Boris Johnson took ‘completely unnecessary’ helicopter trip to promote cycling scheme

As PM, he has access to military aircraft but as with his holidays, his flat and probably lots of other things still to come out, he seems to accepting "gifts" from all the donors for these things to save "direct" costs to the taxpayer. Of course what the costs to the taxpayers will be indriectly is very hard to work out once they call in the reason for these gifts.

Edit: Although I just realised that if he was "campaigning" he might not be able to use Government resources.

As for the first question, as most travel is pre booked during Covid, I doubt there would be as much disruption although the one carriage would probably have been requsitioned. 

yes but people get their knickers in a twist about the PM using those too, or having planes with Union flags on them, meanwhile our EU neighbours often have entire fleets of aircraft at their disposal and no-one pays it any notice as its just accepted, whilst we have groups arguing over whether its appropriate to have two planes on lease.

anyway, this was an election campaign trip, so it wouldnt have been appropriate to use government resources (ie taxpayer funded) to do it, unless he had government business there as well, so it makes sense to have used a party donors largesse if it was available and it meant he could do PMs questions on the same day in the Commons.

"party donors largesse"

I wouldn't trust Johnson to make the distinction between party business and government business. I wouldn't trust Johnson.

Awavey wrote:

meanwhile our EU neighbours often have (..wafflewaffleblurb...)

You're really obsessed with the EU, aren't you?

no, but maybe you are if that sentence specifically bothered you.

so enlighten us why is it unreasonable to compare what countries, who are still our near geographic neighbours, who we share thousands of years of history with, who are of similar sizes,with similar populations & similar wealth & with similar outlooks and attitudes as a comparison ? just because the UK left the EU doesnt mean they are suddenly out of bounds to compare against.

and they have better train networks and better public transport in general, better roads too often, but when you dig into the detail and find actually they consider air travel for their governments/heads of state, even just to fly around their country to be just one of those things you do and no one moans or complains about it, or about what colour they painted their planes, or really who uses them or for what purposes, thats just a terribly British hangup about it, probably rooted in class envy, as is complaining that someone should have used the train instead of a helicopter, which really has absolutely nothing to do with the environment or cycling at the end of the day imo.

Awavey wrote:

just because the UK left the EU doesnt mean they are suddenly out of bounds to compare against.

It's whataboutery; your only reason to bring it up is to distract from Johnson.

Voters in all countries are perfectly capable of criticising their own politicians, and the defense "but everybody else is also bad" doesn't sound good anywhere.

And you're not "comparing", it's just a claim.

"Such visits are an important part of the democratic process... visit as many places as possible within time constraints".

The spokesperson omitted the last part which should have added context - "as long as they have the billionaire donors to provide them with helicopters and private jets".

Democratic indeed.

AlsoSomniloquism wrote:

As PM, he has access to military aircraft but..

I know the RAF have planes suitable for "VIP" flights, I don't think they have any helicopters set aside for this purpose. Unlike the US air force.

AlsoSomniloquism wrote:

As PM, he has access to military aircraft but as with his holidays, his flat and probably lots of other things still to come out, he seems to accepting "gifts" from all the donors for these things to save "direct" costs to the taxpayer. Of course what the costs to the taxpayers will be indriectly is very hard to work out once they call in the reason for these gifts.

Edit: Although I just realised that if he was "campaigning" he might not be able to use Government resources.

As for the first question, as most travel is pre booked during Covid, I doubt there would be as much disruption although the one carriage would probably have been requsitioned. 

The GE was in December. Train travel had limited spaces due to social distancing, and lots of people travelling for xmas would have made this difficult.

The main helicopter story was less then two weeks ago and the rest was in April? And the GE was before social distancing as it was 2019.