Control freaks

New York

Mayor Michael Bloomberg is as gruesome a fellow as they come. Mind you, he’s not as bad as Governor Eliot Spitzer, but then not every public official is a habitual body-waxer the way Spitzer is. The trouble with both men is that at various times one or the other appears not to have felt the slightest contempt for commerce, foul play, hypocrisy or cowardice, among other things. Bloomberg calls himself America’s greenest mayor, but he’s as green as the fumes which choke Noo Yawkers every day, including holidays. Just consider this: Bloomie’s emissions are equal to those of 18 average Americans, 404 average Guatemalans, and I’d hate to think how many thousands of Eskimos. The New York Post figured out that his main city residence emitted 64 tons per annum, his Vail condo 17 tons, his Bermuda ‘cottage’ 51 tons, his Cadogan Square flat 30 tons, his New York country house 21 tons, his Dassault Falcon 900 jet 2.9 tons per hour, his Mooney M20M plane 0.1 tons per hour, his horse farm in upstate New York 40 tons, but it failed to mention the private chopper, which the mayor uses more often than I reach for an alcoholic drink.

Not bad for a green mayor who lectures us daily on the evils of smoking and of eating fats. It is so typical of a billionaire hypocrite to tell people what they should do with their lives. Here’s a short (5ft 4ins), flat-footed man whose mouth looks like that of a hooked fish and whose voice is a constant whine, a man who can count up to perhaps 20 billion but who has read as many books as the times I’ve headed the Gay–Lesbian parade in Greenwich Village, and he’s preaching to us as if he were King Solomon.