The Rise Of BoJo

Energy and charisma alone don't necessarily make anyone a good manager.

He's got a heckuva large budget to manage -- Transport for London (TfL), the Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA), the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority (LFEPA), and the London Development Agency (LDA).

His record on gay and lesbian issues is appalling.

When I ask him what he would do to reduce the sky-high rate of suicide among gay teenagers, he starts talking about the need to get kids out of gangs – as if the Brick Lane Massiv is stocked with gay-boys and lesbians.

Still, he's starting from such a low base of expectations that he can't help but pleasantly surprise us. Hopefully.

I remember visiting New York during the recall election of 2003, which led to Ahnuld becoming the Gov-ern-a-tor of California. Myself and two friends recently moved to NYC from Los Angeles found the very idea of his candidacy absurd. If someone had told me, five years later, that Schwarzegger would be putting California on a path to be the leader in the US in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, encouraging a million roofs for solar energy, and threatening to sue George Bush's federal government if it did not take steps to curb greenhouse gases, well, you could have pushed me over with a feather.

I just compared Boris Johnson to Arnold Schwarzenegger. Am I running a fever?