We can only assume that Boris Johnson, the man charged with finding a solution to London’s spate of tragic youth violence, has been delving into his own past for inspiration. As such, on his 16th birthday, every boy in London will receive a Michelin restaurant guide, a case of Bollinger and a plant pot full of £50 notes.
Well, that’s not true, but a suggestion put forward by our new Mayor yesterday, in the wake of yet another murder in the capital, does hark back to his own youth.
I think there's a huge amount we can do in London by promoting the learning of languages including Latin. I would like to see not only that but I would like to see ancient Greek.
Boris Johnson, who studied classics at Oxford, thinks teachers are having a hard time convincing pupils of the relevance of mathematics, so frankly we wish them luck with dead languages. “Christopher, put the blade away, you never know when you’ll be asked to decline the ablative plural of a group 2 noun”. We think not.
Mr Johnson sees violence as the manifestation of a number of social ills, including the absence of fathers, lack of strong adult role models, and the insufficient provision of physical pursuits. In this vein, he also announced yesterday his approval of London’s many boxing academies.
They take kids off the streets and they not only teach them to enjoy the pleasure of belting seven bells out of each other but they give them an opportunity to get qualifications and an education.
It was clear to many during the electoral campaign that Boris could be relied upon to propose unorthodox solutions to the problems our city faces, and it seems that he is remaining true to form. At Londonist we’re keeping our fingers crossed and practising those left-handed body jabs just in case.
By Andy Fell
Image taken from Wordyeti’s Flickrstream under the Creative Commons Attribution license.
