Boris Johnson......the next PM?

I remember now that he appeared on the family tracing programme Who Do You Think You Are?
 
He found out that he is a direct descendant of George II and James I (VI of Scotland) but I don't think that he will be pursuing his claim to the throne!
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Johnson

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The weather prophets should be chucked in the deep end
Homeowners lumbered with useless swimming pools know precisely who they should blame

Outdoor swimming pools in Britain: something of a gamble Photo: Myimagefiles / Alamy



By Boris Johnson
9:13PM BST 23 Jun 2013

232 Comments

The great thing about flying into London is that you get bags of time to see the countryside below. The congestion at Heathrow is so bad that many passengers circle above the Home Counties for half an hour, allowing themselves to be penetrated by the splendours of Surrey while their planes spew thousands of tons of CO₂ into the upper air.
You can observe the way we live in the peri-urban world: the golf courses, the landfill sites, the pleasant whorls of detached houses; and over time the embourgeoisement of the British people has added an amenity that the Romans first introduced to this island. Look down on southern England, and you see the little winking ultramarine oblongs of the swimming pools – perhaps the greatest triumph of hope over experience in the history of English domestic architecture.
In Roman times, a swimming pool was a sign of taste, style and affluence, and in some of the biggest Romano-British villas you can see where Roman nobs frolicked and enjoyed the pleasures of water and nakedness. These days it would be fair to say that a swimming pool is a luxury – but not an unheard-of luxury. In the past 10 years there have been plenty of middle-class punters who have decided that they want a touch of Beverly Hills about their homes – and I know why they did it. They thought it would be nice for the kids and the grandchildren. They thought it might conceivably add to the value of their homes. In their secret hearts they hoped, forgivably, that it might provoke the envy of their neighbours.
But then there was an extra spur – the new and unanswerable imperative to find a way of keeping wet and cool. For more than 20 years now, we have been told that this country was going to get hotter and hotter and hotter, and that global warming was going to change our climate in a fundamental way. Do you remember that? We were told that Britain was going to have short, wet winters and long, roasting summers. It was going to be like 1976 all over again, with streakers at Lord’s and your Mr Whippy melting before you could even lick it, and Hyde Park scorched into a mini Kalahari.
They said we were never going to have snow again, and that we should prepare for southern England to turn gradually into a Mediterranean world. There were going to be olive groves in the Weald of Kent, and the whole place was going to be so generally broiling in summer that no one would be able to move between noon and 4pm, after which people would come out to play boules and sip pastis, to the whine of a mandolin, in the dusty square that had once been a village green.
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That’s what they said: the BBC, and all the respectable meteorologists – and I reckon there were tens of thousands of people who took these prophecies entirely seriously. Omigod, they said to themselves, we are all going to fry. The only answer was to build a source of permanent refreshment – and so they did. They saved up, and they remortgaged, and they got in the diggers. They moved huge cuboids of earth and used them to create curious berms at the bottom of the garden, and then they lined these trenches with tiles (jolly expensive) or with a kind of blue plastic sheeting (virtually indistinguishable and much cheaper) and then they filled these holes with thousands of gallons of water that circulated endlessly by an unintelligible process known only to the people who had installed it but who seemed unfortunately to have gone bust.
They fought gallantly but in vain against the green slime, and to understand the balance of chemicals that the pool required; and they watched baffled as it oscillated – now choking with vegetation, now a glorified sheep dip of eye-stinging acid. Year after year they summoned up their courage, choked back their nausea and fished out the dead mice and the pallid corpses of worms bleached white by the chlorine. They sieved for leaves; they flipped out bugs with their hands; and all the while they were comforted with the thought that it was a sound investment.
They imagined the poolside parties they would have when the warming really kicked in: the barbecues; the bikinis; the pina coladas. They saw themselves on their lilos talking to their brokers on their mobile phones or getting up early on a glorious summer day and diving in unclothed when no one else was around. They thought they were doing the sensible thing and getting ready for a Californian lifestyle – and they were fools! Fools who believed that the global warming soothsayers really meant what they said or that they had a clue what the weather would be in the next 10 years.
I hope I don’t need to tell you that we have not experienced a Mediterranean climate – not since they started to tell us to expect it. On the contrary, we have had some pretty long and miserable winters – including the last one, in which I saw snow settle in London on four separate occasions – and our summer is at risk of becoming a bit of a farce. As I write these words, I am looking out yet again at lowering grey clouds, in what should be the peachiest time of year – and now these so-called weather forecasters and climate change buffs have the unbelievable effrontery to announce that they got it all wrong. They now think that we won’t have 10 years of blistering summer heat; on the contrary, it is apparently going to be 10 years of cold and wet.
It is outrageous. Think of all those honest hard-working folk who have sunk their resources into a pool, only to find they use it only a couple of times a summer, and even then the wind-chill is so bad that the swimmers get goosebumps as soon as they emerge. I am generally against the compensation culture, but in my mind’s eye I see a class action: aggrieved English pool-owners against the global warming prophets and the erroneous meteorologists who have, frankly, been taking the piscine.

=================================

and you see the little winking ultramarine oblongs of the swimming pools – perhaps the greatest triumph of hope over experience in the history of English domestic architecture. "    You have to give Boris credit for his writing skills, this is hilarious.

Miliband is taking his cue from loser Kinnock, not winner Blair
The Labour leader is doomed to fail because he offers nothing that raises a nation’s hopes, writes Boris Johnson

Ed Miliband Photo: Rex Features
By Boris Johnson
8:31PM BST 30 Jun 2013

Beep beep! Red alert! I bet there was a flurry in Labour HQ yesterday, as the news broke about Ed. I can imagine them gathering round the computer and fretfully slurping their skinny lattes as they stared at the data.

Yes, folks, it looks as though the public are finally starting to rumble the human panda — a man who genuinely seemed to think he could become prime minister by sitting virtually motionless and chewing bamboo shoots while espousing the most Left-wing agenda Labour has seen since the death of John Smith.

For the first time since the 2010 election, the Labour lead has sunk to five points. The Tories are ahead not just among the over-60s but — and this is surely a new thing — we seem to be more popular among 18- to 24-year-olds as well. If Labour can’t get their message across to a generation that faces such challenges — rising rents, tuition fees, you name it — then what is the point of the Labour Party?

In the words of Peter Kellner, the august (and Labour-supporting) president of YouGov: “Labour has entered the danger zone.” He says that on this showing Labour is looking, for the first time, at a hung parliament rather than outright victory — and in the Tory camp the confidence is growing. Yes, we must be cautious in our language, and yes, we must acknowledge that people have been going through tough times. But everywhere I look on the London economic scene, I see reasons to be increasingly optimistic.

Foreign investment is flooding in; the skies of London are busy with cranes that froze or disappeared in 2008; employment is at a record high. The winds of recovery are starting to puff the Tory sails. People are looking at Ed Miliband, and they are seeing the shade of Neil Kinnock, the nearly man of Labour, who was ahead in the polls for so long but who went on to lose. I think they are right: there is an important similarity between Miliband and Kinnock — and there are some who will tell you it is all about image.

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The trouble with Kinnock, they will say, was that he was a Welsh windbag and that no one could see him as prime minister; and the trouble with Ed Miliband is that he is vaguely geeky and nerdy, and no one can see him as prime minister, and I suppose that may be true as far as it goes.

But this is about much more than image. The problem with Ed — and his similarity with Kinnock — is far more fundamental than that. Neil Kinnock didn’t lose because he was a Welsh windbag, but because he didn’t match the Tories in coming up with a language of opportunity and aspiration. He failed to equal Margaret Thatcher and, in the end, John Major, in providing a sense of how he, Kinnock, would unleash the talents of the British people and get the economy moving.

He was brilliant at sticking up for those who needed help — the elderly, the sick, the poor. But he never showed any real acknowledgment or understanding that we live in a broadly capitalist and free-market economy. At no stage did he seem to accept that it is always this money — the tax revenues – created by this capitalist system that allows us to finance all the social benefits and protections that government is able to disburse.

Neil Kinnock failed because he made his pitch to the Labour base — the unions, the public sector and all their clients; he had absolutely nothing to say about enterprise and ambition. The man who changed all that, and who understood how Labour could win was, of course, Tony Blair; and it was Blair who made a break so decisive with the legacy of Kinnock that they actually re-baptised the party, and called it “New Labour”; and the whole point of New Labour was that it straddled the divide.

You could, of course, vote for New Labour if you had a social conscience. But you could also vote for New Labour if you had a social conscience and you wanted to get rich. People felt under Blair that Labour was emotionally and psychologically reconciled to the realities of free-market economics. They looked at old Tony, with his zillionaire friends and his love of tennis and his ever-expanding property portfolio — and they thought: this man is not hostile to business.

They could see that he was in favour of wealth creation — and the problem with Ed Miliband is that he sends out absolutely no such signal because it is just not part of his political make-up. He can’t help it. He is the product of a world of north London intellectuals and grew up in a household where the words “free market” or “capitalism” were positively terms of abuse. His problem is not any supposed geekishness or nerdiness; his problem is entirely to do with substance, not style.

Under Ed Miliband, Labour has offered no explanation whatever of how it would like to inject more dynamism and growth into British capitalism. It has nothing to say about the everyday problems of business, about high tax and regulation; and as the election approaches it will pay an ever bigger price for its failure to offer any improvement in our relations with the EU in the form of a renegotiation, let alone a referendum.

Labour has nothing to say about Britain’s ability to compete in what David Cameron rightly says is the global race. Of course, we want a society where we care actively for the vulnerable; but the reason young people are not much turned on by Labour is that it is saying nothing exciting or hopeful, let alone about starting your own business or getting on in the world, and that is because in his heart Ed Miliband does not really view those prospects with excitement or hope.

They are not why he came into politics. He is there to curb the free market, not to celebrate what it can achieve. He has reduced Labour to its old role as a party of protest, complaint, and public-sector special interest groups.

That is not how Tony Blair won three elections. It is how Neil Kinnock lost twice.

Boris Johnson: Denying Amnesty To Some Illegal Immigrants Is 'Crazy'

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/07/02/boris-johnson-illegal-immigrants-amnesty_n_3532055.html

The Huffington Post UK  |  By Ned Simons Posted: 02/07/2013 10:24 BST  |  Updated: 02/07/2013 11:41 BST



Boris Johnson has repeated his support for giving amnesty to illegal immigrants, days after David Cameron dismissed the idea as "terrible".

The Tory mayor of London told LBC Radio on Tuesday morning that people who had been in the country for 12 years or more should be granted the right to stay - a policy position he has taken before.

"This was something that came up in 2010 and every single party leader turned my machine guns on me, he said. "We effectively have it [amnesty], if you've been here for more than 12 years I'm afraid the authorities are no longer prepared to pursue you, they give up."

Asked if that meant he supported an amnesty he said: "Why not be honest about what is going on. Yeah, absolutely."

"You've got people who are living here, ultimately you've got to reflect a reality," he said. "Otherwise they are not engaged in the economy, they are not being honest with the system, they are not paying their taxes, it is completely crazy."

However Boris said this did not mean the government should not be "much tougher" in policing the border to ensure fewer people were allowed to enter the country illegally in the first place.

On Friday Cameron slapped down one of his most loyal backbench MPs after he suggested an amnesty would be an effective way for the Conservative Party to win ethnic minority votes.

Nadhim Zahawi, who is tipped for promotion to ministerial office in the next reshuffle, said not only would amnesty be politically advantageous for for the Tories - but would it boost the economy.

"Economically, a one-off amnesty would make sense," he said. "There are an estimated 570,000 illegal immigrants in the UK; this vast hidden economy cheats the Treasury out of billions while undercutting the pay and conditions of low-income workers. At a time of austerity, moving these people into the legitimate economy has obvious attractions."

At the 2010 general election the Conservatives only won 16% of the ethnic minority vote. Zahawi, the MP for Stratford-on-Avon MP and a co-founder of the polling company YouGov, said "unless we act now this electoral penalty will only get worse."

However the prime minister shot down the plan within hours. "It's not one we are going to implement. It would send a terrible signal as Britain as a soft touch," he said.
Unquote

Boris it seems is trying to stick it to his old mate Dave.....

Thanks malena....Not so long ago a Judge refused to deport an Immigrant because "he had formed an attachment to a cat "!!! America is offering amnesty to Mexican Immigrants who have jobs and settled down , it's not such a bad idea if these immigrants are paying tax. How can Cameron object when the Border Agency admits there are 20,000 illegals they have lost track of and 30,000 cases waiting to be heard..?

Cameron has really lost the plot , in the Commons today he said British troops would leave Afghanistan in December 2014 and a token force remain. He is also giving Afghanistan £7 million to help repair the infrastructure. Today Taliban killed NATO soldiers, It was a breaking news bit so I don't know the full details.

Here's the report and link Panda.

 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/03/world/asia/suicide-attack-afghanistan.html?_r=0

Suicide Attack at Afghan Base Kills at Least 9By AZAM AHMED
Published: July 2, 2013

KABUL, Afghanistan — Suicide attackers struck a civilian base on the outskirts of the capital, Kabul, early Tuesday morning, blasting their way into the compound and killing four security guards before the five attackers were fatally shot.

Suicide attackers struck a civilian base on the outskirts of Kabul on Tuesday, police said.

The attack took place at 4:30 a.m. when a truck laden with explosives detonated at Camp North Gate, an operation about 24 miles from Bagram Air Base that is primarily used to house employees of the military contractor DynCorp International. The remaining attackers stormed the compound, but were shot by security officers in the ensuing firefight. Four Nepali guards and one Afghan security guard died in the fighting; five civilians were wounded.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, the latest in a series of assaults aimed at the capital. Last week, the Taliban launched a sophisticated attack against the presidential palace in Kabul, while insurgents killed as many as 17 people during a June 10 attack on the Supreme Court in Kabul.

With typical flair, a Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, said the insurgents killed 33 people and wounded 44 others, vastly inflating the official casualty count.

The Taliban have kept up the pace of attacks in the capital, refusing to ease the pressure on the government even as a bid to restart peace talks has stalled in Doha, Qatar. The Taliban recently opened an office in Doha to facilitate peace talks, but hopes were quickly dashed after they raised their own flag and placed a sign that appeared to suggest it was akin to an embassy, infuriating the Afghan leadership.

“This attack has no connection to any peace process whatsoever,” Mr. Mujahid said in a statement. “We will continue our military operations until our country is liberated from hands of invaders.”

Violence has continued apace this summer, exacting a particularly heavy toll among Afghan police officers. The Interior Ministry said 299 officers had been killed from May 10 through June 13. During the same period, 617 police were injured.

While it is difficult to know the precise percentage increase in Afghan police deaths over previous years (the Interior Ministry said it did not have the data), the increasing casualties come as Afghans have taken greater responsibility for handling security in the country, with coalition forces officially handing over responsibility last month.

Thanks malena......and Cameron is giving Afghanistan £7 million????

leave this here but I have copied and pasted to put on the Afghanistan file.

What has boris done for London today ?

Well he says immigrants are better than British workers.

Boris continues his love affair with immigrants and will no doubt allow Hyde Park to turn into a shanty town.

London's streets are already getting covered with excrement from boris's friends.

Boris is being paid to destroy London and bring it to its knees.

I wonder how long it will be before we find out what boris real agenda is because it certainly isn't looking after the interests of Londoners.

Boris is frackers !

Boris has finally lost his mind,the man should be sectioned !  

http://ruvr.co.uk/2013_07_02/Boris-Johnsons-call-for-London-fracking-branded-a-fairy-tale/

A complete loon.

Boris has gone fracking mad and what has he done for London today ?

Well first off he went down to Hyde Park to cook breakfast for his immigrant friends camping out there.

Then he went off to entertain the Islamic supremacists who want to build their empires in London.

Then he went back to his office for caviar and chips and to rubber stamp the closure of loads of London's fire stations.

Boris Johnson,working for London,well done.

Boris wants to give his 'friends' an amnesty !

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-backs-illegal-immigrants-amnesty-as-he-hints-he-may-run-for-third-term-as-london-mayor-8683014.html

Go Boris,looking after the interests of Londoners.

As Britain dithers, the rest of the world is getting things done
Our great projects are being stalled by endless consultations and grinding bureaucracy

Lord Mandelson has put the kibosh on HS2 Photo: HS2 LTD
By Boris Johnson
8:46PM BST 07 Jul 2013
233 Comments
Well isn’t that just brilliant? Isn’t that grand, eh? We have always known that Peter Mandelson was a modern Blackadder — the only politician who actively rejoices in his reputation for being as cunning as a fox who has just been appointed the Regius professor of cunning — but this takes some beating. Old Mandychops has pulled the rug out from under HS2 — the very scheme he helped to invent in the last days of Gordon Brown’s government.

It turns out the whole thing was a gimmick. They didn’t have a clue about the economic case for the gigantic new railway. They hadn’t even vaguely tested whether anyone wanted to get to Birmingham a full five minutes faster, or whether they would be just as happy with their laptop and internet connection. They just plucked it from the air, because it sounded like a bold and forward-looking wheeze for the manifesto of a washed-up government.

Do you remember the run-up to the opening of the Millennium Dome, another great Mandelson project, when we were promised that there would be a fabulous new game called “surfball”? And then it was revealed that “surfball” didn’t exist, and had been dreamt up by Labour as the kind of dynamic activity that MIGHT take place in a venue as cool and happening as the Dome. It was just “indicative”, said Mandy; and now we know that HS2 was the same.

They didn’t really believe in the scheme at all; Mandy says we should scrap it, and everyone else is putting the boot in. Gee, thanks, Mandy. Remind me never to believe a word you guys say. The only question is: when was Mandelson right — then or now? Let us be clear: there is a strong case for investment in high-speed rail in this country. The business case for HS2 is not as good as the case for Crossrail Two, let alone a new four-runway hub airport. HS2 will still need better mitigation against noise in west London and we need to deal with the huge pressures the scheme will place on Euston.

But as a general principle it is obvious that both London and other cities would benefit from better and faster connections. The problem, as Peter Mandelson has indicated, is cost. This thing isn’t going to cost £42 billion, my friends. The real cost is going to be way north of that (keep going till you reach £70 billion, and then keep going). That is why the Treasury is starting to panic, and the word around the campfire is that Lord Mandelson is actually doing the bidding of some fainthearts in Whitehall who want to stop it now – not the first or second Lords of the Treasury, clearly, but the bean-counters. So there is one really critical question, and that is why on earth do these schemes cost so much?

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Doug Oakervee is a brilliant man to have in charge of HS2, and if anyone can deliver it, he can. But he is dealing with a system of building major infrastructure projects that is holding this country back. Talk to the big construction firms, and they will tell you the problem is not the cost of actually digging and tunnelling and putting in cables and tracks. Those are apparently roughly the same wherever you are in the world.

It’s the whole nightmare of consultation and litigation – and the huge army of massively expensive and taxpayer-financed secondary activities that is generated by these procedures. It is the environmental impact assessments and the equalities impact assessments and the will-sapping tedium and cost of the consultations. Did you know that in order to build HS2 we are going to spend £1 billion by 2015 — and they won’t have turned a single sod in Buckinghamshire or anywhere else?

That is a billion quid going straight down the gullets of lawyers and planners and consultants before you have even invested in a yard of track. To understand the prohibitive costs of UK infrastructure, you need to take this haemorrhage of cash to consultants, and then multiply it by the time devoted to political dithering.

Look at the Turks. They have decided that they need a new six-runway airport at Istanbul, so that they can take advantage of the growing importance of aviation to the world economy. They are almost certainly going to do it for less than 10 billion euros, and long before we have added a single runway anywhere in the South East. Or look at Chep Lap Kok, the airport Doug Oakervee built for Hong Kong. The authorities announced it in 1989 — and opened it nine years later! If you want to get a sense of our sluglike pace in the UK, we announced Heathrow Terminal 5 in 1988, and it took almost 20 years to create; not an airport, just a new terminal, for heaven’s sake (and if anyone thinks the advantage of a third runway at Heathrow is that it would be a “quick fix”, they frankly need their heads examining).

Other countries have clear plans for their infrastructure needs over the long term, and the talent and managerial firepower is being moved from one to the next. We don’t have a plan; we have a list of schemes, each of which causes politicians such heeby-jeebies that they waste billions – literally – in optioneering when what they need to do is decide on the right course and crack on with it. We have proved with Crossrail and the Olympics that we have the expertise to deliver big infrastructure projects. But time is money: we spend far too long on bureaucratic procedures and then enormously multiply that expense by a political failure to blast on with the task in hand.

The result is that we are being restrained from giving this country the improvements it needs at an affordable price. We are like Laocoon wrestling with the serpents, or like some poor bondage fetishist who has decided to tie himself up in knots — and then realised, too late, that he has gone too far. We tug at our bonds with our teeth and pathetically hope the neighbours will come. Of course they won’t! Our neighbours are out there investing in airports, while we are investing in consultants

What has boris done for London today ?

Carry on philandering Boris.....

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-the-flawed-mayor-of-london-8626198.html

Far too much baggage for the buffoon to go anywhere with his flagging career.

London remains a disaster zone full of traffic jams and illegal immigrants sleeping on the streets and whats the big fat man doing ?
Getting fatter and fatter on his expense accounts and making sure his mistresses get tax payers jobs as well.

He's obviously got enough sense to realise he is not the 'chosen one' for the Tory leadership so he thinks he'll get a third term as Mayor.

Boris is on a downward spiral and will eventually only have his immigrant friends to turn to !

Lioned wrote:What has boris done for London today ?

Carry on philandering Boris.....

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-the-flawed-mayor-of-london-8626198.html

Far too much baggage for the buffoon to go anywhere with his flagging career.

London remains a disaster zone full of traffic jams and illegal immigrants sleeping on the streets and whats the big fat man doing ?
Getting fatter and fatter on his expense accounts and making sure his mistresses get tax payers jobs as well.

He's obviously got enough sense to realise he is not the 'chosen one' for the Tory leadership so he thinks he'll get a third term as Mayor.

Boris is on a downward spiral and will eventually only have his immigrant friends to turn to !

I think you are jealous Lioned. 

I feel sorry for the three year old illegitimate daughter who apparently bares a 'striking resemblance' to her father.

Poor girl.  

Lioned wrote:I feel sorry for the three year old illegitimate daughter who apparently bares a 'striking resemblance' to her father.

Poor girl.     

Now Now Lioned, there was no need to bring his personal life into this. If you read the article he is advocatiing a speed up of getting things done, he is right about Mandelson who should never have been made a Lord . The more you delay investment the more you will pay when you finally make a decision to invest in the infrastructure of Britain. I definitely think he is the man for the job and will get things done.

He wants to invest in the infrastructure of London by fracking blowing it up !  

Lioned wrote:He wants to invest in the infrastructure of London by fracking blowing it up !    

 He's perhaps got shares in the programme 'Destroyed in Seconds' Lioned.

I am quite sure Boris is a Russian plant.

Just look at the name and his ancestry.

He is a Quasi Bilderberger as well.He is undoubtedly looking for a leading role in the New World order.

He will be setting up his fracking machines above the Central line.

Havn't we got enough water leaks under the streets of London without boris stuffing sticks of dynamite down the Tube ?

Home»News»AviationMinisters 'sitting around like puddings' while aviation crisis worsens, claims Boris
Ministers are "sitting around like puddings" doing "nothing" to solve Britain's aviation crisis, Boris Johnson has indicated.

An artist's impression of the Thames Hub, a four-runway Thames Estuary airport capable of handling 150 million passengers a year that is proposed by architect Lord Foster Photo: PA
By Peter Dominiczak, Political Correspondent
11:41AM BST 15 Jul 2013

The Mayor accused Governments of avoiding for 40 years the issue of whether to build a new airport in the South East of England

In a warning to David Cameron, the Mayor of London said that the Government "can't endlessly push" the debate over a new airport "into the long grass".

His comments came as he set out his favoured three options for a new mega-airport in England to replace Heathrow.

Mr Johnson has cooled his support for a four-runway island airport in the Thames Estuary and is now throwing his weight behind plans to site it on the Isle of Grain, in north Kent.

While Mr Johnson has not completely abandoned the idea of “Boris island”, he now believes the proposals drawn up by Lord Foster for a four-runway hub on the mainland have the “greatest potential”. Significantly, he has also suggested making Stansted a four-runway airport as an alternative.

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Speaking in City Hall, the Mayor hit out at the decades of inaction on airports.

Mr Johnson said there is "still time" to get the airports issue right but said that people had been "sitting around like puddings for the last 40 years doing nothing".

Echoing one of Mr Cameron's campaign slogans, the Mayor said that if the Government made the decision to build a new airport "we would be able to win the global race".

He said the debate has been a difficult issue for "all sorts of leaders" and "nobody has grasped it".

"Why don't we get on with it?" Mr Johnson said. "I simply want to exhort people in this Government to do something... You can't endlessly push this into the long grass."

The Mayor has repeatedly clashed with Mr Cameron and George Osborne, the Chancellor, over the issue of air capacity.

The Government was last year accused of kicking the debate into the long grass by announcing a commission to discuss potential solution.

It means that no decision on a new airport will have to be taken before the next election.

Mr Johnson said a new hub airport would be able to support more than 375,000 new jobs by 2050 and add £742 billion to the value of goods and services produced in the UK.

With London falling behind Paris, Amsterdam and Frankfurt, there is mounting pressure on the Government to act to preserve the capital’s status as a European airport hub.

Any of the three schemes, Mr Johnson and his advisers believe, would enable London to regain its primacy as an aviation destination.

Any plans to shift Britain’s hub airport to the east of London would lead to the closure of Heathrow.

Mr Johnson said that continuing to expand Heathrow would be "nuts".

What has boris done for London today ?

Well under the guise of a new airport for London he wants to build a new town for all his immigrant friends in  the Isle of Sheppy   

I wish he would just shut the frack up,which by the way means you'll be getting gas out your taps in London if boris gets his fracking way....

http://tv.greenmedinfo.com/woman-lights-her-tap-water-on-fire-thanks-to-fracking/


Anyway,back to the Airport.All these reports come out when everyone is drunk on the sunshine and suffering heat stroke.

It cost best part of a £bill to build a circus tent on the Greenwich peninsular so what do you think it will cost to build a new International Airport and New Town for a quarter million Immigrants  on the quicksand in Sheppy ?


Boris is a stupid clown whos lost the plot and relies solely on his flagging charisma for popularity.


One more runway at Stanstead and job done.

BORIS'S 'HITLER' VISION




Boris Johnson's plans for a £64 billion airport on the Thames estuary have been under attack today. Sir Terry Farrell, a leading architect of airports and railway stations, said it would make HS2 look like "chicken feed", reports the Evening Standard. Farrell said: "When people say that you have to have vision, well Hitler had vision... Vision can be a madness where you get so obsessed you throw everything you have got on the roulette table and hope you got it right." Boris's proposals involved closing Heathrow at a cost of £15 billion and creating a new London borough for 250,000 residents. The Mayor complained that ministers are simply "sitting around like puddings" while the aviation crisis worsens, we report. You can't fault him for ambition.

New Thames Estuary airport 'easily affordable'
A new four-runway airport on the Isle of Grain in north Kent would need up to £45bn of net government spending over nine years but is “easily affordable”, it was today claimed, as Boris Johnson set out his plan to solve Britain’s aviation crisis.
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By Nathalie Thomas, and Peter Dominiczak
7:41PM BST 15 Jul 2013
49 Comments
The Mayor of London backed a new airport in the inner Thames Estuary which could open in 2029, as he attacked ministers for “sitting around like puddings” and doing “nothing” as rival cities abroad build vast airports in an attempt to win a greater slice of global trade.

Mr Johnson is submitting three proposals to a Government-appointed Airports Commission, although he suggested a development on the Isle of Grain would strike the best balance between economic benefits and reducing the negative effects of aviation on local communities and the environment.

The plans, to be submitted this week, also include transforming Stansted “out of all recognition” and a new airport built on an artificial island in the outer Thames Estuary off the Kent coast – a project dubbed “Boris Island” after it received early backing from the Mayor.

Britain has “squandered decades” by failing to make a decision over where to build new runways in the South East, Mr Johnson claimed. That indecision means “other countries are eating our lunch” when it comes to growing business and connections with the rest of the world, he warned.

In addition to building a new airport to the east of London by 2029, the Mayor proposes that the Government spends £15bn of taxpayers’ money to buy Heathrow, close the airport and regenerate the area by building up to 100,000 new homes. However, Daniel Moylan, the Mayor’s chief adviser on aviation, admitted it could take up to 25 years to completely regenerate the area around Heathrow.

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Mr Johnson on Monday fired the first shot in what is likely to become an increasingly bitter battle over the future of aviation in this country, as Heathrow prepares to publish its proposals for expansion tomorrow.

Heathrow will also present the Airports Commission, led by former Financial Services Authority boss Sir Howard Davies, with several options where it could build a third runway, and eventually even a fourth.

The Mayor’s camp argued that the eventual cost to the taxpayer of expanding Heathrow is unlikely to be vastly better than the price tag for a brand-new hub airport, which would have a “trivial” impact on the local population by comparison.

Extra surface transport links would need to be built to accommodate a four-runway Heathrow, Mr Moylan said – a burden that would fall on the taxpayer.

A new hub would require £4bn-£5bn of net government spend per year between 2019 and 2028 — a period when it is proposed the taxpayer will also have to pay out for the proposed High Speed 2 rail project. But backers say the Thames Estuary airport would be sold as a “going concern” to private investors, while the taxpayer could also recoup money through the sale of land around Heathrow to housing developers. “It [a new hub airport] is certainly affordable in the context of Government expenditure of £700bn per annum,” Mr Moylan said.

The Isle of Grain airport would be located on agricultural land next to the Thames Estuary. A new high-speed rail line would have to be built to transport passengers from central London to the airport in less than half an hour and the plans include extending the Crossrail project from Abbey Wood to reach the hub. The M25 would also need to be “enhanced” while the airport could be connected to train services from the Midlands and northern England by the proposed HS2 route.

According to an investigation carried out by Transport for London, the Isle of Grain airport would support 388,000 jobs on the whole, including 134,000 directly at the airport, and permanently add 0.5pc per annum to GDP by improving connectivity for UK businesses.

The airport would initially handle 90m passengers year but eventually double that number would pass through its doors. About 31,500 people would be affected by noise from the Isle of Grain hub compared to 766,000 at Heathrow at present.

Mr Johnson said the debate on runway expansion had been a difficult issue for “all sorts of leaders” and “nobody has grasped it”.

“Why don’t we get on with it?” he said. “I simply want to exhort people in this Government to do something … You can’t endlessly push this into the long grass.”

The Mayor has repeatedly clashed with the Prime Minister David Cameron and George Osborne, the Chancellor, over the issue of air capacity. The Government was last year accused of kicking the debate into the long grass by announcing a commission to discuss potential solutions, which will not deliver its final findings until 2015.

Mr Johnson said expanding Heathrow would be “nuts” and also discounted a “dual hub” solution, involving an extra runway at Gatwick, which would do “absolutely little or nothing to increase connectivity,” the Mayor added.