How To Win Friends And Influence Hooligans

Sir Steve Bullock, Mayor of Lewisham, isn't terribly pleased about the Climate Camp setting up shop near him. He has every right not to be, of course, though given that the whole reason he's commenting on it is that the camp is on his doorstep, he'd be a more credible commentator and politician if he'd go and visit before using his position to assert a vague, unfounded prejudice. Come to that, even making a reasoned argument would win him a few points; sadly, he seems determined to assume that the Camp will wreck the site and upset the locals, against all evidence to the contrary.

In truth, it's probably fair enough that he didn't bother with even those token efforts: given that his jumping off point was an insulting and unjustified comparison of Climate Camp to the West Ham/Milwall hooligans. Fairly obviously not a winning move, but of course Mayor Steve didn't mean it like that. Those of us who weren't impressed had "missed the point"; Steve had made himself "very clear". Inevitably, he his sorry that "[his] views may have upset some readers" but considers himself wholly inculpable in the matter. After all, what possible reason could readers of the blog post "Football and Climate Change" have had to think he was making a direct comparison?

Oh. Right. Despite his failure to respond to criticism directed to his Twitter account, our dear mayor is "really quite keen on all this modern cyber communications stuff", so I'm sure he'll be pleased to learn how good the internet is at preserving ill-advised remarks.