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Originally Posted by Stephen
It has nothing at all to do with who is currently Mayor of London.
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Yes it has, very much so.
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https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/04/...nyone-noticed/
Sadiq Khan is a lousy London Mayor. Why hasn’t anyone noticed?
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Outside the realm of the press release and the TV interview, Khan is underachieving badly
According to people at City Hall, Sadiq Khan writes some of his own press releases. I can believe it: they’ve certainly become a lot more excitable since he took over. I like to imagine the Mayor of London, late at night, combing the thesaurus for fresh superlatives to bugle his ‘unprecedented programme of far-reaching improvements’ for the taxi trade (allowing black cabs in more bus lanes) or his ‘bold package of measures’ to revive street markets (creating a London Markets Board and an interactive map). One release even panted that Khan had ‘personally scrutinised’ the New Year’s Eve fireworks display ‘to make the acclaimed event the most exciting yet’.
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The same pattern applies in most other mayoral policy areas: big promises, followed by things going inexorably backwards. Crime is up by 12 per cent since he took office, with a far bigger rise in murders. February and March were the first months in history when London homicides exceeded New York’s. On transport, Khan claimed that he could ‘both freeze fares and invest record amounts modernising London’s transport infrastructure’. Fares have, in fact, only been frozen for some travellers. But the impact (together with a cut in government grant) has still left Transport for London so short of money that it can no longer pay the interest on its debts.
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