No more burgers for Boris

Thanks to price of meat for the heads up on this one. Tory MEP challenges Boris to eat less meat.

Food Climate Network report

New report out by the Food Climate Network, on the environmental impact of eating meat. But I think we're still a long way from winning - or even beginning - the public debate.

And here's what Boris Johnson thinks: "It's not eating meat that does the damage. It's the huge and remorselessly growing number of people who want to eat it." It's over-population we really need to tackle, says father of four, Boris. I like the suggestion in one of the comments that the obvious solution is therefore to allow the meat-eaters to eat vegetarians.

Hold on to your friends

OK, I'm going to stop criticising Dave. And hand over to Boris.

As it is when it was

I’m genuinely disappointed that Boris Johnson’s appointment of Ray Lewis as Deputy Mayor didn’t work out. From the little I knew, it seemed he was to be commended for his work with disaffected black youth; this week’s revelations don’t necessarily negate that either. He could have been a great role model, if he’d been all he seemed, and a breath of fresh air. But it now appears that Boris didn’t know enough about him either – and perhaps was in rather too much of a rush to appoint him to office.

This calls to mind a story I was told this week, about a recent visit by a Tory MP to the Vassall Centre in Fishponds. He was lobbied pretty hard by a guy in a wheelchair, who is involved in running the Centre and is on the board of the Spinal Injuries Association. He wanted to know what the Conservative policies were on issues affecting people with disabilities.

The MP was clearly impressed, and told him: ‘You’re exactly the sort of person we need in the Conservative Party; here’s my card’. I am pleased to report that Kelvin Blake, ex-Labour councillor and the guy who ran my 2005 election campaign, who came off his motorbike in 2006 and severed his spinal cord, hasn’t taken him up on his offer!

Boris woos the BME vote

Or not. He's got off to a good start, hasn't he?

First he decides that the Rise festival should no longer be an anti-racism festival and now he's had to dissociate himself from an aide who has told black people from the Caribbean to 'go home' if they don't like living in London. Is anyone really surprised?

Boris leaves by the back door

Just watching Portillo on This Week refusing to say who he voted for in the London mayoral elections, but saying that he regarded the Boris Johnson campaign as "an insult to my intelligence". So not Boris then.

I wonder how long they'll be able to keep Boris under control? His minders refused to let him answer questions at his first press briefing, and then smuggled him out of the back door of the GLA (whilst Ken, as ever, caught the bus to work to clear his desk).

But surely they can't keep him muzzled for ever. If they do, at least the Johnson family should be good value, from his father insisting he'll do a great job as mayor solely because of his mastery of ancient Greek and Latin, and his sister insisting that he is in no way homophobic because, after all, 'he went to Eton'. It's another world, it really is.

I will probably get round to saying something more intelligent about the local election results at some point, but not tonight...