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Comment by grey-area | Hacker News Reader

but who seems oblivious to (or to be willfully disregarding) the long term detrimental effect his skirmishing has on the UK.

He's not oblivious to it, he just doesn't care. Why should he? His ego is the only thing that matters, other people are a means to an end. He has the same low cunning as trump, I think he's quite good at reading people, and manipulating them, but others are just tools to him. He is remarkably similar to Trump in fact, and as Sarah Kendzior said about Trump:

"If Trump senses he may have to make a personal sacrifice, he will sacrifice the world instead."

https://www.fastcompany.com/40558314/donald-trump-will-do-an...

The same holds true for Johnson. He will happily sacrifice the UK for the sake of his political career, so that he can be prime minister.

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He did pretty well in London - certainly better than Kahn, who has been disastrous.

The office of mayor in London does not carry enough powers for any mayor to be "disastrous". That's just ridiculous hyperbole.

Other than that, the views on London mayors tends to mostly follow party lines, so it's not a particularly worthwhile discussion.

Objective measures say different. Just look at the bloodbath on the streets, about which Kahn appears to be perfectly sanguine.

Can you cite a source that defines the “bloodbath on the streets” of London?

So which US state do you live in, out of interest?

West Sussex.

Not far from London then. You should pop by sometime, witness the complete lack of bloodbaths on the streets.

That's ok, I prefer England.

Do you want to explain why you don't think London is English?

Err, perhaps the fact that the majority of the population are not ethnic English people?

Thank you for confirming what it's clear several of us suspected.

Yes, QED on why he really dislikes Khan - the colour of his skin.

Please keep regional and ethnical flamewar off HN. Not wanted here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

As I noted in another comment, Sussex police in fact recorded a higher rate of violent crime than the Metropolitan police recorded for London in April. It gives an indication of just how much the media affects peoples ideas of crime levels.

If you think there is a 'bloodbath on the streets' of London you just demonstrate that you have no clue what London is like.

And even if you had been right, the office of the mayor only has oversight powers and limited powers to set priorities and shift some resources. Most of the Met budget and control of their day to day operations is outside the mayors purview.

EDIT: Here's a wikipedia page with info on the media frenzy around the violence in London last year, and the comparisons to New York in particular, which basically jumped to lots of conclusions from a single month: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_London

And here is stats for April, that shows a higher rate of violent crime in Sussex (233 incidents per 100,000 people) than in London (227 per 100,000 people): https://ukcrimestats.com/Police_Forces/ - however this too means pretty much nothing; the numbers fluctuate too much to start drawing many conclusions based on the headline numbers.

But I guess by your argument there's a "bloobath" going on in Sussex then.

Sure, sadly lots of crime and drugs in Sussex - I'd imagine Brighton on its own accounts for a lot of it, and there is the county lines phenomenon everywhere. That doesn't change the upsurge in London. I'd also be extremely suspicious about taking the official crime statistics at face value - the history of their manipulation is long and detailed.

Whatever you might think about it, it does however change the nature of your narrative of blaming Khan for it when London does in fact not stand out.

You might want look at nationwide police funding during the Tory government for an explanation on the increase in violent crime.

Bloodbath is a stretch and the uptick in knife-crime isn't localised to London, it's nationwide, and almost surely the result of tory austerity.

> almost surely the result of tory austerity

Just a laughable assertion.

You don't live in London do you?

Just to add the opinion of someone who actually lived in london under both mayors - this is false.

Johnson's time as mayor was marked by trying to claim the successes of others (buses and bikes introduced by Livingstone), and failed initiatives like the expensive garden bridge which was never built or buying illegal water canons which could not be used, and addressing non-problems like drinking on the tube.

Khan's London has been professionally run and is tackling real problems like air quality and too many cars.

Both suffered from problems with crime caused by a decade of police cuts imposed by central government. London is still dramatically safer than any large US city though, including New York.

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