his watch. After he was elected mayor for the first time in 2008, he ditched plans to reduce the capacity of the stadium to 25,000 seats. Instead he began to talk up the idea of getting a Premier League football club involved. The costs were originally estimated to be around £154m with a sizeable contribution coming from the club. But the costs soared as the contribution from the selected club, West Ham, dwindled. It agreed to pay just £15m plus £2.5m in rent. The bulk of the remaining £323m had to be paid by the taxpayer. Johnson’s office said: “It was entirely the decision of Labour to build a stadium that needed to be retrofitted. Is the Guardian seriously suggesting that we should have left it as it was?”
Boris Johnson with Olympic gold medalist Nick Skelton in front of the Olympic stadium and ArcelorMittal Orbit tower.
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Boris Johnson with Olympic gold medalist Nick Skelton in front of the Olympic stadium and ArcelorMittal Orbit tower. Photograph: Matt Alexander/PA

ArcelorMittal Orbit £6.1m

This was conceived after Johnson bumped into the steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal at a cloakroom at the World Economic Forum at Davos. The original Anish Kapoor tower was commissioned at a £3.1m cost to the tax payer and, in Johnson’s words, to provide “something extra ... curiosity and wonder” to the Olympic park. But visitors were not as wowed as he hoped. In 2014-15 fewer than expected visitors meant the tower lost £520,000. According to Kapoor, Johnson then “foisted on” the idea of adding a £3m helter-skelter slide by the Belgium artist Carsten Holler. The Guardian’s architecture critic Oliver Wainwright wrote: “Of all of Johnson’s follies it has been the most useless totem pole of mayoral hubris.” It has just been voted one of the most popular pieces of public art in Britain, Johnson’s office pointed out.

Total: £939.7m

and you want to trust this brickie to look after the country- can't build a bridge on the Thames, but to trust him to build one to Ireland. Really?

I would say that Dominic Grieve was "in the trade" for quite a long time. He had this to say about Johnson and Corbyn:

"I think Jeremy Corbyn’s policies are ghastly and therefore would be massively damaging, but I have to say, do I find Jeremy Corbyn as a private individual somebody who is sincere in beliefs that I happen to disagree with? Yes I do.

Whereas I have to say that I find Boris Johnson is an individual who I regard as wholly insincere and indeed willing to say almost anything to anybody if he thinks it’s going to be to his advantage at any given moment."

He added:
"I’ve never experienced a politician in modern British history who is so elastic with truth and also willing to resort to telling whopping lies against other people if he thinks it suits him and that really worries me as a Conservative…
The leader of the Conservative Party and the prime minister is now somebody who, in my judgement, has no integrity at all."

www.indy100.com/article/boris-johnson-jeremy-corbyn-dominic-grieve-tory-general-election-9202531

sarahellen another one with problems spelling names?

You are like terriers over a bone. I’ve just agreed I wouldn’t employ him (obviously).

That said, I stick by what I said. If I like the builder and his portfolio of work looks good, I’d employ him for his work

His affairs of the heart would not influence me in the least. Nor his political views (as a brickie).