Mayor is always changing direction

By Jon Massey on May 6, 2009 2:59 PM |

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By John Biggs

Boris has been talking about electric cars. They are the future and the one he drove can do 160mph, silently.

At least they go in one direction - unlike his position on the challenges facing London's economy.

On the one hand we are being treated to a series of statements that seem to support the same policies as the Government - investment in training, in housing, in construction projects funded by more borrowing - and on the other hand we get newspaper columns condemning the very same policies when practised by the Government. A "cake and eat it" policy.

The electric car is a zero emission car promoted by a Mayor who has just relaxed emission standards from vehicles in London.

The same Mayor who wants to stop the expansion of Heathrow Airport but then build an even bigger one in the Thames Estuary. Or who supports pedestrian safety but wants to have less "green time" on pedestrian crossings. Perhaps he really has invented one of those cakes you can eat, and then still find there on the plate? They tend to get found out.

The budget has come and gone and, following the G20, a plan has been agreed for the economy. We're now told not that the worst is over, but that it is getting worse more slowly. So that's good news, of a sort.

Are we on the Titanic, silently cruising but doomed, or are we gliding towards a soft bump and an effortless rise thereafter? What is needed is leadership to make it the happier ending. World leaders offered us some at the G20.