Swallowing pride

Dear Ken Livingstone,

I will start this letter by making it perfectly clear that I don’t like you very much and I don’t think you’ve been a good Mayor of London.  But much as it pains me to admit it, you and I both share a hatred of Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) in it’s current form.  Your decision to bail out Metronet with an £897 million loan today was the latest step to limit the damage caused by Metronet falling apart.  I have no idea where this particular story will end, because presumably the Metronet contract for Tube maintenance will be returned to them after the temporary arrangement with TfL ceases after two years despite their financial meltdown, and to make matters worse the unions have gone on strike recently at the prospect of job losses (which was unacceptable, but there you go).  Metronet’s track record (no pun intended) for maintaining the Tube network has been disgraceful and has made a significant contribution to how rubbish the Underground is, but no-one seems to have done anything about it.

I don’t know if you’ll have time to sort this out before Boris tears you apart at the next Mayoral elections, but if you can at least steady the ship I’m sure Londoners will be (fairly) grateful.

Yours in begrudging allegiance,

A.Tory