Election Diary

Wilson Mackenzie

THE independent candidate and former boxer will soon be giving bendy buses a run for their money when he embarks on his battle bus tour of London in a 55-foot American Dodge Ram truck, complete with banners and under-car flash lighting.

His campaign slogan - Save Our Children - comes with a pledge to root out gun and knife crime from London's streets within 18 months of taking office. Youth clubs will offer street dancing, gospel choirs, singing, football and cookery classes and those that slip through the net into a life of crime will be punished in boot camps "in far away places".

CAMPAIGN CAPERS

BORIS JOHNSON was confronted with a very well-informed questioner at this week's housing hustings. Sally Gimson, of the Family and Parenting Institute, asked how he would deliver more cheap homes to those in need. Mrs Gimson is a Labour councillor, but Boris was unusually nice to her - she is also the wife of his biographer Andrew Gimson.