...boris johnson

I couldn't resist this story I found on the ABC website...

Teachers and parents have criticised a British couple who allow their children to go to school unsupervised.

Oliver and Gillian Schonrock allow their eight-year-old daughter and five-year-old son to cycle the one mile (1.5 kilometre) journey to school on their own. The couple taught their children a route on pavements through the backstreets of the London suburb of Dulwich to teach them independence and self-confidence.

But parents and teachers at the children's junior school say it is irresponsible and dangerous, and the school has told the couple it can refer the matter to social services.

London mayor Boris Johnson has slammed the health and safely rule as "barmy", writing in a newspaper column that he commends the Schonrocks for "taking the sword of common sense to the great, bloated encephalopathic sacred cow of elf [sic] and safety".

I think I like Boris Johnson, the Lord Mayor of London. Even though he's a tory (and I'd hate him if he was my local politician) he's a bit of an outspoken nut (the hair is a giveaway), which I think is a good thing for a Lord Mayor to be. A good Mayor should be a bit eccentric, more clown than politician, to spruik a city, to turn heads. Robert Doyle is starting to warm to the job here in Melbourne. He would have made a lousy Premier, but with his anti-bogan rantings and his April Fools jokes (announcing on morning radio that he'll be building a waterfall and trout fishing pond on the Yarra outside the casino), he's got enough fruit loop in him to serve well. Perhaps the job of village idiot is still alive and well.

Here's some more of Johnson's work...

• In 2003 Johnson was investigated for the theft of a cigar case belonging to Tariq Aziz, one of Saddam Hussien's cronies. He eventually returned the case at the owner's request.
  

• In April 2007 Johnson was called upon to resign by the MPs for the city of Portsmouth after claiming in a column for GQ that the city was "one of the most depressed towns in Southern England, a place that is arguably too full of drugs, obesity, underachievement and Labour MPs"

• At the conclusion of the 2008 Olympics, Boris gave this famous speech at London House in Beijing. It's an absolute pearler (you can skip the first half of the vid if you are short for time)...