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Boris and Ken

Writing entirely in my personal capacity (ie without any Government, charitable or business hat on), I am bound to say that nothing I have heard over the last few weeks has in any way diminished my sense of horror at the prospect of Boris as Mayor of London. He may well be a cyclist, an enthusiast for tree-planting, and indeed the son of Stanley Johnson (who is a serious environmentalist), but pro-Boris ‘greenies’ really should wake up and smell the elitist, growthist, consumerist, hedonist, gas-guzzling, contrarian brand of ‘green’ that Boris represents.

Of course Ken hasn’t got it all right (in fact I find it hard to understand how he’s let Boris even begin to threaten him on Thursday), his political instincts are sometimes totally off the wall, and he can be arrogant and idiotically offensive. But having spent a lifetime, literally, observing politicians getting to grips with sustainable development, my headline conclusion is that Ken is one of the few I’ve seen with some real vision as to the way in which sustainable development can transform people’s lives in practice, and some real courage in taking on vested interests and doing the difficult things that most politicians wouldn’t touch.

In politics, as in everything else, you have got to look beyond the messy minutiae of just keeping things trucking along, to some sense of a higher purpose. And in our world of sustainable development, Ken’s got that, Boris hasn’t. End of story.

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Posted by JP on April 29, 2008 9:21 AM |

Comments (1)

Thank you for articulating precisely what is most worrying about BJ.

Posted by Denise Young | May 9, 2008 10:12 AM

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