Blackwall tunnel

I was going to blog about the closure of the Blackwall tunnel at some point today. I have just got around to it.

The initial news was that extensive fire damage meant that the tunnel was expected to be closed until Wednesday. It seems that Boris wasn't too keen on South East London being gridlocked for three days and put considerable pressure on TFL to get the work done more quickly. Top marks Boris.

It also seems that TFL pulled out all the stops to get the work done, and will be in a position to reopen the tunnel at about 7PM this evening. Top marks TFL.

I have been quite a critique of TFL but, credit where credit's due, they have responded well to the needs on thousands of my constituents and got the job done.

Politicising the police

There as been a lot of ill informed comment about Chris Grayling's proposals to have elected heads of policing.

Let's just look at the situation as it currently stands. If crime in your area increased against a national decline or the police were ordered to turn a blind eye to public drug taking, who would you hold to account and how?

Let's look at a specific example. If crime in London was to soar who would lose their job in 2012, Boris Johnson or Sir Paul Stephenson?

The creation of police authorities was a step in the right direction but it is a flawed model. The MPA sets the budget, owns the properties and employs the non-uniformed police staff. It is part of the delivery machine. It is also the scrutiny body. I can't see how it can properly scrutinise a process that it is part of.

Operational decisions will still be made by the police but budgets and priorities will be set by someone accountable to the people being policed rather than police authorities.

Goodbye to Des Browne

Regular readers will know that I have never had a particularly high regard for Des Browne in his capacity of Defence Secretary.

I have little doubt that he is a good man, probably filled wit the best of intentions, but hopeless at Defence.

The news that he plans to stand down at the next election triggers little emotion, I have to confess. I wish him well in the future and have written this haiku.

Browne, not a bad man

Geoff Hoon set the bar so low

Yet Browne slid under

Feel free to add your own.

Boris in Welling shops

Earlier this week Boris came to open a new supermarket in Welling, in my constituency.

Here's the video of the even.

My City Hall podcast

My latest podcast has gone live over at Tory Radio, you can listen to it here.

This week I talk about Mayors Question Time where night flights and the Olympic Route Network and the great news about the roll out of Oyster cards.

Oysters on the menu

Boris has delivered on another of his pre-election promises. From the start of next year Oyster cards will be accepted on overground trains and Thames river services.

At last outer London commuters can take advantage of the lower fairs that are available to Oyster users. Livingstone's policy of picking fights with the rail operators made for good headlines but didn't deliver the Oyster improvements that Londoners needed.

Even the hyper critical Chair of the Assembly's Transport Committee (Lib Dem, Caroline Pidgeon) seems impressed. “After repeated delays it is welcome that Oyster pay-as-you-go is finally being extended to all cover all National Rail services in London.” she said.

Total Politics- Theatre Review

A little while ago I promised you the review of Kwame Kwei-Armah new play "Seize the Day". Well here it is. It is in this month's edition of Total Politics (available online) and as the Americans would say "there is a whole bunch of other great stuff in there too".

"Would you like to see Kwame Kwei-Armah's new play Seize the Day?" asked Emily, the nice young lady from Total Politics. "It's about a middle class black guy having a crack at becoming Mayor of London," she said. How could I resist?

The premise was not all that farfetched: long-standing players in the race relations world bemoaning the relative lack of progression made by black politicians. Seeing the London mayoralty as an opportunity to shortcut the system and create an Obama moment, they look to get someone with a bit of spark and an existing public profile, surround him with political insiders, run him as an independent, throw big money at the campaign and hey presto - a black Mayor of London.

So much for the manifesto; what about the delivery? There were times when I worried that the script was being played out by a cast of caricatures. Through much of the first act all but the leads seemed a little exaggerated, not quite grotesques but not quite right either.

All the characters you would expect to see were there but, slightly disappointingly, none that generated surprise. There was Jeremy Charles, reality TV celebrity, charismatic and dynamic, thrust to the fore but torn between his ambition and his conscience. He is being pushed, polished and prepared for greatness by manipulative power players dripping flattery into his ear.

To offset this we have Lavelle, a knife-carrying gang kid, there to provide raw street wisdom; the narrative equivalent of a hooker with the heart of gold. And, ultimately, we had Jeremy's slim white wife and Lavelle's curvy, black, earth-mother to provide a metaphorical and visible spectrum against which we could measure the authenticity of Jeremy's blackness or lack thereof.

The dialogue and acting saved these characters; their words, opinions and even their gestures were well-observed and sharp. Peppered with in-jokes about the cynicism of politics in general and race politics in particular, Kwame clearly did plenty of homework before writing and directing this play and was unafraid of stepping on a few toes.

People in the Equality and Human Rights Commission and the campaigning group Operation Black Vote may see glimpses of themselves in the kingmakers and spin doctors who orbit Jeremy; there are plenty of not-so-tangential references to them. They may not like what they see. Diane Abbott came out of it well, mentioned enough times that she might feel aggrieved not to have got a credit on the cast list.

If the first act was played a little too much for laughs, the second was much more mature and thoughtprovoking, providing some lemon to cut the honeyed first half. This is where the big questions were asked. In order to win in London, would a black candidate need to black up or become colourless? Could they get in with only the ethnic vote or without it? Would the win be for the individual or for all black Londoners?

If I told you whether or not these questions are answered, I would probably spoil the ending. But this play is at least as much about what it means to be comfortable, middle class and black as it is about politics.

Seize the Day was easy to watch and well observed; I didn't leave the theatre disappointed.

And that's how the French repay them!

Some might say that Ireland getting done over by the French in the World Cup qualifier is galactic karma for their U-turn over the Lisbon treaty referendum.

You might think that, I couldn't possibly comment.

Labour video talking rubbish

Watch this video:

Then read this blog.

Even when cherry picking the best bits from history the Labour party can't tell the truth.

My weekly City Hall podcast

In this week's podcast I talk about underhand goings on at People's Question Time, dangerous dogs, the Evening Standard's 1,000 most influential Londoners and the Lord Mayor of London's parade.

You can download it here or listen to it at ToryRadio.com is now live.

Youth unemployment

To hear that 1 in 5 young people are currently out of work is horrific. These are the worst figures since records began and is a poor indictment of Blair and Brown's time in office.

I have been keeping an eye on youth employment figures and it has become clear that the government's actions in this area have been driven more by spin and PR than by any real desire to reduce youth unemployment.

The Future Jobs Fund is a classic example of policy by headlines. It allocated £1billion to buy 6 months of employment for 100,000 long term unemployed young people. Sounds great, until you look beyond the headlines.

The fund made no provision to address the underlying cause of youth unemployment. The jobs had to be "new" positions, meaning that companies created artificial and unsustainable posts just to qualify for the funding. And once the money from the government runs out the jobs disappear.

It was £1billion spent to create an artificial dip in youth unemployment figures ahead of a General Election. Cynical and ineffective, typically New Labour.

There are three broad measures which will bring down youth unemployment. Firstly ensure that there is a buoyant employment market, particularly in the small business sector. Small businesses employ the vast bulk of young people and have been some of the worst hit by this recession.

Secondly ensure that the education and skills training is up to the standard that will enable our young people to take advantage of the economic upturn, when it comes. Creating the demand for employees will be of no use if young people are not qualified to take up the posts.

Finally make it less costly and bureaucratic for companies to employ people. It is too often the case that the marginal cost of employing staff deters small businesses from growing. They prefer to stay within their comfort zones and not to take the financial risk. Employers NI contributions should be reduced (it is basically a tax on employing people) and a simple process made available to navigate the myriad of rules that relate employing people. Better still the rules should be simplified.

The current government have done nothing to address these basic issues and I have little doubt that it will take a change of government to make any real improvement.

I know you're listening!

Evening Standard 1000 most influential Londoners

I wasn't going to blog about this because I thought that it would appear rather narcissistic, but what the hell, I've got a blog and that's pretty narcissistic anyway!

I have been included in the Evening Standard's list of the 1,000 most influential people in London. Luckily the list isn't fully numerical because if it were I have little doubt at which end I would find myself. Still it was nice to be invited to the candle lit soirée that ES put on and mingle with a lot of people that I mingle with at work. But with champagne.

Although I didn't stay long (I was a guest at the National Business Awards later that evening) and didn't mix as widely as I would have liked, I did bump into a few new faces who turned out to be very interesting particularly Simon Fletcher, Livingstone's former Chief of Staff, and Shami Chakrabarti.

I can't pretend I'm not chuffed to be on the list and I'm more than happy with the write up that I got:

James Cleverly - Youth ambassador
Ambitious and bright, the keen triathlete manages to bridge the gap between parties, the old school Tory assembly members and those running City Hall. Tipped for a future front bench role in Parliament.

But you know what they say, "don't believe everything you read in the press".

Lee Jasper, rabble rouser?

On Monday of this week I attended the People's Question Time in Brixton, you can read my twitter updates here.

PQTs are usually energetic and robust but Monday's event was notable by how much shouting and heckling there was from the audience. I was particularly surprised and dissapointed when someone threw something at the stage, nearly hitting Val Shawcross AM who was hosting the event.

While some people seemed happy to write this off as the natural exuberance of a Brixton crowd, I felt something wasn't right. It turns out that at the centre of the most aggressive and noisy part of the crowd was one Lee Jasper. I have no idea whether Ken Livingstone's former right hand man was instigating the rude and aggressive behaviour or just drawn towards it, but he certainly wasn't helping to calm it down.

It seems that some people just can't move on from the politics of the playground.

My weekly catch up

I've started a weekly podcast for Tory Radio about City Hall and London politics. You can listen to it either by visiting Tory Radio or by downloading it directly here.

This week I talk about the unavailing of the Keith Park statue in Trafalgar Square, John & Edward in Barnet and the City Hall service of remembrance.

We will remember them

This morning I will be laying wreaths at the war memorial and at Canadian Corner, a Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery in Orpington. This afternoon I will be a a service of remembrance in Welling.

Heron wing opening at Feltham YOI

Today has been a very exciting day for me. I have spent a great deal of time over the last year working on a range of projects to reduce the drivers towards youth crime, the details of these plans can be read here.

One of the most complicated, ambitious and exciting of these plans was called Project Daedalus, this is our plan to introduce a new regime for young offenders' institutions and reduce the levels of youth re-offending.

I described this plan as complicated because its delivery involves a range of organisations, different levels of government and significant up front expenditure. I have worked closely with the Met Police, the Prison Service, Youth Justice Board, National Offender Management Service, Probation Service, local councils, London Development Agency and a number of voluntary sector organisations to put the plan in place. This morning we launched the plan.

Kit Malthouse, Pam Chesters and I joined Boris to officially open Heron Wing, the pilot for our new regime. Oh Jack Straw was there too.

Referendum on the Lisbon treaty

Before anyone "goes off on one" over the position we now find ourselves in, there are a few points I think we should consider.

We are not the bad guys here!

While it is very flattering for the Conservatives to be talked about as if we are already in government, we're not. Gordon Brown is the Prime Minister at the moment and Labour are in government. They are the ones who made a promise of a referendum and could have delivered on that promise. They didn't.

It is no longer possible to have a referendum on the ratification of the Lisbon treaty.

The treaty has already been ratified, while I don't like that fact at all, it is the truth. If we were to have a referendum on Lisbon what would the question be? We can't ask if the UK should ratify the treaty in the future tense, and if we ask "should the UK have ratified the treaty?" what would we do with the answer?

As Conservatives we should not base our future actions on our opponents' version of history.

The left are trying to paint David Cameron as going back on a "cast iron pledge" to hold a referendum whatever happened. Only he never said that. As you can see from this contemporary report David Cameron has broken no promise at all:

He said a referendum could take place "absolutely no problem at all" while it was still being discussed in Europe. But he admitted it was more difficult if there was no general election until 2010 and if all member states had ratified it without holding a referendum.

We are, both as a country and as a party, in a crappy position, not of our making. Gordon Brown has stitched us all up and David Cameron is going to have to come up with a plan of action. I think it is worth waiting and listening to what he has got to say before helping the left damage our election chances.

Seize the day

I've just got back from watching Kwame Kwei-Armah's new play at the Tricycle theatre. Seize The Day is about a black TV celebrity's attempts to become mayor of London.

I was there to review the play for the guys at Total Politics, I don't want to steal my own thunder so I'll say no more tonight, but I will link the review as soon as it's up.