London Mayor, Boris Johnson at his trenchant best -
‘I remember what the doubters said when we first announced a
new bus for London – a replacement for the beloved Routemaster. They said I was
mad. The Labour Party said I was deranged. My opponents said I was a swivel-eyed
loon, or words to that effect. They said we were showing an arrant disregard
for health and safety, and that in any case, it would never be built.
Where is it, they used to sneer at me, as Sir Peter Hendy
and Transport for London began the necessarily lengthy process of procurement.
When’s the bus due, eh? And when the first prototype finally turned up in 2011,
the machine managed to conk out on the M1 (because someone had forgotten that a
diesel hybrid still needs to be filled with diesel). The sceptics laughed their
pants off.
So it gives me unbridled joy to inform you that the new bus
will shortly arrive en masse. A whole gleaming fleet of them is about to take
over Route 24, from Pimlico to Hampstead Heath; and in the next two years they
will cease to be a curiosity – a rare species of charismatic megafauna that you
might spot once in the course of a safari. They will be a glorious and regular
addition to London’s streetscape, as famous and as emblematic as the elephants
of the Serengeti, whose noble and domelike brows they faintly resemble.
When I went to Antrim last week, and saw dozens of them
being made in the new Wrightbus plant, I felt a sense of awe, and the deep
certainty that this was the most wonderful project I had ever been involved in.
It has clean, green hybrid technology. If the new bus fulfils the promise it
has shown in tests, we will be able to save so much on fuel that it will
actually come out cheaper than our current hybrid buses. With 600 of them on
the streets by 2016, they will make a significant reduction in nitrogen oxides
and particulates, and will help us to improve air quality in the city.
The bus is a masterpiece of design, conceived by Thomas
Heatherwick, the magician who created the Olympic cauldron. It helps to drive
employment throughout the UK – unlike the wretched bendy buses, which were made
in Germany. London’s buses are creating hundreds of jobs at the plants in
Northern Ireland, but it does not stop there. The engines come from Darlington,
the seats are made in Telford, the seat moquette in Huddersfield, the ramps are
from Hoddesdon and the “Treadmaster” flooring from Liskeard. Oh, and the
destination signs are from Manchester.
It is the embodiment of the point I often make, that
investment in London boosts the rest of the UK economy, directly and
indirectly. We have stimulated the very best of British technology, creating
jobs in this country, and yes, we are now looking to potential export markets.
All these features make the bus remarkable; but there is one
more thing about it – the best thing of all. This bus stands for freedom, and
choice, and personal responsibility. It not only fulfils a promise often made
to Londoners by bringing back conductors; it restores to the streets of London
the open platform at the rear – and in so doing, it restores the concept of a
reasonable risk.
We all remember the pleasure of the old Routemasters. It
wasn’t anything to do with the way their flanks heaved and throbbed like
wounded old warhorses. It wasn’t the boggler-boggler-boggler noise or the fumes
of diesel. It was the way you could sit on those banquette seats at the back,
high over the wheel arches, and watch the road passing you outside. And if the
bus got stuck in traffic, or at the lights, you knew that you weren’t a
prisoner. You were allowed to get on and off at will, provided the thing wasn’t
moving, and now that freedom and benefit will be restored.
Of course, you will have to be careful. You should look
around to make sure there aren’t any motorbikes or cycles approaching. But if
the road is clear and the traffic is stationary, and you want to hop off and do
some shopping – or if you have missed the bus at the stop, and you want to
scoot down the street to catch it up – then the option is there. You can hop on
and hop off, like the hop-on hop-off hoplites who were trained to leap from moving
chariots and then back on again.
Yes, of course there is a risk; but that risk is manageable;
and without it you have no opportunity to ascend or escape the bus if you want
to. It is, as far as I know, one of the few recent examples of a public policy
that actually gives back, to sentient and responsible adults, the chance to
take an extra risk in return for a specific reward.
We need to develop this thought, because I worry that in the
post-crisis world, we have become all too paranoid, too risk-averse. Yes, the
banks made grotesque errors, largely because they could not understand the
risks they were taking. But unless we allow businesses and banks to take
reasonable risks, they will never hit the jackpot at all.
Why is it that Britain hasn’t produced a giant like Google,
or Facebook, or Amazon? It is because such a business, in the UK, would not
have been given access to the capital required. We are more hostile to risk,
and, indeed, we are more hostile to reward. If you go to San Francisco, where so
many of these tech giants were born, you can see the most bizarre tram I have
ever set eyes on. People hang from it like gibbons as it swoops and clangs
through the streets. It would never be allowed in Europe. But the San Francisco
authorities evidently believe that Americans are more robust – more willing to
be free, more willing to make their own assessment of a reasonable risk.
If you look at the state of the eurozone, and you compare it
with the US economy, you can see the possible advantages of this approach. And
that is the point of the hop-on hop-off platform. In restoring a culture of
reasonable risk-taking, it is a platform for growth.’
Positive Leadership: Why Britain Has Not Produced a Google or a Facebook
