Results tagged “london”

One significant element of being a good local politician is the ability to administer. On reaching office any politician worth their salt - and particularly local politicians - should define 3 or 4 key things they'll achieve, focus ruthlessly on them and make sure they deliver.

On the London cycle hire scheme, Boris has shown himself to be one of the other significant things local politicians need to be - regularly exposed (so to speak) - but not a good administrator.

The excellent Boris Watch has published a one month on summary of the Mayor's cycle scheme, and noted it to be the relative shambles it is.

Regular problems include:

• Badly handled online accounts
• Keys and docks that don’t work
• Poor customer service
• The absence of signage linking the cycle scheme to other forms of public transport

There are enough examples of cycle schemes in other cities for Boris to have competently see through the administration of this scheme. Even if there weren't, any competent administrator could have ensured a scheme like this (a) was launched with all essential infrastructure significantly sorted, and (b) had managed expectations sufficiently in order to easily address those infrastructure issues that will inevitably arise without significantly undermining the scheme.

London elected a show pony for its Mayor. The cycle hire scheme is the highest profile casualty of that election to date.

The excellent Boris Watch picks up on whether or not disabled people were engaged up front in the design of the new London bus.

The answer? No.

One of the particularly interesting areas of government over the next few years - in a train wreck sort of way - will be the Department of Health.

Andrew Lansley is apparently regarded as someone who knows his stuff when it comes to health, having been Shadow Minister for several years. I'm not so sure. He seems to be in hock to the medical unions and has a dubious record when it comes to social care. He's a tribal politician and also seems to believe his own press - not a great combination, especially given we all know what happens when ego and ignorance combine in an unholy, but unfortunately typical alliance.

As an example, take the resignation of Sir Richard Sykes over the government's decision to halt a wave of hospital reorganisations. In response, Lansley apparently wrote to Sykes saying:

[N]either the government nor NHS London should dictate the decisions made.

If Lansley really believes this, then who does he think should dictate decisions made about the NHS in London?

Who knew that William Blake saw a vision of a cloud of angels in a great oak tree on, erm, Peckham Rye in 1765 or thereabouts?

(If you don't believe me, see here, here, here and . There's safety in numbers, even if one of those is Wikipedia.)

To the British Library yesterday, to see the Magnificent Maps exhibition. Small, but perfectly formed, the exhibition is well worth a visit and is open until 19 September. More details here: Magnificent Maps.

Looking around the exhibition, I was reminded of the fractal nature of maps: the closer you look the more you are drawn into another tiny world until it is reduced to a building block on which the whole map is built.

I also enjoyed the political maps, which are mentioned in this post by the Magnificent Maps curator, Tom Harper.

The Bank Holiday was a great chance to get out and remember why it's so good to live in London. The two highlights for me were a visit to Foyles Bookshop on the Charing Cross Road and a trip to the British Museum.

Every time I visit the British Museum I am reminded that the roof of the Great Court is one of the best visualisations of maths I've ever seen. Imagine, if you will, a huge box that stretches up from the ground to many hundreds of feet into space, well beyond the roof of the Great Court. Then what that magnificent roof does is pick out a wonderful, wonderful surface in that vast 3-dimensional space.

There's no better physical manifestation of a manifold, of topology, or of what is simply a solution to an elegant equation than that roof.