KHOODEELAAR! updating report on how our comments this morning have been vindicated by Boris J about turn on CRASSrail levy re Nine Elms...

1720 [1640] Hrs GMT
London
Wednesday 28 October 2009:
Editor © Muhammad Haque.
KHOODEELAAR! TOLD YOU SO!
We said this morning: “Now even Boris J is rushing around looking for any face-saving ploy to haul in as part of the new bid to confess all.” This is confirmed in a report published in the past 90 minutes on the Internet by the pro-Crossrail web site http://www.regen.net. We publish [below] the full report as it has first appeared on that web site.


They run a tricky trade device. The URL linking the piece doesn’t fetch the full texts.. So we reproduce the full texts below.

“Ben Cook, Regen.net, 28 October 2009
London mayor Boris Johnson has announced that developers involved in the regeneration of the Nine Elms area of south London – which stretches from Vauxhall to Battersea Power Station – will be exempt from paying the Crossrail levy.
The Crossrail levy was to be charged on applications for additional office space above 5,000sq ft in London’s “central activities zone” – covering Westminster, parts of Camden, Islington, Hackney, Tower Hamlets, the City, Lambeth, Kensington and Chelsea, and Wandsworth – and the northern Isle of Dogs.
A spokesman for the mayor’s office said it was not yet clear whether the contributions developers would make to the Northern Line extension would be less than, or exceed, the amount paid under the Crossrail levy. Johnson said that the developers of the scheme – which will include 16,000 new homes and create up to 25,000 new jobs, according to Wandsworth Council – will instead be expected to “pay towards” the planned Northern Line extension from Kennington through Nine Elms to Battersea. A spokesman for the Mayor’s office said the method by which the developers would pay for the Northern Line extension was being “worked on”, but he added that it would be “through the planning system, rather than via a business rate”. __Plans for the regeneration of Nine Elms involve the conversion of almost 200 hectares of derelict and underused land into new communities with green open spaces and new transport links, including a pedestrian and cycle bridge linking Nine Elms to Pimlico and the extension of the Northern Line to Battersea. Edward Lister, leader of Wandsworth Council, said: “The announcement is a sign of just how committed the mayor is to securing the vital transport improvements that will ensure the success of the whole project. Rob Tincknell, managing director of Treasury Holdings UK, which will redevelop Battersea Power Station as part of the Nine Elms regeneration, said he was delighted that the mayor has given such a strong affirmation of the importance of the Nine Elms regeneration to the future of LONDON. Johnson plans to extend the Northern Line to Nine Elms using an innovative US-style funding tool called Tax Increment Financing (Tif).__Tif allows a local public body to borrow for capital investment in a designated area by securing the loan against the increases in tax revenue expected to be generated by the development of the infrastructure.”

The piece is confirmation that Boris is caught out in the CRASSrole confusion all of his own making… He is now dropping the draconian and the crass demand for CrossRail levy which he had imposed on all and sundry. The news comes on the same day when another web site has published the furious reaction to CRASSrole-player Boris that ‘businesses’ in Kingston are emitting. Boris truly has been crass. Will he now see sense and drop the crass peddling role? We shall be reporting whether he does or not.

[To be continued]