Tweet from Hendon Labour candidate exposes failure of Sadiq Khan's management of TFL

Nothing irritates me more than people claiming that putting sticking plasters over deep wounds caused by incompetence are huge victories. We are seeing plenty of this at the moment with the government claiming that they are doing a great job, by simply returing the economy to where it was before they lost control of it. If we are all worse off than we were when they were elected, they have failed. This is becoming endemic in UK politics. People claiming they are marvellous because they have had something to do with things just running as they should. 

When I looked at Twitter this morning, the first tweet I saw was one from the Labour candidate David Pinto-Duschinsky. Don't get me wrong, I quite like David. He strikes me as a decent enough chap, but I was gobsmacked that he was silly enough to post a boastful tweet, which probably seemed clever enough when posted, but simply showed that the Labour Mayor is failing massively with his management of TFL. This is what David posted

Thanks to our lobbying, @anne_clarke and I have secured a replacement bus service for Colindale.

The Deputy Mayor has just confirmed that TfL will lay on a free shuttle-the NL6-between Colindale station & Hendon Central during the station closure. (1/2) pic.twitter.com/mqYQOEJ49b

— David Pinto-Duschinsky 🇺🇦 (@DavidPintoD) May 21, 2024

I read the attached letter, and I was horrified. The closure of Colindale Station has been planned for years. TFL was created to manage London's roads, buses, tubes and trains. It's brief is to get Londoners around as efficiently as possible. When any station, road or rail line is undergoing a planned closure, the first thing that TFL planners should do is to plan alternative arrangements, to minimise the impact on people who use the services. What Mr P-D is claiming is that without hard work by himself and Anne Clarke, TFL, which is run by Sadiq Khan, would not have made proper arrangements for a station used by 5.5 million people a year5.5 million people a year. That is an absolutely shocking claim. 

I've no doubt that David D-P and Anne Clarke are decent, hard working politicians. However there are only two possibilities here. The first is that their friend, Labour Mayor is completely incompetent in his management of TFL or alternatively, TFL was doing it's job perfectly well and David and Anne were trying to hoodwink us into thinking they'd done lots of hard work on something which the non political TFL staff had in hand and had dealt with. 

So what is it? Is Sadiq Khan incompetent or is David Pinto-Duschinsky a bit of a bullshitter? Although I'm no fan of the local Tories, I do hope they make hay on this issue. It might serve as a lesson to our local political types that the people of the Borough of Barnet are not mugs. 

BTW The picture I used is from David P-D's latest leaflet. It pictures David walking past Greggs on Mill Hill Broadway with former Conservative councillor Sury Khatri. In the leaflet David states "I work in the private sector and goverment experienceto really deliver for you and get things done in our community". I was intrigued. I had a look at his Linkedin profile Linkedin profile (as any diligent blogger does). The only job he has listed is at a business consultancy called EY-Parthenon, where he has worked since 2021. I am not entirely sure that if I only had three years of business experience that I felt comfortable putting on my Linkedin profile, I'd make such a claim. On his 'My promises to you' section of the leaflet, number 4 states "I'll work had every day to earn your trust and show that Labour has changed". I am sorry to say that his recent Tweet has done nothing to convince me that this is true.