Time Out's Michael Hodges whips up the debate
Michael Hodges’ latest column on Boris Johnson has enraged and delighted you in equal measure. Below are just a few of the comments so far – but what do you think?
Time Out's Michael Hodges whips up the debate
Keep giving us your views on the race for Mayor in the run up to May.
'Why we can't let bumptious Boris win', read Time Out columnist Michael Hodges' on Mayoral candidate Boris Johnson.
'I usually very much enjoy your column, but this week was incensed by your anti-Boris article – not the sentiments, with which I agree, but the
assumption, not uncommon amongst Time Out journalists, that the whole of west London is a Tory heartland. The idea that if Boris wins the mayoralty, "the brays of victory will be heard throughout west London" is complete and utter rubbish. I for one do not know one person who would vote for the buffoon Boris. Credit us with a little more intelligence.
'West London, like north and south London, is a mix of rich and poor. West London is not just Kensington and Holland Park, it is also Acton,
Shepherd’s Bush and Latimer Road, just as north London is not just slimy Islington and wealthy Hampstead, it is also Hackney and Dalston.
'For God’s sake get a grip Time Out, and Michael Hodges, and find out a bit more about 'the ordinary people' of the west. Guess what, they are just like you!'
G. Denton, by email
Feature continues
'Everything you say about Boris and the old Etonians – ie Cameron etc – is undeniably true; the out-of-touch oligarchy has come back to haunt us. I thought that WWI had wiped most of them out, or at least taken the wind out of their sails! I guess that 90 years of inbreeding has enabled them to bounce back. Being an Old Etonian doesn't automatically make you a scumbag – after all, Orwell was one – just as attending the Peckham Academy doesn't make you a gangster.'
Rob Atthill, Camberwell
'I really have to respond to the dose of unreconstructed Spartist ranting that the normally excellent Michael Hodges offered as his thought for the week in the last issue. It was obviously intended as a riposte to the previous week's hammering of Our Dear Ken in some other media outlets. While Hodges' piece does contain plenty of bile, it sadly lacks substance and is internally inconsistent.
'Most of the piece is constructed on the usual journalists' trick; to put the boot into an opponent, trawl through their press cuttings until you find a phrase or two that can be taken out of context, then twist it to suit whatever interpretation you're attempting to place on them. If Bozzer ever did write the words 'watermelon smiles' and 'flag-waving piccaninnies' – and I doubt it – I'm sure it wasn't in the sense Hodges tries to portray.
'For a presumably open-minded and unprejudiced liberal-leftist, Hodges certainly relies on the crudest form of social sterotyping to make his points. Unfortunately puffing these outdated stereotypes constitutes not the robust character assassination Hodges intended, but a weak- wristed character assassination.
'You can't ridicule Boris, because he accepted, and rejoiced in, his buffoon status a long time ago and the British people love and admire him for it. Contradictorily public schools are both a production line for 'wankers' without any wit or sense – and also the place that offers the best opportunities to the 'best pupils'. And the parents who choose to educate their offspring in this 'baleful system' are thereby actively encouraging the educational failure of state schools in London. So that's people like the hypocritical MP for Hackney, Diane Abbott then, or perhaps she's allowed a special dispensation because of her proven ethnic status?
'Perhaps Hodges should stop being such an air raid warden.'
Steve Fletcher, by email
'This letter is a combination of a paean to Michael Hodges, a letter to Time Out and a nomination for Hate Figure of London: Boris Johnson. Your article in TO1954 put into hilarious words exactly my opinion of the odious BJ. It would not only be a tragedy if he was elected Mayor, but it would also be a disastrous joke to have this chump as mayor in a multi-racial city like London. His protestations that he is not a racist would be laughable if they weren't such an insult to the intelligence. Just saying you're not a racist doesn't mean you're not a racist. Anyone who has the distasteful words BJ used in his Telegraph article in their vocabulary without thinking about the offence they may cause is an out-and-out racist. He has made several other foul comments about black people and for him to now deny he is racist in order to scrabble into the London Mayorship shows how he doesn't engage his brain before his vile thoughts spill out into words.
'More shameful and mystifying are those black Tories, in particular Shaun Bailey, he of the bogus charity and article in the Standard about how he wouldn't touch black women with a barge pole. He is too stupid to realise the Tories are using him as their 'dancing minstrel' and he comes across as a typical self-hating black man who is ignorant about the history of the political party he has chosen to join.
'I implore all decent right-minded Londoners to vote for Ken Livingstone, who understands the people in London and how to represent this city in a positive light to the world.'
B Cave, SE London
'Why we can't let bumptious Boris win', read Time Out columnist Michael Hodges on Mayoral candidate Boris Johnson.
Keep giving us your views on the race for Mayor in the run up to May.
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3 comments
How can the Conservative Party seek to gain credibility among black people while referring to them, as Boris Johnson has done, as ‘picaninnies’ - and Africans as having ‘water melon smiles’? How can the Tory Party pretend to be environmentally concerned while having a candidate for Mayor of London who opposed, as Boris Johnson did, the Kyoto Treaty on climate change? How can you attempt to get rid of a sexist approach to women with a candidate who extols cars as ‘chick pulling’? How can the Tory Party attempt to present itself as being concerned with the poor with a candidate who opposed the national minimum wage and opposed full pension rights for part time workers? It will have a candidate who whole
heartedly supports grammar schools. How can you present the Tory party as socially concerned when Boris Johnson was a member of one of the most socially elitist and yob-dominated drinking clubs at Oxford University – and when it will draw attention to the fact that David Cameron was also a member?
Time for TimeOut Readers to Educate Mr Hodges
Michael Hodges asserts that Boris Johnson is out of touch and in seeking to be Mayor of London, Hodges rhetorically asks whether ‘he seriously wants a say in the running of state schools in the capital?’ The person who is plainly seriously out of touch with modern London is Michael Hodges. The Mayor of London has no role in running schools in Greater London. Education is the responsibility of the 32 London Boroughs and the City of London Corporation. They are the local authorities with responsibility for schools and have taken over the role of the old local education authorities. Local authorities now have much less influence than the old LEAs and certainly little direct control over state schools in their communities. This is the result of a succession of decisions taken by the present Labour Government and the previous Conservative governments. These include the introduction: of the national curriculum, a new national inspection service OFSTED in addition to the established Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Schools, national targets for standards, and the devolution of financial management to schools. And the changes made to the distribution of central government grant to local authorities, mean that in practice the only, significant, discretionary decision, that a local authority can take in relation to an individual school is whether it chooses to increase a school’s budget. Rather than engaging in entertaining rhetoric about ginger beer, cream cake and tuck shops Michael Hodges would be better occupied getting to grips with the complex contemporary arrangements that govern London and the interesting substantive political arguments about them.
Warwick Lightfoot
In an election where there is little difference between the 'main' candidates on policy, commentators will focus on personality...which itself leads to smear, personalised invective and avoidance of any discussion about what the capital needs. I suggest that every time anyone reads articles about the race for London Mayor, they look for any reference to real policy on, for example, transport, crime, the council tax, the Olympics (to name just a few). If you don't see these, it's just entertainment/propaganda...the numbers voting will dwindle yet further because no-one is interested in voting in a tired old class war when they want someone to run the city properly - it's no surprise that only one in three turned out to vote at the last two mayor elections - the way we are going this will be even lower on 1st May. Look in vain for meaningful policy from Boris, while the Mayor lurches from undeserved to deserved attack, with few any the wiser of what is really going on here at City Hall because those of us that know and shout about it are never heard amid the diversionary cack about class, newts, Eton, drinking and cronies...