Guido’s FoI Unit can reveal that since Labour took office, Sadiq Khan’s Transport for London has forked out a whopping £235,000 of taxpayers’ money on social media influencers to encourage cycling in London. All while Khan complains about “insufficient funding” for the Met Police and misses his own housing targets…
The TikTok brigade were hired to explain the Cycle Hire Scheme – the Santander ‘Boris bikes’ seen all around London – and to “encourage participation” in Cycle Sundays. Some were paid to post about “how to help when there are incidences of sexual harassment on the transport network.” TfL also splashed another £107,045 on its own social media ads across Facebook and TikTok to promote:
They probably could have just relied on the tube strikes to advertise cycling for them…
Shadow national security minister Alicia Kearns told Times Radio she would have put a precondition on a China trip if she were PM:
“I would have put a precondition that I was not going to go if I was prime minister, unless Jimmy Lai was coming home with me. I would also put a precondition in the six months leading up to the visit that I wanted a reduction in hostile acts against our country. But that’s not what we saw. And actually, in contrast, what we saw was clearly the Chinese Communist Party did put a precondition, which was that the new embassy in London had to be signed off. So why is it okay for China to set preconditions and to make very clear red lines about what they require for a visit, but we go without having put any ourselves?”