Thanks to commenters and callers for communicating the identities of the two mature subversives who bothered Boris at Tuesday's TfL board meeting. George Stern and Nina Tuckman are, as the Tory Troll revealed, members of the Simon Wolff Charitable Foundation, a body which exists to sustain the "radical spirit" of its late founder. This includes Stern and Tuckman doing their damndest to impede ambitious road developments they disapprove of, in this instance the proposed Thames Gateway bridge.
They've got form. Stern and Tuckman bothered Ken Livingstone relentlessly about the project, and way before that - from 1976 - they bothered anyone they could to stop the government building bigger roads in Archway. These included Haringey Council and, I'm told, Michael Howard when he made his living as a QC. I hope it is only a matter of time before someone provides the delicious details about their duels with the latter.
Anyway, having watched most of the webcast of Tuesday's meeting - talk of monocles, by the way remains unsubstantiated - I can report that Mayor Johnson did not allow his impatience with his hecklers to get the better of him. In fact, I'd describe his conduct as exemplifying a triumph of courtesy and compromise over irritation. During the adjournment of several minutes, the mayor decided that "in order to avoid a riot" he would permit Tuckman to make her grievance known to the meeting as long she used only two sentences.
It was all terribly British, as you'd expect. See for yourselves. But pay special heed to The Blond's remark at the end of Tuckman's many semi-coloned oration. After acknowledging her great passion he advised her to attend the next meeting of the board where the the immediate prognosis for the Thames Gateway Bridge project will be revealed. "I think you'll find that matters on that front are evolving," Mayor Johnson told her. Was there a message there for the rest of us too?
