Progressive London 2010
February 3rd, 2010
I was at Progressive London 2010 on Saturday. Got there just after the start at 10am it was bustling in the main foyer. Being a Dave Hill follower I was keen to see the man in person and having made it to the back of a crowded and stuffy room on the 2nd floor, standing room only, he was next to speak. He said that Boris was a milder and more gentle version of what might have been expected, less contentious and more redistributive, that he had increased free access to travel for some groups unexpectedly.
He said that Boris was difficult to get hold of to answer difficult questions, that Ken used to let the Mayor’s question time run on until everybody had had their say but Boris just cut it off when time was up. He said that it is possible to get answers out of Boris but that you have to follow him around London to his numerous “openings” and tackle him on the spot. He added that Boris produced a large amount of written answers to questions to such an extent that Dave was encouraging bloggers to go through it all and saying that more bloggers were needed since stories often arose from their writings. By the time Dave had finished speaking the room was even more crowded and stuffy so I left to get some air.
Downstairs in the foyer I met one of the HandsoffQC people and had a coffee and a chat about the goings on in Hammersmith and Fulham.
Back in Invision Suite 4 with the windows open it was time for the Housing session, less crowded than the earlier Boris do but slowly filled up. Megan Dobney kicked off, Dave Hill turned up this time as an audience member, with his familiar long grey coat and notebook in hand. Nicky Gavron had a lot to say about the London Plan which she had worked on with Ken back in the day, but more to say about the dismantling of it going on with the Boris version called the draft London Plan which was abandoning the aims of the Labour version by taking a borough by borough approach and reducing almost to zero those targets for affordable homes in Conservative boroughs while increasing those in Labour ones. It would seem that under Ken the London plan took a city wide approach to affordable housing.