At least it is not Rome - Romans are saluting and "Duce!"ing Alemanno in their droves. Does anybody else feel that Europe is entering a right-wing era?

I read his Screenburn books during my breaktimes at work, they're great to dip into, so many funny turns-of-phrases and touches of surrealism. And of course there is http://www.tvgohome.com/ , which is finally back online (it disappeared for ages).

i can never keep a striahg t face whenever reading that at work. its awful when you have to laugh and everyone else is quiet.

Charlie Brooker is brill, let that be known.

As for Boris, the end is nigh, people!

Yeah.

Boris is hardly a Sarkozy or a Bush. These people have serious political agendas. Boris is a buffoon, basically, which, while not an ideal quality for a politician, means he's unlikely to initiate riots in his own country or mass invasions of other people's.

I'm not surprised it's happened. Ken had alienated enough grass-roots voters during his two terms to make anything other than a conservative victory quite likely.

I can understand Ken Livingstone alienating the grass roots voters but I can't imagine those same grass roots voters voting for Boris. He's a fucking toff idiot.

Why isn't SuchPalsBeDangers joining in with the Boris bashing?

I find it quite funny that Labour set-up the Mayor of London as a sinecure, a nominal labour seat in a traditionally Labour area and it's gone over to the Tories. It doesn't really bother me that Boris is in the position he's in (I don't think the position holds enough responsibility to be worrying) but it does worry me that the country is sliding back towards the blues. Labour have been going to the dogs for a while, but I'm still not comfortable with Cameron, and even less comfortable with the Tory scum.

Yes. He's not a threat to anything. At the end of the day, things like ''zero tolerance'' and such have been around with labour, why the outrage I don't understand. Left or Right politics differ only in tactics not in principle.

My one major regret with the election outcome is that Livingston was a politician clearly inspired by the idea of London and, while I rarely agreed with how he wanted to do with that idea, he clearly did love the city. Which is something I doubt I could say about Boris.

Will Self for Mayor, 2012.

Londoners rarely love London themselves. It's something that I have never experienced in any European city ever.

Yes, that's true, and I may act like that sometimes myself. Pesonally, I think it's more a love-hate relationship with a bit of a 'we can criticize it but you can't' type of mentality thrown in.

Being born and raised somewhere inevitably gives you a different outlook on that place, compared with those that have only known it in their adult life. This isn't to say that one knows more than the other, just that one sees things differently from the other. My image of London is a mish-mash of childhood memories and current realities. As such it's an image filled with the same mix of great happiness and sadness that you'd expect to find in any life.

To me there is a difference between Boris and Ken in the sense that Ken was a bit of an Autocrat whereas Boris is clearly going to be programmed with what Conservative central office want him to say every morning. So he is harmless in himself but the people behind him may not be.