According to his Wikipedia page, George Ferguson, Bristol’s mayor, ‘is noted for wearing red trousers’. Wow! What a thing to be noted for wearing. I’d like to think that his fashion statement was the only bad thing about him, but I’d be lying.
Ferguson was one of Bristol’s first three Liberal Party councillors and even ran for parliament in 1983 and 1987, after which, Wikipedia advises, ‘he ceased any active political involvement. If only. I am sure it was nothing to do with the toxicity of the Liberal Democrats name after Nick Clegg tripled student tuition fees after promising to abolish them that Ferguson chose to run for mayor as an independent candidate. People do not always have short memories, especially with regard to lying politicians, and it cannot have escaped Ferguson’s attention that the position of mayor might just be denied to him if Clegg turned up to campaign on his behalf. So, instead, Ferguson ran, notionally in my opinion, as an independent candidate, given that he is a prominent Merchant Venturer in the city. And of course he won, on the back of a 27% turnout among voters, as did the candidate for the worthless police commissioner job because – and this is just my guess! – people liked her name, Mountstevens, because they were fond of the family bakery business of that name. I could be wrong on that bit, but I am sure the name was not an obstacle!
You would not think that Bristol had any elected councillors at all, such is the all-embracing influence of the mayor. It seems to me that anything he wants to do, he does, like the insane city-wide 20 MPH speed limits at a cost of well over £2 million and now the destruction of the Stapleton allotments in order to build the “Metrobus’ folly so as to enable a prominent bus monopoly like Worst Bus to boost their profits.
And of course his role in the Bristol as Green Capital of the western world which involved the great man having to attend countless jollies at the council tax payers’ expense. Poor George.
He is no one’s fool though. Hear his interviews with BBC Radio Bristol where the presenters are so keen to suck up to him, they habitually banter with him, referring to ‘George’ as if he was a jolly good chap carrying out a ceremonial position.
Happily, I live outside the Bristol boundary so I feel less of his corrosive effects as those who live within it, but Bristolians only have themselves to blame. The referendum to have a mayor in the first place saw over 75% of voters staying at home and of those who did bother to vote, 41,000 voted for a mayor – 53%. Other cities had bigger turns outs and almost all of them voted against having a mayor and to run the risk of having a joke character like Ferguson at the helm.
Put simply, there is nothing Ferguson does that couldn’t have been done by the council as it was. Now Bristol has a red-trousered self-publicist in charge with no real mandate and even less support.
It’s a good example of why voting really is worthwhile. Voter apathy saw the mayoral position created and Ferguson elected.
