Oh what a shame.  President Sarkozy has apparently changed his mind on supporting the late Dear Leader's aspirations to be President of Europe.  Apparently, and this may come as a shock, he's not very popular in the EU because of something called Iraq.  Fancy.

Still, it saves Gordon Brown from having to make a decision on whether to support Tony's candidacy.  Anything that saves Gordon Brown from having to make a decision about anything at all, anywhere, ever has to be welcomed right now.  Poor dumb bastard.

Great minds think alike, and so apparently do pissed off London bloggers.  Hence the launch of 'Boris Watch', which is. well, a bit like Blairwatch, but for the new Mayor.  They're looking for writers, so I've put my name down.  I've no idea whether it will catch on, but there's a lot to watch out for in the first few weeks, and the signs aren't good (the clear influence of Policy Exchange doesn't bode particularly well, for instance).

The only problem I can see is that there's already a well-established boriswatch.com (from the Haha LOL Isn't He Funny? camp), so boriswatch.co.uk has a bit of a problem getting recognition.

Well, that was fun.  The whole London election has basically been like watching your football team have all the possession, all the skill and all the experience yet go down 1-0 in the first minute to a lucky deflection off the opposing striker's arse.  I'm an Arsenal fan.  We know how this feels, it just usually lasts 90 minutes, not two months.  All of which leaves me feeling more than usually disillusioned and for the first time totally unsure of where my next vote is going.

In the rest of the country, Gordon Brown's tactic of screwing the poor while displaying all the talent, charisma and judgement of an unlanced boil and the political dynamism of a decaying halibut has naturally resulted in the worst results for Labour since before I was born.  As Jamie Kenny put it so eloquently, the man's a wanker, in the truest sense of the word.  Not getting my vote back like that, Gordon.  Pull your socks up, man.

What about the Tories?  Well, they're obviously doing well, given that they've made gains in places they hadn't made gains for a while and did better than in 2004, when Blair was still grinning that punchable grin and Iraq was still fresh in the mind.  However, they needed the most partisan, one-sided and unpleasant newspaper campaign in memory plus the services of Lynton 'I Never Saw A Bastard I Didn't Want To Help Elect' Crosby to be in with a shout in London, plus foisting a completely unsuitable candidate on us, muzzling him, not telling us what he'd do or who he'd employ and then having deeply unpleasant Thatcherite turds welling up out of the sewers to tell us what a great job Boris would do without the slightest evidence to support it.  It's all left a seriously foul taste in my mouth and a desire to kick things.  I can only assume Tory strategy once elected is to pander first to the Evening Standard (they definitely owe them one, so that's the Metro contract extended then) and then the suburban middle class, leaving the real city rudderless and unloved.  Great.  Just when we were starting to have a decent place to live in, we shit all over it.  Still, there should be plenty of material for bilious ranting, particularly given that the inbuilt Tory majority on the GLA is going to be even more toothless than it is now.  Look for reviews of TfL Board minutes on here, as we try and work out which way the wind's blowing.  So not the Tories then.

What about the Lib Dems?  Well, the experiment of moving economically right as the country moved left (defined here as wanting the government to look after them instead of screwing them over - note that recent Tory messages have been soothing ones about putting Britons first and seeing you right about tax and immigration rather than 'On Your Bike' Tebbitisms) always looked badly timed, and electing Nick Clegg as leader is in my view disastrous, since the Lib Dems need a big, recognisable personality at the top, not a boring man whose only memorable attributes are shagging a few women and not believing in God.  Hell, at that rate I qualify on both counts.  Stressing economic liberty instead of personal liberty also sticks in the throat - one thing we've learnt about free market, flexible labour economies is that people feel enslaved by them, what with job insecurity, spending your life searching out cheaper deals on things to avoid being ripped off, it's a treadmill, not a path to riches and enlightenment.  Look at how happy we are as a nation.  Not the Lib Dems, then, unless they too pull their socks up and remember what they stood for under Charles Kennedy.  Unlike Paul Staines, they only started veering all over the road after ditching the drunk driver.  Clever stuff.

I'm obviously not voting for the fascists and the hard left doesn't usually stand round here, so that leaves the Greens, who got my London-wide PR keep-the-BNP-out vote yesterday.  Now I like a lot of their policies, particularly on transport and energy, and it's clearly the right time for them (actually, it's well overdue, we should be), but unfortunately it's not the right time politically - in economic downturns people are going to be looking at their shopping bill and going 'oh shit', rather than 'hey, let's go organic'.  I certainly am.  The ray of hope is that high fuel prices should start doing their work for them, as people are forced to downsize cars to more efficient models, pay attention to domestic consumption and reduce the number of flights they take.  I expect the airlines to have severe difficulties, since their much-cherished lack of fuel tax hides a nasty gotcha that this ensures they receive the full whack of fuel price rises when they have to renegotiate their deals.  That has to get passed on, and with rail finally waking up to the fact that it should be greener (this month's Modern Railways contains a long environmental section sponsored by Siemens) the airlines should start losing big time to greener alternatives.  The Greens ought to take advantage of this and attempt to work out which policies will appeal in a £1.50/litre petrol world.  They should also realise that the solutions to the issues they campaign on are technological as well as societal, so they need to get up to speed on engineering and physics.  If they do that, they'll be odds on for my vote.

00:01
The BBC has the usual suspects, a Dimbleby, heroically trying to interest us in Tumbridge Wells. Charles Kennedy is doing well, considering the late hour. George Osbourne is slowly turning into a Thunderbird puppet. Jeremy Vine is using the 'Ascent of Man' as a swingometer. Really. I wonder what ideas were rejected.

Bloggers are representeed by Iain Dale Blogger Royal to the Court of David Davis, Luke Akenhurst (Hi Luke, remember us?) representing the vacuousness at the core of the New Labour machine. There's some Lib-Dem blogger, but I've no idea who she is. Funnily enough there are no independent minded bloggers, just party hacks with shiny laptops.

Tessa Jowell is gracing  us with her insight. Notably she once said she'd happily throw herself under a bus for Tony. This propmted us to get an HGV and Passenger licence, but somehow she never seemed serious about her pledge, despite our best efforts.

00:19
We watched a programme on cannabis just before, and the presenter tried out lots of Dutch skunk as part of her research. The presenters of this broadcast would also benefit from a good lungfull of White Widow. Dimbleby is searching for Tim. Think Tim's hiding.

00:23
George Osbourne has just spoken about their conference in Gateshead. Apparantly they all got out without being lynched and he seems to think this is progress. Vine and the ascent of man are telling us what we, the humble public think. Apparantly when asked which party leader is a good leader, not one gets a majority. Jimmy doesn't actually say that but the figures do speak out.

00:27
Nuneaton has made history, we are told as the Tories grab the council, that also includes two councillors from the BNP, who figure on the far left - for once - on Jimmy's tribute to Dr. Jacob Bronowski, right next to the plankton. Osbourne's just been told that it's doom for Labour.

00:37
Let's be honest, there's nothing exciting going to happen. The politicians and tame parthy hack bloggers are going to say exactly what we expect and I could blog this whole long dark night of the polls in advance and get it right. some presenter, fresh from Local News has just interviewed some bloke from TV who gave us some funny voices. This is likely to bwe the highlight, unless I'm way off and we'll wake up tomorrow happy in the knowledge that ' we were there when they announced bogworth and crapstone'.

Jowell's telling us that this is all about which party has the best policies, the best leader. Earlkier she was saying that it was all about local issues. apparantly national turmoil translates to local uncertainties.

Oh God, Jimmy's just doing a sub Comic Relief skit pretending to be a cowboy. Oh God. This is more embarrassing since Richard went all AliG on our ass. Ye Gods man, just stop. Seriously, think of what your kids are going to face in school.

00:56
T' Bloggers are spouting. Dale is doing his usual stuff, t'Lib Dem is telling us how happy LD's are always - they're content with their usual flatlining, but she does offer some advice for Jimmy "Stop doing that now". Poor Luke is struggling, reduced to pointing to a solitary seat gain in Hastings or somewhere is making people feel very positive. That says  it all really.

01:04
Shock news from Wales: "Labour have seven councils. If they lose three they'll be left with four.

01:07
This is what's wrong with politics. It's just the same old crap, the same old vacuous spin and the same bland boring guff. Kennedy's talking about something, in his own words, 'quite interesting'. It isn't. He's saying that the LD's have the ability to take on Labour and the Conservatives. They do and they appear to be losing. Tessa is backpeddeling faster than Kollerstrom, but listening to her is about as enlightening as being subjected to Vogon poetry. Boris Johnson's dad is speaking. All is clear. It's a genetic defect.

01:18
John Denham is bullshitting like a true pro. He's saying 'we're listening to the message from the voters and we'll get through this difficult patch and get back to you'. Apparantly losing Southampton is down to the LD's even though Lab have also lost seats. They need to show that they've listened and the causes for that and that they've always listened to people and will continue to listen to people.

Think we've got the "Line To Take". Jimmy's using a lot of bad photoshop to illustrate something or other. Thankfully not with a Texan accent.

01:28
Ed Milliband is whittering along the listening to people guff - camera cuts to a stony faced panel. He appears to be trying to master some Yoda type hand signals. The 10p Tax has been 'difficult'. Robinson says they're doing worse than Blair's low point and the Brown bounce has turned into a Brown flounce. Can I face much more of this content-free comment. It's this boring.

01:43
Congratulations to Gordon, you're now scoring less that Blair did - 24%. Even the narcoleptic Lib Dems are getting more votes. Response, yet more guff about being 'very conscious' about listening, but this is about local issues, but it's a referendum about how well Labour are doing according to the Chair of the Parliamentry Labour Party. What has it not been listening to? the 10p tax rate. Now they have to explain why they're doing this and get through this rough patch.

Ye Gods. Will this crap never end?

01:49
It won't stop. Geoff Hoon is telling us how wonderful Labour is and trying the 'oh sorry I didn't think that question was addressed to me ploy when challenged. An odd one for a one-on-one interview.

01:54
Geoff Hoon is saying there's no crisis at 24% of the vote. Nick Robinson says that there's nothing for Labour to do, they can't change leader and don't know what to do. CUT TO Ed Milliband looking terrified. After more guff Milliband say that the Tories shouldn't be too happy over the results. And Labour will listen to people. No sign of listening to reality knocking on their door though.

02:00
Lord Hoyle is basically say they've got to listen. Pollster Tony King asks that when you've done listening, what are you going to do? Well, it seems that they have to adjust to problems before they happen. Then they're going to listen some more. The policies seemto be right so they'll listen to people.

02:05
Dimbleby wakes up Vince Clarke to tell him the LD's have lost Liverpool. He takes it well.

02:11
The LD's have Liverpool after all. They signed up an independent at the count for an unspecified 'offer'. Before this Jeremy Vine frittered away his dignity by waving pictures of Gordon Brown badly photoshopped onto Mr Bean in the air. To think this man was once referred as Paxman's Mini-me. He maybe demoted to the Teletubbies after this, at least he can embarrass himself in relative anonyminity.

While reading the ever so interesting Fifth Annual Review of the congestion charge I came across this, which suggests that Mayor Boris might be in for a shock when he tries to implement his policies (my bold):

'Mutually consistent', eh?  This apparently comes from Section 41 of the Greater London Authority Act 1999, so let's go back to sources.  Here's the original notes:

So our Conservative Mayor has got ensure his policies are consistent with the national policy of a Labour Government and set targets not less demanding than those set by the Labour Government.  That'll be fun to watch.  He doesn't like targets.

There's more.  Here's how it was amended in the 2007 updating:

So if he brings in measures that will increase car use and pollution, like rephasing traffic lights, abolishing the Western Extension of the congestion charge, reducing bus services or increasing fares, we can refer to this and legitimately ask what this Kyoto-denier thinks he's doing introducing policies that contradict the requirements of primary legislation.

It's no surprise to find Phil Taylor at the bottom of an Evening Standard Ken-savaging piece nominally on the subject of transport.  After all, every nasty Thatcherite in London must have been asked to step up and have a swing by now (why *are* they so nasty?  Every time I read something by one of these clowns it's like being choked in foul smelling soot coughed up from the chimney of a Third World dioxin plant.  I feel the need to wash afterwards. Really, the Nasty Party never went away, did it).

Cough.

Anyway, the Tory Troll, I'm glad to say, links to us in their critique of Taylor's contribution to an Evening Standard hack job, rightly pointing out that relying on data analysis from a man who couldn't get the Oyster bus fare right isn't great journalism.  However, this is Andrew Gilligan, whom one must not criticise because other journalists like him and he's won awards and he nearly got Blair the sack.  Crap.  If the bugger had done his job properly in 2003 we might have been spared four years of Tony Blair, so I've got no sympathy, particularly as he seems intent on foisting, without any regard for how much of a mess he'd make of it, a ruthlessly ambitious but totally inexperienced right wing Tory on my city, purely out of spite.  Selfish twat.

In this case, Gilligan's well-through-the-bottom-of-the-barrel article quotes an anonymous (but clearly congestion charge hating) economist as saying the charge has brought in £938m, while Taylor says £1.2bn.  Eh?  Which is it?  He claims that it was supposed to earn £200m a year (£214m, actually, from TfL board minutes), implying that it doesn't, but also says that Capita's (excessive) take of 60%+ (42% according to TfL) is £130m, which implies the charge brings in about, er, £200m a year (in 2004/5, net revenues were £90m, according to TfL's annual report, and the Fifth Annual Impacts document reports £124m, £101m spent on buses, all legally ringfenced for public transport and reportable to the Secretary of State at four year intervals).

It's interesting that the two vehement opponents quoted are anonymous and a Tory councillor of an extreme Thatcherite persuasion who inevitably doesn't understand transport systems, but does understand how to pick a few items of data and construct an argument backwards that fits his world view.  Why is it surprising that the money has 'gone', by the way?  TfL are quite adamant that spending the profit on public transport was the point anyway, so they're doing what they said they'd do.  They're also quite clear that raising revenue is the sixth most important thing on the list of congestion charge benefits, after reducing congestion, improving bus services, improving journey time reliability for car drivers, making distributing goods and services more efficient and reducing vehicle emissions.

The giveaway is that there's no actual attempt to challenge TfL's figures, which if they were so obviously wrong that even a Tory could spot it, should surely be fairly easy, particularly given the legal reporting requirements?

The one quote from someone who might be expected to know something about it without actually being biased is, unsurprisingly, in favour of congestion charging as a concept, because it reduces congestion by encouraging modal shift.  The clue's in the name, guys.  The proof of the pudding, however, is in the eating, which is that fewer cars drive into central London, bus use is up and road deaths are quite remarkably reduced.

There are other figures in the article that don't agree with other measures elsewhere - fraud on bendy buses is now 'nearly 10%, £6m' whereas the other sources I've read said '8%, £8m', which implies bendy bus revenue should be either under £60m or £100m, which is a substantial discrepency.  Elsewhere he mentions court cases about Croydon Tramlink's PFI contract, without mentioning that it was a bad (Tory, subsequently backed by New Labour) deal that has now been terminated and brought under proper integrated TfL control, saving millions and allowing improvements for passengers without having to fart around giving the private sector their cut.  Nor does he mention Westminster Council's court case against the congestion charge.  Blaming Ken for trying to stop Metronet is just bizarre, since the Conservatives opposed PPP at the time and gave Livingstone warm applause at their conference for opposing it.  Its subsequent collapse and the consequent delays to Tube improvements prove that Ken was right all along, which is the cue for the Tories to pretend they'd never agreed with Ken in the first place.  A rare sight of rats joining a sunken ship there.

The article then degenerates into a series of meaningless statistics intended to give the impression that the city adminstration is costing a fortune without mentioning that it's actually doing a lot more, too.  I get the impression Gilligan can knock this stuff out in his sleep.  Award-winning my arse.

Bollocks to him.  If you want good journalism go to bloggers.  Here are three.  If you don't like them I have others.  Unlike Associated Newspapers, they don't have highly lucrative contracts with Transport for London to distribute crappy freesheets at Tube stations coming up for renewal in 2 years time.

Nicholas Kollerstrom has responded to our outing of him as a holocaust denier and his subsequent dismissal from UCL. Notably he attacks Rachel North rather than ourselves, but that is all apart of the conspiraloons bullying and intimidation of her as a woman and an inconvenient witness to the July bombings.

In his response he identifies the people responsible for his dismissal; the Jews.

Nicholas Kollerstrom is a holocaust denier, a Nazi apologist and an anti-semite. We are fully prepared to defend our views in a court of law, should he be foolish enough to carry out his threat to sue us.

While wheels turn for Mr. Kollerstrom's pet fairyland, back in the real world the real villains are awfully upset:

A few things stick out here:

1. There's still no great Islamofascist conspiracy linking all the Muslims we currently have a few differences with.  Particularly, al Qaeda and associates are quite willing to see large chunks of the Muslim community as targets, even including those like Hizbollah who are popular throughout the Middle East for giving Israel one in the eye in 2006.  This doesn't do an awful lot for John McCain's theory that if we pull out of Iraq it will magically become run by al Qaeda, only with oil.
2. Conspiracy theories aren't just a western thing.  They're a berk thing (h/t Chris Morris).  The Middle East is particularly fertile ground, probably due to things like lack of freedom of expression and information in the various dictatorships we prop up we're urging to democratise.
3. One should never forget that Iran helped us invade Afghanistan, for its own reasons, and has been doing a bit of reconstruction on the side.  This doesn't get you in al Qaeda's good books.
4. Hillary Clinton is rather more violent in her language than al Qaeda's second in command.  This isn't a good thing.

Unity has kindly drawn attention to quarsan's sterling efforts here, with his usual thoroughness and willingness to get his hands dirty in far right filth.

Nicholas Kollerstrom's threatening legal action against us and Rachel North.

Nick, just get your solicitor to put his letter in the comments and we'll get right back to you.

I've had enough Holocaust denying ranting lunatics, thanks, so I'm going to bring things closer to home (well, my home at least, not to mention Andy Rambling's workplace) and play that well-loved Old English parlour game, Fisk The Tory.  First, some background.

When I first moved to London in 1997 I lived for ten months or so in the Northfields area of Ealing, near the Tube station, and had a thoroughly marvellous time that ended when I moved to Hammersmith and met my life partner.  Actually, that sounds rather harsh on the old lady, but there you go, it's not like she reads the blog anyway - the important thing is that I've called London and specifically West London (Ealing/Brentford/Hammersmith/Chiswick) my home for a third of my life and as far as I'm concerned it's where I'm going to stay.

As such, being a generally well off area we can afford to have Conservatives representing us on the local councils (and Brownite loyalists representing us in Parliament).  Moreover, with the advent of blogging and online forums, we now have the opportunity to engage with some of these people and in the course of the current Mayoral campaign, boy have we been engaged, in the sense that a machine-gun platoon might use the word.  It's tempting to hit the dirt until they run out of bullets, but for the sake of sanity and Old England I'm going to charge head on and devil take the hindmost, and my target for tonight is Conservative councillor for my old W5 stamping ground, Phil Taylor.

Firstly, the man has a website.  Nothing wrong with that, most of us will have one, although ours isn't so obviously an Iain Dale wannabe - we occasionally do depth as well as smug self-promotion. Phil Taylor's website has a blogroll, and the first thing that strikes one about this blogroll is the rather short list of sites in the 'Political Thought And Comment' section:

• Adam Smith Institute
• Burning Our Money
• Conservative Home
• Ian [sic] Dale's Diary
• James Bartholomew
• TaxPayer's Alliance

 A fine, balanced selection there, a Thatcherite think tank, a low tax pressure site, a Thatcherite Tory, another Thatcherite Tory (whose name Phil can't be bothered to spell correctly), a man who wrote a book about how terrible it was to spend money on public services and finally another low tax pressure site.  Are you thinking what I'm thinking?  I'm getting the impression Mr. Taylor might be a Thatcherite who doesn't like paying tax to fund public services.  He also doesn't seem to like being exposed to much in the way of a range of ideas, to put in mildly.

However, I didn't come across this fellow via his website, I discovered him through a lengthy blog comment, left on Dave Hill's London: Mayor & More website, which I read with mounting horror even before twigging that he was actually an elected councillor (I thought originally he was just the usual mouthy know-nothing Boris supporter found contaminating online fora the length of London).  Having digested the contents, I found myself pacing round the house, a habit of mine when deeply disturbed that nearly caused a domestic with the missus.  So, in order to preserve domestic harmony, on with the fisking:

Dave's post is the fine one that should put the whole Routemaster/bendy bus idiocy to bed, by pointing out that Boris can't count and has now admitted as such.  Open and shut case, black mark Boris, Ken was right, as anyone with half a brain can see.  Not our Phil though - he thinks Boris is steering clear of actually costing his Routemaster policy because

"they don't want to use up too much airtime on this issue."

You what?  Their most high profile transport policy, talked over endlessly everywhere for months, the 'first act as Mayor' given highly favourable treatment in the Standard, Times and by Boris himself in the Telegraph (seriously, just go and read the Telegraph one and tell me you want this clown running the city) and now they don't actually want to talk about it?  Could have fooled me, Phil.  Possibly they don't want to talk about it now it's been completely busted?

 He then goes on to repeat the allegation (also from the Standard) that Ken somehow leant on TfL to produce Ken-friendly figures for the cost of Boris' plan, an allegation demolished in Dave's piece which points out that Ken and TfL came up with similar costs by different routes.  In fact, TfL's are somewhat higher and more accurate, since they twigged you'd need more drivers (which to be Phil Taylorishly smug I worked out on the 5th March, two days before Dave Hill's original piece).  The subsequent admission by Boris that the £8m figure is rubbish and he was really thinking of a figure around £100m is completely ignored in favour of a classic bit of Conservative projection:

"A lot of what the Mayor says about London's buses is rubbish."

Heh.  How amusingly ironic. We move on to a classic exhibition of why Thatcherites don't get transport:

"They are overcrowded at peak times and empty at off peak"

which is akin to complaining that the sun doesn't come up at night when the light would be more useful.  They're crowded at peak times because they're peak times, fool.  This abject misunderstanding highlights a key reason why public transport requires public ownership and subsidy, because the amount of capacity you need to run the peak service efficiently inevitably results in capital-intensive assets sitting around empty for most of the day.  A conventional business would seek to use them for something else, but a commuter train or city bus can't be used for much other than shifting lots of people around, it's too specialised a vehicle, so if there aren't lots of people to shift, you have empty seats.  The best you can do is encourage off-peak travel (which actually happens on the Tube and previously happened on the buses until the recent fare cut), but the Thatcherite solution would presumably be not to run them off-peak if they won't make money, at which point bang goes your integrated transport system.  Phil's point seems to boil down to 'London's got too frequent a bus service for Thatcherites to be comfortable with'.  Bollocks to you if you're poor or elderly and want to get to the shops, then.

However, this is a 24-hour city, and we have our own solution to this as explained [PDF] by Commissioner Peter Hendy of TfL last week:

"You have got to be careful what you characterise as times with low passenger volumes. If you want to see high passenger volumes, go out in the middle of the night - you have never seen anything like it. We do not run the 29 every four minutes, up to Wood Green, for fun. They are all full. In fact, coming into London they are quite full as well. I think one of the characteristics of London’s public transport now is that it is full at a number of times when you would expect it not to be."

In other words, splash the cash, run high-capacity buses (the 29 is one of the more notorious bendy routes) more frequently and people use them more even at times you wouldn't predict.  Anathema to Thatcherites, ballsy but ultimately the right decision for Livingstone and TfL.

 Next, a new argument to me:

"Bus ridership in Manchester and other major urban centres is about the same as London's (DoT figures) so London isn't any kind of outrider in getting people on the buses."

Now, as I understand it, the entire apparent rise in bus ridership a few years back was due to London, with the rest of the country falling.  Before we check that out, however, Phil's argument already contains one admission - even if he's right he's implying that the Thatcher-inspired deregulated private entrepreneur led bus industry in the rest of Britain is no better at attracting custom than rubbish-spouting Red Ken's statist dead hand TfL operation.  Oops.  Actually, I'm leery of the entire argument, so let's see if we can locate these 'DoT' (or, as we've been writing in the real world for a number of years, DfT) figures.  Mr. Taylor hasn't provided a link, sadly.

Now, two years back the Public Accounts Committee, which looks into these things and is led by Edward Leigh MP, who is a fairly right-wing Conservative, came out with a report on just this matter.  Let's delve.  Ah, the summary has the antidote right there:

"Five years after a PSA target was first set overall growth in bus and light rail usage in England seems likely to reach the national target level by 2010, mainly because of the substantial increase in bus passenger numbers in London since 2000-01 (Figure 1). The increase in London can be attributed to the commitment of the Mayor and Transport for London, increased public subsidy, congestion charging and enhanced bus services. Usage in all other regions has declined, however, and it seems unlikely that the target for growth in every region will be achieved."

OK.  London, according to the cross-party Conservative-led committee charged with investigating these things, is in fact the clearest outrider you could want.  Figure 1 shows a nice, long positive line with London next to it and a series of short negative lines (including North West, which to be fair is next best) for the rest of England.  At the bottom we find:

"Source: Department for Transport"

Phil Taylor is therefore completely busted on this one.  Next:

"Financially London's buses are a disaster. On the current account TfL lost £617 million on the buses alone in 2006/7. In 2006/7 every bus journey cost TfL 87p but they only managed to collect 55p. Doh! Their bus fare dodging bill is £46.7 million of which £8 million is down to the bendy buses that Boris is seeking to replace. With headline cash fares of £2 and Oyster fares of £1.50 something is clearly awry."

 Firstly, Phil has his fares wrong - Oyster bus fares are 90p everywhere all the time - which seriously affects his credibility on this point; to be nearly 70% wrong on such a basic fact of London's bus system really isn't acceptable.  Something is, indeed, clearly awry, but it's not in London - another excerpt from the PAC report:

"The Department believed operators would act rationally to maximise profits and hence would not seek to drive passengers off their buses. Fares had, however, risen by substantially more outside London than they had in London (Figure 3). Buses were on average 8.3 years old outside London, whereas in London they were renewed on a five yearly cycle."

Secondly, the idea that public transport should break even is round the twist - as stated earlier, the aims of providing sufficient peak capacity lead to underutilised resources off peak and are incompatible with any idea of turning a profit, not to mention that the competition essential to the efficient operation of a deregulated system and the integrated transport network essential to driving ridership growth are mutually exclusive concepts.  To sum up: you put public money in, you get an integrated efficient bus network out - see Figure 4 in the PAC report.  In any case, buses outside London are subsidised as well, but they got negative ridership growth for the money plus higher fares and older vehicles, so who's got the better record?.  Next:

"One of the Mayor’s own capital expenditure plans for the buses, announced last November, is to spend £10 million on just 10 experimental hydrogen powered buses. The Mayor might think it is his job to give US bus manufacturers R&D money but some of the rest of us are not so sure."

Now we're into the realm of high chutzpah.  This is actually the second trial, the first of which concluded in 2005 and was part EU funded and came about in conjunction with 8 other cities, zero-emission buses being extremely interesting from the point of view of emissions, noise, particulates, David Cameron etc. to a wide variety of operators.  The cost of £9.65m is for the full five years including parts, maintenance etc. and for bleeding edge transport technology isn't all that much.  Now compare Boris's wholly unnecessary Routemaster plan.  We now know that hiring conductors would cost £8 million/year * 5 years * 3 shifts = £120m and will get you laughed at rather than seen as a world leader in environmental development.  In any case, £2.6m comes from central government.

If you really want to piss money up the wall, try commissioning a bespoke design of open platformed bus harking back to the 1950s but with worse maneouverability and capacity than existing off the shelf designs and zero export potential.  In other words, back Boris.

Talking of which, Phil is a businessman.  Let's see what he thinks Boris' Big Idea will cost:

"It does not take much wit to work out how you replace one capital asset, the bendy buses, which will have a finite life in any case, with another, newer one, the new Routemaster, and to fund this from the savings you will make by having bus conductors to clamp down on the fare dodging"

Hmm.  He reckons £8m a year in fraud on the bendy buses and indeed it is about three times higher than on conventional routes.  However, this means that if you get this down to the same fraud rate as on other buses you'll only save £5.3m a year.  At an estimated £200k for a new RM this will buy 26.5 buses a year so with 620 to buy (just to replace all the bendy buses) you'll be able to fund them from the savings in a surprisingly short 23 years (or 15.5 if you manage to completely eliminate fraud).  This isn't counting the cost of the extra drivers and conductors, of course - if you do that you find you start making a loss and would be better off leaving the freeloaders alone and keeping the bendies.

In other words, fraud on bendy buses is tiny compared to the waste of money involved in replacing bendy buses with twin crew open platform son of Routemasters and is therefore most efficiently tackled by targetting revenue protection officers at peak times and known hot spots.  Phil is therefore busted.  Again.  I do hope he doesn't run his business like this.

 "The trouble is this kind of argument is difficult to communicate against a background of Livingstone inspired hysteria and misinformation."

The trouble is this kind of argument is industrial-grade horseshit.  If I were the Livingstone camp I'd have this guy's self-righteous crap on billboards across the capital as a ghastly warning.

Nearly at the end:

"The buses still tend to be a Zone 1 issue and Boris is busily running the outer boroughs talking about their problems."

Now we're finally getting some sense.  As mentioned before, Boris' strategy is entirely suburban, playing on fear of inner city crime and opposition to car use restrictions to try and get elected.  This explains his entirely non-serious and unworkable bus policies - none of the people he's trying to reach seriously think it matters, they just want someone who'll readjust the city for their 4x4s and school runs.  Hence the leak today that Daniel Moylan might be in the running for chairman of TfL (a job that no one expects Boris to be able to do, so he's going to have to pay someone else to).  Moylan's actually written two CiF articles.  One's attacking the £25 Band G congestion charge rise, the other is about 'naked streets'.  Neither has much to say about buses, tubes, rail or indeed public transport at all. Obviously the Tories' ideal man for the job, then.

Since our revelations about Kollerstrom, the conspiraloons have been running around trying to hide away their dirty little secrets. The fact is that many such people are also holocaust deniers and revisionists. We take the view that this tells you all you need to know about their research abilities and judgement.

For people obsessed with bringing the truth into the public arena, they certainly don't practice what they preach.

They have private forums that they now admit exist after denying it. They hide away writings on holocaust denial. Some forums are now banning discussion of the holocaust, not because they accept it happened, but because they realise that this stuff doesn't go down well with the public. Frankly it makes them look like anti-semitic loons. To be honest, an uncomfortable number of them are. For example the thread just linked describes holocaust denial as a 'Mossad trick'.

Entering the conspiraloon world is like entering a parallel universe where logic is warped beyond all recognition and self-reinforcement and name calling is paramount.

Since our expose we've been called agents of Mossad, MI6, part of a government cover up. And Nazis. Ho hum.

The loons have spent the last couple of days in cabal trying to handle the results of our expose and even the loons are conspiring against each other. Indymedia reports that they are "currently deleting threads as quickly as people can post them showing their real attitude to the truth. What has become clear is that Kollerstrum is not the only so called truth activist who shares these opinions."

Just returned from the Yorkshire Rantercon down Southwark way to find that Gwyneth Dunwoody has died aged 77.  Anyone who's ever had a passing interest in transport politics knows this is a sad loss, she was pretty much the epitome of backbench power as well as a hugely capable chair of the Commons Transport Select Committee, and was even up to her last weeks a formidable and capable examiner of anyone who came before her.  RIP.

As foreshadowed in various places in recent weeks, Basra's army and police chiefs have been given the boot, presumably for the twin crimes of not being signed up to the crushing of the Sadrists and being too close to the British (although the official reason seems to be that they're being blamed for the failure of Maliki's attempts to crush the Sadrists just after Dick Cheney dropped in for tea).  Since we handed the place over to them with fine expressions of goodwill, and after General Mohan in particular had brokered a peace deal where the British got out of town, released prisoners and, in return, the Sadrists stopped bombing them, this is another whack in the face for the whole British approach to Southern Iraq.  Think Mr. Barrowclough being replaced by MacKay and you'll get the picture ('There's going to be a new regime here, based not on lenience and laxity but on discipline, hard work and blind, unquestioning obedience. Feet will not touch the floor. Lives will be made a misery').

Still, we've got 4000 troops out there still with their thumbs up their arses, now apparently out of favour with the Sadrists, the Green Zone Government and the US, with new and doubtless unfriendly faces being parachuted in to turn policy around to fit the current 'Sadrists = Iranians = targets' framing, which we'll doubtless be invited to join in with, one suspects reluctantly.  The big question is 'what's the bloody point?'.

We've occasionally been targeted by 9/11 and 7/7 conspiraloons over our coverage of terrorism and strategies to deal with it. At one level it's just a small group of deathly boring obsessives, at another it's something disturbing.

One fact that keeps cropping up is the links between these self-professed truthers and Holocaust deniers and Nazi apologists.

Update: This linked thread has now been 'hidden' according to the board hosts. Seems like they demand everyone else to make everything public but hide away their anti-semitic crap. They've also banned discussion of holocaust denial becaue it's - you guessed it - 'a Mossad trick' This is a cynical PR move, not from any conviction.

We've just found another conspiraloon, Nick Kollerstrom aka astro3, who's been pestering 7/7 survivors as they offer an inconvenient witness against his ludicrous theories. Although he specialises in that ultimate conspiracy theory, crop circles, he's not afraid to take a deep bath in Nazi apologism and Holocaust denial:

As surprising as it may sound, the only intentional mass extermination program in the concentration camps of WW2 was targeted at Germans.  From April, 1945 five million Germans were rounded up after surrendering, and deliberately starved until well over one million had died

He also likes to submit quotes to White Supremacist sites: According to my teenager's homework, it seems to be Holocaust week at school again, so all the non-Jewish kids will be learning the Jewish version of it. What do you do when a public institution teaches something is a fact that you believe is not a fact? Well, you can always call the teacher or write a letter, which will have no effect other than to get you a reputation as a dangerous nut. No school will change its policy on this because of any information you cite to them; even if they secretly agree with you, they do not have the courage.

Nick likes to put on his boots and goosestep over history by denying the holocaust and acting as an apologist for Hitler. How does he picture Auschwitz? Death camp? Extermination centre? Nope. It was like Butlins.
Let us hope the schoolchildren visitors are properly taught about the elegant swimming-pool at Auschwitz, built by the inmates, who would sunbathe there on Saturday and Sunday afternoons while watching the water-polo matches; and shown the paintings from its art class, which still exist; and told about the camp library which had some forty-five thousand volumes for inmates to choose from, plus a range of periodicals; and the six camp orchestras at Auschwitz/Birkenau, its the theatrical performances, including a children’s opera, the weekly camp cinema, and even the special brothel established there. Let’s hope they are shown postcards written from Auschwitz, some of which still exist, where the postman would collect the mail twice-weekly.

Where does he get his vital research and evidence? It's ordained in the stars!

So that's why the tedious drivel these conspiraloons put here gets deleted. Because it's rubbish. It's boring. It's the product of Nazi apologists.

UPDATE

In the comments one noted conspiraloon, Bridget Dunne, seems to have taken this a bit personally and claims we're talking about her. Interesting.

It was also noticeable that, despite her claims not to have anything to do with holocaust denial, she refused to enlighten us with her views.

She challenged us to look at her site for evidence of holocaust denial. That turned out to be difficult as they have private/hidden forums. Bridget said they 'Just for the record, we don't have a private part of the forum'. This is not true as following a referral link from their site leads to a error: You do not have permission to view this topic. So much for their 'everything must be public' stance.

It wasn't too suprising to see that Nicholas Kollerstrom has commented on Blairwatch, using astro3 and giving his website as... any guesses, people? Yes, Bridget Dunne's site!