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Face it, Ken had simply outstayed his welcome
• GEORGE Durack and Annette Thomas think Boris Johnson will be a disaster for Londoners, but on practically every point they go on to make they have misrepresented the facts (Mayor Boris sure to be an unmitigated disaster, May 9).
Boris has never said he will take away the Freedom Pass, and the proposed 24-hour extension on its use would be of very little benefit to the over-60s.
The congestion charge no longer makes a huge difference to the time travelling around London. Traffic congestion is now back up to pre-congestion charge levels, due largely to the machinations of Ken Livingstone’s transport arm, Transport for London, in installing 2,000 more traffic lights, most of which make traffic wait for long periods on red, and in putting hundreds more buses on the roads, clogging up road space, with many of them virtually empty of passengers.
They say that affordable housing will be dumped in favour of handing out money to private developers, but Mr Livingstone is himself guilty of this, not keeping to his 50 per cent target and cosying up to multi-millionaire property tycoons who want to ruin the London skyline with their gargantuan skyscrapers.
Quite apart from dumping affordable housing, Boris is committed to such projects as releasing hundreds of acres of unused land and derelict properties owned by Transport for London for this purpose.
Londoners gave Ken the thumbs down this time not because of what he did or did not achieve, not because of the unpopularity of Labour, but essentially because of the sort of person he is – devious and untrustworthy.
He managed to alienate at least half of London’s population with his ways, and Londoners felt rightly that after eight years he had outstayed his welcome.
DANNY MICHAELSON
La Fromagerie
Highbury Park, N5
• THE election held on May 1 shows a dramatic shift in the political scene in Islington. Putting aside the Ken v Boris show, the way in which Islington voted in the London Assembly elections clearly shows that the Conservatives outpolled the Lib Dems in all of the Islington wards in the party vote and most of the wards in the candidate vote in Islington South. Whichever way you slice and dice the results, more people voted Conservative than Liberal in the whole of Islington.
The results are testament to the hard work the Conservative Party has been putting into Islington, on the ground and mostly unreported.
Over the next two years the party will be continuing to work hard, presenting a fresh alternative to the Labour government and the Lib Dem council.
The days of the Lib Dem administration at the Town Hall are coming to an end and the choice at the next elections, both at a local and national level, will be between Labour and Conservatives.
RICHARD BUNTING
Deputy chairman, Islington Conservatives
Halliford Street, N1
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