nw3 to nyc

Observations on moving my family across the Atlantic

Category Archives: Politics


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Levering for votes

You’d think that a sophisticated city like New York would have a sophisticated system for dealing with elections: no pieces of paper folded up and shoved into antiquated boxes in musty church halls here, you’d think. Err, well you’d be wrong.

“Dented, dinged and dated, New York’s battleship-gray lever voting machines have been hauled out of retirement because the city can’t seem to get the hang of electronic voting.”

This is what the New York Times had to say on in its front cover story in today’s newspaper. Machines from the 1960s have been dusted down, lubricated, given some TLC and shunted off to the 1200 voting locations for tomorrow’s primary elections. The primary elections are to decide who gets the Democratic and the Republican nominations for the race for Mayor and the other election in the city (that’s five Borough Presidents, the Public Advocate, the Comptroller and various City Council seats). You cannot escape the candidates and their supporters as you walk around the city, the number of trees that have died because of election literature must be huge!

The Executive Director of the Board of Elections, Michael Ryan – appointed a month ago –  goes on to say on a more cheery note in the same article:

“The machines have all been tested, and they’re functional. I think that there are naysayers in every walk of life, and some people just like to harp on the darker side of life. We’re a lot more optimistic here about this election coming off, and the election coming off successfully.”

Fingers crossed, eh?


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What is he up to now?

Blimey. I thought old Anthony Weiner had got over his leacherous ways, but apparently not. The press here has been all over the confessions of his sometime ‘sexting’ partner, Suzie Leathers – what a great name, it has to be made up. Seems that he created an alias for himself – Carlos Danger (!) so that he could carry on his pervy ways. I’m not sure whether the UK press would have done what the New York Post did here. Through their Twitter account they published the text ‘conversation’ between Carlos and Suzy. They blacked out the rude words, but you didn’t need to think very much to know what they were. It was soft porn for the masses. Apparently he has a thing about high heels. Naturally there has been intense speculation as to whether he can continue in the race to get the Democrats to nominate him as their candidate for the election for Mayor of New York. So far he is still in, but his campaign manager has legged it, but he’s only 31, so I’m sure he’ll be just fine. It’s hardly comforting when your main man clears off a few weeks for the all important primary election on 10 September. I am quite addicted to following Mr Weiner now, shame I can’t vote.


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An all-perv ticket

Ah, what a great headline on the front page of this week’s New York Observer. ‘Dems brace for an all-perv ticket’. This is reference to two politicians here who have recently tried to resurrect their political careers after some rather dodgy behaviour in their recent pasts. Anthony Weiner is a former New York US Representative who resigned after he sent sexually explicit pictures of himself via Twitter to one of his followers. He is now, two years on, trying to get the democratic nomination to become Mayor of New York and giving Christine Quinn a run for her money. He is also interesting because he is married to Huma Abedin, who is a key aide to Hillary Clinton. There was an article in the New York Times Magazine earlier this year about them, which is worth a read, if you’re interested.

And just this week Eliot Spitzer, former Governor of New York, also put his hat into the ring for the race to become Comptroller of New York State (the chief fiscal officer of the state, responsible for pension funds and payroll amongst other things). His controversy stems from 2008 when he had to resign the Governorship after he was found to have a bit of call girl habit “costing him tens of thousands of dollars in legally questionable transfers” according to the New York Observer. I’m not entirely sure that’s a great CV for a finance post. The Huffington Post confirmed that he had got the required number of signatures to get on the ballot for the democratic primary in September, so someone obviously thinks he can do the job. It’s a hilarious part of this year’s elections and I’m sure will have plenty of food for the headline writers as we get closer to voting day.


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Smoke alarm

Today’s papers are focusing on an announcement made by the New York City Government about plans to increase the age at which you can buy cigarettes from 18 to 21. As a non-smoker, this sounds good to me. Any disincentive to smokers has to be a good thing. I have been surprised at how little smoking you see in New York. In London you would see gaggles of people outside buildings, puffing away during office hours. The smoking ban in pubs and restaurants back in 2007 made a huge difference to anyone who hated coming home stinking of cigarettes. It was a relief not to have to air my clothes on the radiators after a night in the pub. Here, you aren’t allowed to smoke in parks, beaches (not many of those in New York City!) plazas and other public places. The argument here against raising the age for buying cigarettes is all about liberty: the freedom to buy cigarettes when you are old enough to fight for your country, you’re old enough to decide whether it’s a good thing to smoke. On a more political front, the New York Times observed that the announcement made here on Monday about these proposals was fronted by Dr Thomas A Farley (they are big on using the middle initial here) who is the city’s health commissioner and Speaker Christine Quinn. Previously anything health related would have been announced by Mayor Bloomberg. The Times speculates that this is him passing the mantle to Quinn, in her bid to be Mayor. Whatever the truth, the New York Post has the best headlines as ever: “The Cig is Up. Quinn Bill to hike cigarette age to 21”.


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Financing the election

The New York Times produces a fascinating table of how much each candidate for the New York Mayor has raised and spent.

I predicted in an earlier post that Speaker Christine Quinn would get the Democrat nomination, which concludes on 10 September. The golden number is 40, she needs 40 per cent of registered Democrats to vote for her to get the nomination. The papers here are predicting she is pretty close based on various polls. So far she has raised over $6.5 million, nearly double her closest rival, Bill de Blasio. Interestingly they have both spent about the same so far, around $1.1 million.

Unfortunately I can’t get it to look fancy here on this page, but the interactive map is at:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/03/16/nyregion/how-much-the-nyc-mayoral-candidates-have-raised-and-spent.html?_r=0

It’s great though, when the best the New York Post can do is print a photo of Christine Quinn walking to work in her business wear and be critical about the fact she is wearing trainers, like that’s news.


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Going to the candidates debate

“Sitting on a sofa on a Sunday afternoon
Going to the candidates debate
Laugh about it, shout about it
When you’ve got to choose
Ev’ry way you look at it, you lose”

Humming this on my way to the 92Y to see the candidates for this year’s election for New York Mayor. No Simon and Garfunkel, no funny seventies hair or woolly jumpers, but a very white, middle class audience in the Upper East Side of Manhattan on a bitterly cold Thursday night. Sold out auditorium with rich wood panelling and Washington and Jefferson in large gold leaf lettering above the stage. Five Democrats, three Republicans, all men bar one. The formidable Democrat, Christine Quinn, current City Council Speaker oozes confidence, has a hard edge to her tough oratory and splits the audience with her Marmite appeal. The four Democrat guys all kind of merge into one with their opposition to Mayor Bloomberg, his money, his remoteness from the people and his lack of attention to education.

The Republicans are more colourful and interesting. I was interested to see George MacDonald, the guy who set up the DOE Fund, which I’ve written about before. He lives just down the street, it seems and bemoaned the development of the 2nd Avenue subway and the blasts that shake the buildings. He did seem a bit lost at times, not answering the questions but has a real passion for getting the poor and homeless into work and providing affordable housing. Not sure he’s the man for the job, doesn’t seem hard  enough to take the knocks of City Hall. I was intrigued to see John Catsimatidis the owner of Gristedes, the 24 hour supermarket near me. He’s a big guy with a lot of money, the closet thing to Bloomberg in terms of wealth, but no one will be able to spell his name, I certainly struggled here. The other Republican is Joseph Lhota, who previously ran the MTA (NY transit) and came across as the most credible candidate with facts and figures at his fingertips but lacking any charisma.

I learnt that Mayor Bloomberg introduced a ‘bull pen’ into City Hall to emulate a trading floor with him sitting in open plan with all his deputies and aides. I also learnt that New York is a Democrat city but hasn’t elected a Democrat Mayor for 20 years. After tonight, I predict, based on very little and gazing into crystal ball,  that Christine Quinn will get the Democrat nomination, Joseph Lhota will get the Republican nomination and through sheer force of character and ability to talk, Quinn will win. Let’s wait and see, there’s 8 months to go.


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Bloomberg billions

I’ve been reading about Michael Bloomberg, the Mayor of New York. He is worth $25 billion! Blimey. Nice to see that he declined his salary and takes a notional dollar in payment.  He made his cash in financial information. He has just given Johns Hopkins University a multi million dollar gift which takes the total he has donated to his alma mater over $1 billion. Incredible isn’t it? Bill Gates had already given away $28 billion by 2007 and says he will give away 95 per cent of his fortune, so it looks like he’ll be donating many more billions over the years, given he’s only 57. Philanthropy is big here and goes back a long way. There’s Andrew Carnegie, born in Scotland in the 19th  Century, but who spent most of his life in the US, who gave away $350 million by the time he died in 1919, that’s $4.7 billion in today’s money. He gave loads to UK libraries, including a dozen built in London. Other big names include the Mellon family, the Rockefellers (not just for Christmas!) and Stanford. Most of their wealth seems to have gone to higher education and it’s no coincidence that universities here have massive endowments built up over centuries. The Mayor is up for re election later this year and it’s unlikely that Bloomberg would be able to run for a fourth time having changed the laws last time so that he could have a third go. I doubt the new Mayor will have quite so much cash, but you never know!


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American Wife

Not me, but the title of a book I have just finished. American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld was published in 2008 to great critical acclaim. Reading it in our New York apartment, it seems a good book to start our time here. The story of a fictional (but loosely based on Laura Bush) First Lady, who looks back on her life and how she got to the White House from her humble Wisconsin beginnings. I enjoyed it, it’s got a nice tone to it and although I was a bit surprised that the rise of Charlie Blackwell to State Governor and then President was covered in a few pages of the 600 page book – you’d think it was a fairly important plot line. I compare the experience of Alice Blackwell, fictional First Lady to the current First Lady, Michelle Obama. She is a hugely impressive woman: she went to Princeton (as does the fictional President in the American Wife) and Harvard Law School and had a very successful legal career before entering the White House in 2008. The First Lady in American Wife was a librarian who gave up her job when she got married – how life has changed for women now, not that I’m knocking being a librarian, of course. Last Sunday’s New York Times got its priorities right and dissected the First Lady’s wardrobe, extolling her preference for sleeveless dresses (well, she has the arms, no bingo wings there) and a fondness of Michael Kors (no longer on Project Runway’s judging panel, for anyone interested, but now proud owner of massive store on London’s Regent Street). Good to see the US press is as obsessed with high profile women’s wardrobes as they are in the UK – I think of Kate Middleton in particular (let’s see what her pregnancy wardrobe brings us).  Samantha Cameron by way of contrast, as the UK’s First Lady, gets nowhere near as much attention as the First Lady in the US and she’s more stylish than all of them.

 

 


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A tale of two libraries

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” Dickens may have written one of the most well known opening lines in English literature when he published A Tale of Two Cities in 1859, but it was an American writer, Mark Twain, who took a trip to NW10 (just over the border from NW3) in 1900 and opened Kensal Rise Library. In 2012, the local community is fighting to keep the library as a community asset after Brent Council withdrew library services from the building owned by All Souls College, Oxford, in a bid to save money (I note that in today’s local government finance settlement, Brent’s grant will reduce by a mere 0.5%). I checked in on progress with Kensal Rise Library’s local campaign and was heartened to see that All Souls will allow the community to use 1500 square feet of space for a library in perpetuity. Kind, but they will make a lot of money out of the sale of flats above that space when it’s sold to developers. The reason I write about this is the contrast with NYC. Today the New York Public Library published its plans to develop the iconic 101 year old building on 42nd Street and spend over $150 million to bring it up to date and, for the first time, lend books to the public (currently only branches do this). Shutting down and selling the buildings housing two other libraries and using capital money provided by New York City, a modern lending library will open to the public in 2018. I was saddened by the closure of public libraries in the UK and in NW3 the community rallied round and brought the Heath, Belsize and Chalk Farm libraries into the modern age of community resources, run by local people for local people. I just hope they survive past 2018 when New York opens its famous public library, after its extensive programme of works, run by the city for the city.