Boris, getting the job done

Hawkeye

Good for Boris - telling it like it is!

Alf Tupper

Boris wasn't there and didn't have to make the call.

Like a lot more people, he forgets what a dreadful situation the country was in at the time, and what pressure the police were under. It will return and other security people will make mistakes.

Chuck Unsworth

Yep. Nice to see some straight talking for a change. I bet that prize pillock Ian Blair didn't know what hit him.

mac

Ring - Ring:
"Hello Ian, it's Jacqui. You were quite right, Boris' comment was so unfair. You must be terribly hurt, so I just wanted to tell you again how much the party valued your emphasis on apolitical policing when you were Commissioner. Just wait until the heat dies down and then you'll get the little earners we promised. A bientot".

Andy Leeds

All Boris said was well within the bounds of fair comment. I quite agree with him: if de Menezes was a potential suicide bomber then 'why the hell was he allowed on two buses, and then down the Tube ?'. Why indeed.

Lance Grundy

An article in yesterday’s Sunday Times, Tories will rein in New Labour police, suggests that Chris Grayling is spoiling for a fight with Britain’s Labour-loving chief constables.

These politically-correct placemen have tied their colours so tightly to Labour’s mast, that when the rotten ship ‘New Labour’ goes down…

steve

Go Boris!

JMB

I have never been more proud of Boris. Ever...

David Raynes

Of course Boris was absolutely correct. De Menezes was killed through a command and control failure. The local commander at the scene should, if operating within proper guidelines agreed with Control (Cressida Dick), have ensured that any suspect was intercepted way before they got to Stockwell, as soon as out of sight of the target premises in fact. This is routine procedure. All tasks like this should have "risk assesments" formal or informal at the time. For Special Branch or Anti Terrorist Officers, a suspect leaving premises and needing detention/identification should be routine to a standard system. Any such risk assesment would have included as prime issues, misidentification of a suspect. Metpol should have had a plan to minimise that risk by early interception. It is absolutely no use in such situations relying on command decisions from a remote HQ over what might well be flaky communications. Time does not allow it. The Officer in charge at the scene has to be EMPOWERED. For Cressida Dick to suggest she would do nothing differently is a disgrace. For notes in the control room to be altered is disgrace. For Sir Ian to defend what his force did is a disgrace. Boris was very right.

David Raynes

Of course Boris was absolutely correct. De Menezes was killed through a command and control failure. The local commander at the scene should, if operating within proper guidelines agreed with Control (Cressida Dick), have ensured that any suspect was intercepted way before they got to Stockwell, as soon as out of sight of the target premises in fact. This is routine procedure. All tasks like this should have "risk assesments" formal or informal at the time. For Special Branch or Anti Terrorist Officers, a suspect leaving premises and needing detention/identification should be routine to a standard system. Any such risk assesment would have included as prime issues, misidentification of a suspect. Metpol should have had a plan to minimise that risk by early interception. It is absolutely no use in such situations relying on command decisions from a remote HQ over what might well be flaky communications. Time does not allow it. The Officer in charge at the scene has to be EMPOWERED. For Cressida Dick to suggest she would do nothing differently is a disgrace. For notes in the control room to be altered is disgrace. For Sir Ian to defend what his force did is a disgrace. Boris was very right.

HJ

I like Boris.

However, he was really just saying what any reasonably intelligent person with the ability to think for himself would have concluded. That it's so rare to think for yourself and speak clearly in public life is the tragedy.

hadrian

Boris says it like it is!
Sir Ian's no loss whatsoever to the Force...are we still allowed to call it that? Or was Sir Ian one of those renaming it the more PC 'service'?

David Boothroyd

The exchange was from late 2007, long before Boris was elected as Mayor.

Simon Chapman

Actually, Fraser, the really impressive thing about this correspondence is that it dates back to late 2007, when Boris was only the candidate, not the Mayor. Even then he was quite unwilling to be intimidated by the Commissioner - a great example of speaking truth to power.

J H Holloway

Now we know why that clown Blair was given the boot.

And how the hell did Livingstone end up on Blair's side in this argument?

Max Kaye

Boris's appeal transcends usual political an social classification.

If Boris was Tory Leader the polls would be showing a 70% lead.

I kid you not.

Verity

If de Menezes had left the country when his visa expired, instead of buying a fake 'Permission to Stay' stamp for his passport, he could have been sipping a rum punch on Copacabana Beach today.

This isn't a comment on the operations of the police who shot him, nor those who commanded them, which is a separate issue, obviously. But he wouldn't be dead if he had obeyed the law and left when his visa was up; and he would have obeyed the law if he had believed there were severe penalties for not doing so. As one does.

But with all these hundreds of thousands of illegals floating around London without penalty, why should he?

So, indirectly, it was the Blair/Blair aggressive socialists policies which created the environment for his death.

JohnAnt

I've often wondered if the reason why de Menezes was allowed on two buses and down into the tube was that the police were too frit to intercept him?

Frank P

David Boothroyd

"The exchange was from late 2007, long before Boris was elected as Mayor."

Great! 'Getting the job done' even before he was getting paid for it.

But the fact remains that regardless of Sir Ian Blair, who was a piss-poor Commissioner, it is ludicrous that HM Commissioner for Police of the Metropolis is answerable to three political masters viz. The Home Secretary; the MPA and the Mayor. Whereas he should be answerable to HM, for convenience and protocol via the Home Secretary and have non-partisan top Mandarin status himself. The fact that Blair besmirched his office by politicisation, greed, overweening ambition for celebrity and at times panic-stricken hyperbole, has probably destroyed that status quo ante (prior to Paul Condon, I would say) forever. Operationally, as far as the incident is concerned, I agree with David Raynes who knows the score and he is spot on.

The Jury is still out as far as Boris is concerned. Anyone but Ken is still my mantra until Boris grows up a bit and becomes the Mayor of London, rather than the Mullah of Londonistan. The demographics make that increasingly more difficult every day.

Boothroyd caught you with you slacks down there, Fraser. You should know better.

Fergus Pickering

Sory, young Boothroyd, what does the DATE matter? You obviously think it does but I don't follow. Whenever the gratman said it, it was true magine, if you will, a British man being shot dead on, say, a Portuguese train in similar circumstances, and then imagine what people here would say. I don't think a Portuguese cop saying everything was OK would quite fit the bill, would it?

Hawkeye

David Boothroyd said: "The exchange was from late 2007, long before Boris was elected as Mayor."

So? It is still the right thing to say and confirms that Londoners elected the right man rather than that lizard Livingstone.

Ian C

The important thing is that Boris does not hold back in future when/if cock ups are made by other public services in his spehere - or outside it. If he is badly 'softened' by holding political office his raison d'etre will rapidly diminish. Ken screwed this side of his life up by using his 'cheeky chappie' capital for supporting Met Cop Blair, Islamofascists and nutty schemes for non-businesses.

Anand

Gotta love Boris, what a gent. As Londoner I was extremely pleased to see the back of Red Ken. Have people watched Boris' documentaries for the BBC on the Crusades et al? The man is a true multiculturalist with real respect for all religions and creeds. He knows his stuff.

Nicholas

Blair's overt political bias disgraced him, the role of Commissioner and the Metropolitan Police. He was a prime example of the police "management" culture that fast-tracks theory over practical experience because of some smarmy leftish concept that reform is required. The very essence of successful policing is integral with ordinary members of the community at street level not pontificating about equality in some poncy meeting with pressure groups and "victim" cultists.

Blair got it very wrong and besmirched the reputation of the Met police. His childish behaviour on being ousted and ridiculous appeals to his Labour paymasters only confirm that Boris was right to boot him out. Good riddance. The correspondence confirms that Blair was long overdue for sacking. Let's hope that his chum Jacqui soon follows suit.

THX1138

I admit I was totally wrong about Boris, he's turning into a great Mayor & advocate for LDN

My Musical tribute to Boris.

London Is The Place For Me

http://tinyurl.com/buj6yl

From The Trinidadian Calypso singer Lord Kitchener. If this doesn't bring a smile to your face you're either dead or a member of the BNP

Like me Boris love's LDN, I see that now

hadrian

The more one is familiar with Boris, the more imoressive he becomes and the more likeable! It does have to said he's probably got the makings of a truly excellent leader if the situation ever becomes vacant in the Tory party in the future!
I also think he's to be congratulated for his championing of one of our harmless eccentrics, Gary MacKinnon who quite ludicrously and unjustly by any standard is threatened with deportation to the USA for trial there as a terrorist for having had the obessive acumen to hack into their Security systems in his pursuit of extra terrestials. It has infuriated me that all along not a single M.P. so far as I can see has had the decency to defend Gary and that our otherwise nanny state has been prepared to sacrifice him to the tender mercies of the USA penal system whilst sheltering out and out terorist knaves and their offspring at taxpayers' expense. Shame, shame, shame on our spineless government for yet again picking on a oft target to make a political point. Broon- you are in charge of a genuinely oppressive regime.
Thus we should be thanking our lucky stars that we have someone with the common touch and sense of Boris to see this monstrous injustice for what it is and standing up for the truly little man. Well done, Boris, one of the few decent politicians we have.

Frank P

Stephenson announced as Blair's successor. same old same old, then. Change we can believe in? NWFC! Tough old Boris eh? Just ratcheted it up one. Ye Gods!
Hercules in the Augean stables? More like Mrs Mop with a feather duster: Can I do you now Sir? Smudger Smiff prevails then: so much for the Mighty Mayor.

J P Furriskey

David Raynes does indeed know the score. So does Frank P, who as a young unarmed constable disarmed a gunman on the streets of London. Sic transit gloria Meti.

Herbert Thornton

I'm a bit puzzled by Boris.

On the whole I believe he's very sound, but I wonder, at times, whether he fully grasps the danger that Britain's - and especially London's - increasing Islamisation constitutes.

He has some Turkish ancestry and some people have at times asserted that this influences him towards being positively pro-Muslim. I doubt very much that this can be so. But I do wonder whether it predisposes him towards thinking that Islam is going to be controlled as effectively in Britain as it has been in Turkey. If that is what he believes, it makes me uneasy.

It is of course true that Kemal Attaturk's reforms instituted a secular form of government for Turkey, and that secularism has been preserved by means of constant vigilance by the Turkish army. But - apart from the much derided (and officially ignored and wherever possible suppressed) voices of people in the British National Party - there is no sign whatsoever no sign of movement towards any such reforms in Britain.

Indeed British mainstream politicians and the British Establishment in general seem to view the role of Turkey's army in ensuring that Turkish government remains secular as a phenomenon to which they are viscerally opposed - as if it were contrary to Democracy, Human Rights and the Rights of Man. I only hope that Boris does not have that kind of mindset.