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Breaking Media, Politicians & Celebrities Since 1995Tabloid news for broadsheet readers |
Boris Johnson in the media
THE London Evening Standard’s Paul Waugh asks Kate Hoey, the former Labour sports minister and still Labour member of parliament for Vauxhall, now operating as Boris Johnson’s Commissioner for Sport, how she voted in the London mayoral elections.
Boris or Ken?
Her reply:
“Er…when was the election…I can’t remember!”
KATE Hoey writes:
Dear Member of Vauxhall Labour Party,
The Members of this Party are its lifeblood and so I wanted you to be the first to know that I have now agreed to be the Mayor of London’s Commissioner for Sport.
I have been asked to develop the London legacy plan for sport arising from the unique opportunity that the 2012 Olympics gives us, and to help increase grass roots sport participation and access to sporting opportunities across London.
Read the rest of it here…
BORIS Johnson On Islam:
To any non-Muslim reader of the Koran, Islamophobia - fear of Islam - seems a natural reaction, and, indeed, exactly what that text is intended to provoke. Judged purely on its scripture - to say nothing of what is preached in the mosques - it is the most viciously sectarian of all religions in its heartlessness towards unbelievers. As the killer of Theo Van Gogh told his victim’s mother this week in a Dutch courtroom, he could not care for her, could not sympathise, because she was not a Muslim.
The trouble with this disgusting arrogance and condescension is that it is widely supported in Koranic texts, and we look in vain for the enlightened Islamic teachers and preachers who will begin the process of reform. What is going on in these mosques and madrasas? When is someone going to get 18th century on Islam’s mediaeval ass?
Spotter: Mary Jackson
“BORIS breaks the law,” announces the Mirror on its front page.
Has Boris Johnson, London mayor of mere days been caught out so soon?
Is he drinking a tincture of gin and tonic on the Tube, thus flouting his first initiative?
Nothing of it. Boris was on a bicycle. And the Mirror says that on a trip about the capital he jumped 6 red lights, mounted the pavement and failed to stop at zebra crossing.
This might say more about cyclists, who all behave in such a fashion, more than its reveals about Johnson. Indeed had Johnson been pictured not behaving so his credentials as a bona fide cyclist might have taken a hit from which they would never recover.
But it is all thin edge of the wedge.
BORIS Johnson is the new mayor of London, Ken Livingstone is free to spend more time with his newts, sorry, his children, and the Independent’s Johan Hari is making some snese of it all.
“At last – a solution to my Boris blues! I have just forced myself to read the detailed election stats from last Thursday. It seems the media cliché is true: it’s the angry, whiter outer suburbs that elected Boris, out of rage with the congestion charge and council tax. Boris will forever be the mayor of Zones Four to Six, the chief executive of Watford and Bromley and Amersham”.
Watford and Amersham are not in zones 1-6. Residents of those locales were afforded no vote in the election. And you can’t have a democratically elected leader who you didn’t vote for, at least not outside the US and Zimbabwe.
SAYS Kevin Maguire in the Mirror: “Cocky David Cameron has privately conceded that he’s not as popular as he’d like us to think.”
Says the Mirror’s deputy political editor, Jason Beattie one page on:
“Gordon Brown was yesterday warned by Cabinet colleagues his core voters were being won over by David Cameron.
“One senior minister said former Labour supporters were not just ‘flirting’ with the Tory leader but climbing into bed with him.”
SAYS the sire Arabella Weir, on Boris Johnson in The Guardian’s desperate chrestomathy of leftyluvviedom for Ken:
How do we trust a guy who says he knows about London, when he’s just taken three of his kids out of state school and put them into private schools?
Question asked, question answered…
Boris Johnson’s first few days as mayor of London...
IN Islington, no-one can hear you scream:
The council staff operating the ballot were inexperienced (that is putting it politely). A voter ahead of me in the queue was querying what details they were writing where and was threatening to kick up a fuss. I am going to put my snob hat on and suggest that he was voting for one of the fringe parties… When I got to the front, the person taking down voter details didn’t know what he was supposed to be doing. The lady in front in the queue didn’t have a polling card, but the official didn’t know that she didn’t need one. He needed to be assisted by the supervisor. I handed my polling card over and he still wanted to know my name and address - was that supposed to prevent voting fraud?
It is Islington, right - by Clerkenwell Green?
AN up and at ‘em wake up call from the new improved Daily Sport: “DON’T VOTE! GET LAID!”
For those of you not up with Americanisms, those of you who like your Sport to focus on association football and not soccer, “laid” is explained as: “Don’t bother voting! Get our leg over instead!”
Today Britons go to the polls and select which retired dentists, overgrown schoolboys and patty canvassers they want to sit on the 4,023 council seats up for grabs. Or not.
The Sun’s George Pasco-Watson prefers voting to sex and thinks Gordon Brown “faces a beating”, a “hammering”. This is “Judgement Day”. (Picture: Beau Bo D’Or Website)
The Mirror’s Bob Roberts hears Sunder Katwala, general secretary of the Fabian Society, a “key Labour thinktank”, accuse Brown of “neurotic under-confidence”.
KATE Hoey will join Boris Johnson’s administration as a non-executive Director…
KEN Livingstone or Boris Johnson? Newt or clown? Mirror or Sun.
The Sun’s Trevor Kavanagh says a vote for Tory mayoral candidate Boris will show Gordon Brown that the electorate have had enough of him and his party.
Over in the Mirror, Alastair Campbell says Boris (4-6 favourite) has a “silly name” and went to Eton. There’s a picture of Boris playing a charity game of football. “CHEAT,” says Campbell.
Boris, says Campbell, once described “blacks as ‘piccaninnies’ with ‘watermelon smiles’”. Boris apologised
Now word, though on “brave” Ken (11-8) who embraced Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, the chap who condones suicide bombings and holds anti-Semitic and homophobic views.
Make your vote count…
THE contest to be Mayor of London is about so much more than picking a miserabilist or a clown. It’s:
The bitter battle to be London Mayor is not only a matter for the capital.
It could determine the course of politics across Britain for the next two years.
A win for Labour’s Ken Livingstone will be a devastating blow for Tory leader David Cameron.
JANET Street-Porter is in conversation with Boris Johnson. The words feature in Marie Claire magazine, the organ of heart-wrenching stories:
JSP: Are you prepared for what’s going to be slung at you as this election campaign gets under way? Your past is going to be raked over. What about drugs? In an interview, you said, ‘I’ve snorted coke, but I sneezed.’
BJ: I thoroughly disagree with drugs, and…
You smoked dope before you went to university.
That’s true, but the stuff you and I may have smoked is not the same as what the kids are having now. I think skunk and this stuff is very, very dangerous.
Well, you’re a father and you’ve got four children.
I don’t want my kids having drugs.
…You said in interviews that you’ve snorted coke.Well, that was when I was 19. It all goes to show that, sometimes, it’s better not to say anything.
Brilliant stuff. Always good if a journalist can encourage their subject not to speak…
“Oysters for everyone!” says Boris. “I promise to oysterize all of south London!”
SAYS Trixy: “Andrew Gilligan pointed out in the Evening Standard yesterday that Ken Livingstone cannot seem to open his mouth without lying about something:
Both the Mayor, Ken Livingstone, and his main rival, Boris Johnson, recently made separate appearances on the BBC’s Vanessa Feltz show.
Each answered questions from callers and from Ms Feltz for the same length of time. Allowing for the questions, news and travel bulletins and station promos, Mr Livingstone spoke for approximately 35 minutes. In that time, he said 36 things that were untrue or misleading, an average of one every 58 seconds.
What has really annoyed me is that if the evening standard can work out that they are saying untrue things, then why did Vanessa Feltz let them go unchallenged for 30 minutes?
Over the same length of time Mr Johnson said 11 things that were untrue or misleading, an average of one every three minutes 10 seconds.”
Who is the bigger liar?
