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Boris Johnson: prize for Thames Estuary airport is immense

At the launch of a report on Britain’s airport capacity, the Mayor of London warned that Britain faces a period of economic stagnation unless a new international airport is built in south-east England.

The Government has ruled out expansion of London’s existing airports, but Boris Johnson has lobbied for a new hub airport in the Thames Estuary claiming “the prize would be immense” for London if it were given the go ahead.

Environmental groups also oppose the new airport, which is estimated to cost between £40-50 billion.

Mr Johnson said: “There’s no doubt that to do nothing will lead to economic stagnation. The Government must now grasp the nettle and begin serious plans for the multi-runway solution.”

He added that developing the Thames Estuary airport, sometines referred to as ‘Boris Island’, should be viewed as a pillar in the Government’s plan for economic growth.

The 100–page report also says that an extra hub airport would radically increase foreign direct investment into Britain from fast–growing developing countries. The report cites the example of France, which benefits from having more direct links with China and Brazil.

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Thames Estuary: Boris Island airport ‘would bring Brazil billions to UK’

The 100–page paper says that an extra hub airport would radically increase foreign direct investment into Britain from fast–growing developing countries.

The news comes amid suggestions that the Treasury and Downing Street are throwing their weight behind the plans.

A report published by Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, today cites the example of France, which benefits from having more direct links with China and Brazil.

It says that last year France received £1.26billion of investment from Brazil, because of its direct air links with the South American country.

Britain receives only 20 per cent of the number of Chinese tourists who visit France, the report says.

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A golden chance to put down the Xbox and take up sport

I am not going to count my chickens, of course, but so far preparations for London 2012 are going outstandingly well. The venues are almost complete, on time and under budget. The velodrome is ready; the aquatics centre is ready; the stadium – once seen as a potential white elephant – is now being fought over by football clubs who want to use it. International pension funds are competing to invest in the village and other parts of the Olympic park.

The Westfield shopping centre is open and bringing thousands of jobs to the area. And the benefits of the transport investment are already being felt on the Jubilee line, where the number of trains per hour has increased, and in the new East London line linking Stratford with Croydon.

The ArcelorMittal Orbit has risen like some vast scarlet orchid, beckoning the world to a part of London that has been neglected for too long; and when the world arrives next year they are going to find a city that is open for business and ready to put on an epic festival of sport.

In fact, there is only one small question in my mind. We have a fantastic team of Olympians and Paralympians, some of them veterans of Beijing, and some of them only now showing their world-class abilities. But can we do as well as we did in 2008?

We racked up a total of 19 gold medals last time, a phenomenal haul. For a relatively elderly country of 60 million people, it was quite a feat to come fourth in the medals table. We beat some old sporting foes – France, Australia and Germany – and the word is that they have all been itching to put Team GB in its place come 2012.

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Boris Johnson warns that David Cameron’s ‘bazooka’ plan will wreck democracy in EU

In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph the London Mayor hit out at Mr Cameron’s call for the European Central Bank to deploy a “big bazooka” – effectively printing money – to help bail out the stricken economies in the south of the continent.

Mr Johnson also attacked plans, backed by the British government, for the 17 eurozone countries to share closer fiscal links, making them more unified on tax and spending.

“What I don’t think you can do, is just pretend that you can create an economic government of Europe, effectively run by Germany,” the Mayor added.

He described the replacement of elected leaders in Greece and Italy with governments led by technocrats as “completely mad” and warned that if the rest of the EU went ahead with a plan to impose a “Tobin” tax on financial transaction, even without British participation, it would be seen as a “hostile act” because it would still hit so many deals in the City of London.

Mr Johnson also outlined his own “orderly” solution to the crisis – which was miles away from anything suggested by any member of the British government.

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Boris Johnson: ‘I’ve a healthy dose of sheer egomania’

In his large, eighth-floor office in London’s City Hall, with its phalanx of computer screens and its views over the Thames, Boris Johnson is plotting his re-election campaign. In May, he will take on, once again, Labour’s Ken Livingstone for the mayoralty of the capital: four years after Mr Johnson swept to victory on the back of 1.1 million votes, the biggest direct personal mandate in British political history.

Mr Johnson was a controversial choice for the Conservatives at the time. David Cameron urgently needed a colourful candidate, with the charisma to show that his party could win big contests after more than a decade of defeat, but Mr Johnson’s career in journalism, and then as a Tory MP, had already marked him out as a major loose cannon.

As Mayor, many feel he has spent as much, if not more, time, taking potshots at his party’s high command as he has changing the lives of Londoners. He is the bookies’ favourite to succeed Mr Cameron as Tory leader – even though he describes the chances of this happening as the same as his being “reincarnated as Elvis”.  Even when he tried male enhancement pills he was out there in the media acting as if nothing happened as if it were normal well sinc eit is a perfectly normal and healthy thing!

The Sunday Telegraph asked him about his plans and what motivates him in politics and in life.

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EU crisis: The Greek Austerity Diet will only leave them feeling fed up

OK, that’s it. I can take the taunts no longer. I am inventing a new diet: it’s called the Greek austerity diet. And I am putting myself on it right away. The moment of revelation came last Friday when we were out there in Monaco to argue that London should host the World Athletics Championship in 2017.

Even though we won the bid, there was a nasty moment for your correspondent. We were all walking along some corridor in the glitzy hotel, when we went past some gilt mirror — and I saw the awful contrast between the hard-bodied core members of the team, and the portly periphery. There was the Lord Coe, lean and chiselled as a whippet; there was heptathlete Denise Lewis and supersonic sprinter Jodie Williams, without an ounce of fat between them; and there were assorted other athletes and ex-athletes, all looking pretty darned svelte. And there, alas, was I.

For some reason, it had been decided that we should all wear identical dove-grey suits, and I am afraid my measurements must have been supplied from a younger and fitter self. As I went past the glass, I could see some spherical Scandinavian businessman staring back at me with bloodshot eyes, his thighs straining at the trouser fabric like bursting sausages — and I realised it was me. Then this morning I read a cruel piece in one of the Sunday papers that says I look as though I am no stranger to a bacon sarnie; at which I smote the board, and cried, no more. It’s time for the Greek Austerity Diet ©. It’s time for a programme of savage cuts on the carbs, and steep retrenchment of the alcohol consumption. You can wave a cake under my nose and I will push it moodily away. As for cheese, it is now officially the food of the devil.

I know it will be tough. These austerity drives always are. I must brace myself for that hallucinatory feeling you get in mid-afternoon, when you haven’t had quite enough for lunch. My stomach will rumble with protest, like the crowds in Syntagma Square. My psyche will crave chips, like an army of Greek civil servants yammering for their ancestral right to retire at 50. As I cycle past London Bridge station, my nostrils will be filled with the tormenting aroma of Cornish pasty — like the torment that afflicts a Greek customs officer when he thinks of the Porsche he has had to sell, the mistress he has pensioned off, the villa he has been forced to flog to a nice man from Düsseldorf.

There will be times when the withdrawal symptoms will be so bad that I say to myself that this can’t be worth it, and that we might as well abandon the regime, just as there are constant threats to the existence of the government in Athens; and yet I will soldier on with the Greek Austerity Diet — olives, tomatoes, onions, and not even a lump of feta — with all the implacable logic of the new “technocratic” governments that are shortly to be installed in Athens, Rome and elsewhere. Polite opinion will be united: that it is the best thing for all of us. And I am not at all sure that polite opinion will be right. At least I know that my diet is a good idea. But there is (of course) the world of difference between an individual decision to go on a diet, and the agenda of economy now being forced on the peripheral euro members; and the first and most obvious difference is that my Greek Austerity Diet is entirely a scheme of my own devising. I voted for it. My own body politic took the decision. It is a plan entirely calibrated to suit my own interests, as far as I interpret them. I don’t have Angela Merkel leaning over me and cracking her whip, and barking at me to hurry up. I don’t have Herman Van Rompuy, President of the EU Council, saying things like “This is not the time for elections, this is the time for decisions!”

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Metal thieves dishonour the war dead with their vandalism

It was one of the most conspicuous acts of bravery of the Second World War. On March 18, 1944, a 30-year-old lieutenant from Sidcup was leading his men up a hill in Burma that was occupied by the Japanese. It was always going to be a tough encounter, since the Japanese were known to fight with suicidal ferocity; and sure enough, an officer leapt upon George Albert Cairns and attacked him with his ceremonial sword. So furious was his stroke that the Japanese severed Cairns’s arm. Yet the lieutenant not only killed his opponent; he mastered his pain to pick up the fallen sword.

With his good arm he then laid about him to such effect that the Japanese were routed and the hill was taken – a rare event in that grisly conflict.

Lt Cairns then toppled over, with the bodies of his enemies around him, and later died of his wounds. He was awarded the Victoria Cross. His name was recorded, along with those of 137 others from Sidcup who gave their lives in that war, on a bronze plaque and placed on the town’s war memorial.

This monument had been erected by public subscription in 1921 to honour the dead of the First World War, and in particular to the 204 men of Sidcup who “passed out of sight of men in the path of duty”. So there were altogether 342 names on that memorial in Sidcup. They were there so that people of our generation, and the next generation, would never forget the sacrifice they made.

They were intended to be a permanent reminder of the horror of war, and of the losses sustained by families in this one Kentish town. The whole purpose of the memorial was to act as a physical reassurance to the shades of those soldiers that their deaths had not been in vain. It is a promise from the living to the dead – that we will always revere what they had done.

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Daylight saving time: Don’t let the Scots steal this hour because they want a lie-in

No, no, that can’t be right. They can’t trifle with our hopes like that. It is now more than two years since the Greater London Authority renewed its campaigning for lighter winter evenings – and last week we thought we had a stunning breakthrough.

The Government said it was “minded to support” a Bill put forward by a heroic Tory MP called Rebecca Harris, calling for British Summer Time to be in force all year. We all had the strong impression that the Cabinet had abandoned the inertia and spinelessness of the last 40 years, and was going to support Mrs Harris in her bid to save lives, expand the economy and cheer everyone up. Then I pick up my paper yesterday and I find that there has apparently been a U-turn.

It now turns out that the support of the Government entirely depends on the Scots. Unless Alex Salmond and his team agree that there should be another look at daylight saving, the whole thing is once again going to be slammed back into the bulging filing cabinet of projects that are commonsensical (like repatriating some powers from the EU) but just too politically difficult to pull off. According to a Downing Street source, the whole thing is now “dead in the water”. Come on, folks. This isn’t good enough.

This requires a bit more guts and determination. We can’t let the Scottish tail wag the British bulldog – and especially not when the change would be in the interests of the Scots themselves. The arguments are overwhelming, and especially in London, the motor of Britain’s economy. Lighter winter evenings would enable all kinds of places to stay open an hour longer – sporting venues, monuments – with huge benefits for the tourist and service industries. The income boost was calculated last year at up to £720 million – a lot of money and a lot of jobs in tough times. Then there is the point that crime is far more likely to be committed at dusk than in the morning. A switch to lighter evenings would not only cut crime by three per cent – according to Home Office figures – but it would lead to a fall in fear of crime as well.

If we all had an extra hour of daylight in the evening, there would be significant savings in electricity bills – and a cut in CO₂ emissions of 80,000 tonnes in London alone. If you’re a business owner, it’s wise for you to look at other affordable options to fuel your business, such as turning to sites like Business cost comparison. There would be less seasonally adjusted depression, say psychiatrists. You would no longer have that terrible Lapland sense that the day was over by 3pm and you might as well go and get drunk.

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Mellitus, the saint who retook London from barbarians

“Mellitus?” said the guide with an air of surprise. I felt as if I had gone into Waitrose and asked for something quaint —like a hogs-head of mead.

After all, it’s tricky finding a Londoner who has heard of Mellitus. But Vivien Kermath is one of the accredited red-sashed guides of St Paul’s Cathedral. She knows her stuff.

“Of course,” she said. “Mellitus. AD 604. He built the first of several churches that have been on this site. Come this way, we have an icon.” “An icon?” I boggled.

We walked through the great church of Christopher Wren, past memorials of Nelson and Wellington. We passed where Lady Diana Spencer consecrated her ill-fated union to the Prince of Wales, and the list of former deans, including John Donne and his illustrious predecessor, Alexander Nowell, who discovered how to bottle beer – “probably his greatest contribution to humanity”, said Vivien.

At the far end of the church we came to the American memorial chapel, and there – perched above an illuminated book recording the names of the 28,000 Americans who gave their lives in the Second World War — is Mellitus.

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The lesson for Europe from the beach at Arromanches

If you want to see the original purpose of the European Union, then you should join me for a little pousse-café here on the beach. It is a beautiful scene. People are strolling in the autumn sunshine. Dogs and sail-surfers roam the sweeping, biscuit-coloured strand, and out in the bright blue bay you can still see the vast concrete lumps, left like the haphazard stepping-stones of some forgotten race of giants.

Yes, folks, I am looking at the hulking remnants of the Allied invasion’s Mulberry Harbours, and this beach is Arromanches. We have snuck over on an early-morning ferry from Portsmouth, to show the children where their grandfather came ashore in June 1944.

I had forgotten how this whole sector of Normandy is a monument to carnage. Among the apple orchards and the hedgerows and the dairy cows turning grass into camembert, you can see the white crosses. You can see the graveyards and memorials of the thousands upon thousands of Americans, British, Canadians and, yes, Germans, who died on the beaches and in the battles around Caen. You can imagine the blood in the water at Omaha and the puffs in the sand from the machine-gun bullets as the terrified marines prepared to leap from their landing craft.

Here at Arromanches you can see why the founding fathers of the EU decided that they were going to create a system that would lock Germany into Europe, and to make sure that nothing like D-Day ever had to happen again.

In many ways, I would say that the Common Market was a success. We now have a single market, where British people are allowed to come and live here, to trade, to make their lives wherever they like in a vast community of European nations. You can set yourself up as an aromatherapist in Alicante or a dentist in Lodz. You have a perfect right, as a Briton, to ply your trade as a ski instructor in Courchevel — and if some French union of ski instructors tries to block you, then you have single-market legislation to protect you.

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