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NIKESH ARORA: Good morning, everybody.
Welcome back.
Did you guys have a good time last night?
You guys sounds like you did.
Yesterday we talked about lots of different issues in
terms of world leadership.
We learned about Ubuntu from Archbishop Tutu, and we also
learned that we learned nothing from our experiences.
I sort of kind of find that true.
For the last five years, I've been doing Zeitgeist and every
time, I promise myself I will not stay up late.
Clearly I've not learned from my experience.
Today we're going to talk about leading from the front.
We're going to talk about execution.
We're going to talk about, how do we get there?
I've done a lot apparently We're going to talk to a lot of
trailblazers who have actually set their minds and hearts
doing something and gotten it done.
We'll talk about innovation and about pushing boundaries
and blazing trails.
In that context, there is no one better to lead us off in
terms of blazing a trail than our mayor of London, Boris
Johnson, who's here.
He's had a long and illustrious media career.
He was the editor of the Spectator but at the same
time, he managed to start a career in politics.
As a person who's trying to figure out how to keep my one
job, I'm very curious to understand how you can do both
of those, Boris, so I'm looking forward to hearing from you.
As the elected leader of one of the largest and most diverse
cities in the world -- and my favorite city, despite me
having moved to San Francisco, Boris has proven himself to be
different, inspiring and one of the most capable leaders
in getting things done.
So with that, Boris, I'd love for you to come take the stage.
BORIS JOHNSON: Thank you very much, Nikesh.
Good morning, good morning Google executives.
And actually, my speech was printed off by your wonderful
Gemma, your associate Gemma this morning.
She corrected my opening lines, quite rightly,
before she handed it to me.
I want to add, it's not just Google executives, it is of
course business leaders of all cutting edge of
businesses around Europe.
I congratulate you, of course, on choosing this
fantastic venue, which is very near London.
It is done very well.
It's almost that, folks, but close.
You did exactly the right thing because London -- Google
executives and leaders will come here and technology in
London -- as I need hardly tell you-- is the home of technology
innovation, isn't it?
People forget this.
We're a great artistic, cultural, media center,
financial center -- but people forget.
But it was London that gave the world so many of
the critical inventions upon which we now rely.
Penicillin.
Penicillin?
Penicillin was invented in Parade Street.
Absolutely.
Which is a pretty useful thing to have for a night out on
Parade Street, I can tell you.
The Maxim gun.
Where do you think the Maxim gun was invented, folks?
The Maxim gun was invented in Hatton Garden.
Anybody know where the first television set was turned on?
You do?
Sorry.
Someone said Frith Street.
Give that man a [INAUDIBLE].
Frith Street -- actually, it was my associate,
Dan Ritterband.
Frith Street.
Frith Street in Soho, above what is now the bar Italia.
And of course the theory-- what was the most important
scientific theory of the last 200 years?
Even after your heavy night last night you must be able to
identify the most important scientific doctrine of the
last 200 years-- thank you.
Where was the theory of evolution first propounded?
Where do you think it was?
What?
No, not -- sorry.
In which London borough did Charles Darwin have
his brilliant insight?
Anybody know?
Come on, Google.
It was of course the great London borough of Bromley I
hope very much in the course of your travels you visit, you get
away from this place-- you visit not just the
[UNINTELLIGIBLE]
of London but you visit all the outer London boroughs.
And you will see that London is the greenest, most
beautiful city on earth.
And when you meet the people of Bromley-- as I very much hope
you do-- and you behold their physical and intellectual
gifts, you will understand how Darwin came up with the theory
of natural selection and the survival of the fittest,
ladies and gentlemen.
And of course, it was London-- I have absolutely no hesitation
to claim this -- it was London, which was the birthplace of Sir
Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the internet-- therefore we
claim paternity of the internet, that great engine of
human progress and happiness whose cash generating
potential, I think it would be fair to say, brings
us here today.
And it's thanks to London born Sir Tim that our children spend
so many blissful hours as they do in front of YouTube and
YourFace and MyPlace and all the rest of it.
And thanks to Google that all if our sentient adults spent so
many-- so much of our lives grazing absolutely like
ruminants on this vast Serengeti of the web.
And I congratulate you on what you do.
It's fantastic and I think most of us are really only just
beginning, quite seriously, to understand the vast potential
of this device for social, cultural, material,
intellectual enrichment.
That's why we in City Hall are doing our best to keep up.
We're bobbing in your wake, you at Google.
We've got a project called Wi-Fi London so that every lamp
post, every bus stop will one day-- very soon, before the
2012 Olympics, be wi-fi enabled.
But can I ask, actually, since I've got a large captive
audience, I want to ask a question.
How many of you-- roughly speaking, I can't see you all--
how many of you, roughly speaking, are in favor of us
putting wi-fi, putting mobile telephones on the underground
system, on the tube?
And how many are against on the grounds of people endlessly
shouting in your ear about how they're on the train?
Anybody against?
I'm delighted to see a few.
That's pretty good.
So you're overwhelmingly in favor.
We'll have to push forward progress here.
Normally our focus groups produce a resounding
negative, but you are in the cutting edge line.
By the way, I'm sure that you are right.
And that's why we are doing everything we can to get in, to
try to promote new technology.
We've got a project called London data store so that
entrepreneurs can take all the information that we
have in the public domain.
We're putting it all out there for you.
It's fantastic, and we're forgoing probably huge revenue
opportunities ourselves so that the public can benefit from it.
I'm was delighted to see just before I came out to you that
some bright spark has come up with an iPhone app for our
forthcoming bike hire scheme.
So that you'll not only be able to tell where the nearest cycle
hire docking station is, you'll also be able to tell how
many bikes the local yobbos have left there for you.
And that's a very, very important development.
And I think for growing-- if you think about the bike hire
scheme, think about the Urban Rome projects we're doing.
We're planting thousands more trees.
We have more electric vehicles now in London
than anywhere else.
Some of you may have seen pictures in the papers this
morning of a new hop on, hop off very, very clean, green
lightweight new generation Routemaster bus.
We're doing lots and lots of things in the run up to 2012
that will improve the quality of life for huge numbers
of people in the city.
But today I really want to talk not so much about those people
who are already benefiting so hugely from the information
technology revolution.
I want to talk about the people who are really older and
poorer-- and information poorer and who don't go online, who
don't use Facebook, who don't have iPhone and who, according
to all the surveys, feel increasingly isolated and
mistrustful of their neighbors-- partly as a result
of the huge demographic changes that they have experienced in
their lifetimes, many of whom lived in east London in some of
the poorest boroughs in our country.
I want this morning to talk about my ambition for
convergence in this city, in London-- between old and
young, between rich and poor, between east and west-- east
London and west London.
And the huge commercial advantages that I think -- and
opportunities that I think this offers-- because there is too
much loneliness and there is too much division in our city.
And that's why we are thinking of some of the things that we
can do to get people out of their homes and do
things together.
We're at the risk of embarrassing them and having a
cultural forced jollity-- which of course, the British have a
horror of, but we've got to do it anyway, I think.
We are promoting things like the big lunch.
Last year 150 thousand Londoners sat down together in
our fresco lunches across the city, meeting their neighbors
for the first time.
And as Nick Craig and David Cameron are discovering, once
you get over the initial embarrassment of meeting people
for the first time and talking the first time, it can be
thoroughly worthwhile.
It takes awhile for all of us to break down our natural
reserve and I think it is keeping people in isolation
and we do want to tackle it and we want to go further.
Next week-- and I'm trying to encourage local councils to
sponsor a fate week or a bracketed series of weekends--
in which we say to the councils, go easy on some of
the form filling, the bureaucracy and the hysterical
CRB checks and all the rest of it.
Throw the streets open.
Throw the supermarket car parks open if you possibly can to
street parties, to faiths, to charitable events of all kinds
to bring people together.
And those are some of the things that obviously
we want to do in the next couple of years.
But of course, there's one huge thing, one massive event that
has a colossal potential to unite our city.
What am I thinking of?
The huge, huge potential for these Olympics games to be a
force for social good, getting people to volunteer, getting
people to do things for their city, for their neighborhood
and of course, it is a staggering force for change.
And the genius of the London Olympics is that we're doing it
very differently from the way they did it in Athens or
Sydney or Barcelona.
That's the whole objective.
We want to use these to soothe this great beast and use
it to drive change and improvement in the city.
And we are therefore holding these games in what was and
what is still the most deprived part of London-- but in the
area which has the greatest potential for growth
and for renewal.
[UNINTELLIGIBLE], Tower Hamlets, the whole Thames
gateway area-- these are areas with among the lowest skill
levels, the highest child poverty, the lowest life
expectancy rates in the country.
And of course it wasn't always this way.
Because this part of London was once the great beating heart
of the imperial British economy, the world economy.
If Britain was the workshop of the world, this was where the
raw materials were unloaded and it was the scene of vibrant
commercial activity and innovation and it was in the
Thames Gateway in east London that we invented-- I'm always
claiming these things but it's true-- the world's first long
distance electric power station, the first industrial
paper making, the first dock railway, the first UK oil
shipments, the first reliable cement production and of
course, everything arrived in London, in this great city,
factory-- everything arrived here by boat.
Norwegian timber to Caribbean sugar to spice from-- from
wherever spice came from and of course, everything left by
boat, having being turned by British manufacturing industry
into items of considerably more value-- which was sold at a
great profit to the rest of the world.
And of course, over the centuries, the boats grew
bigger and bigger-- and that was basically the problem
because the river ultimately could not cope with the scale
of the boats and congestion became unbearable as I
experienced this morning on my way out of London.
The condition became unbearable and in the end, by the 60s, you
had a situation in which places like Dover, Felixstowe, were
able to handle containerization in a way that London wasn't
and by 1969, we had to close the first docks.
We closed Saint Catherine's docks.
By the 80s, it was all over for London's docklands.
Of course, there were catastrophic economic
consequences.
By 1981, the workforce of Tower Hamlets had shrunk
from an interwar high of 210,000 to 81,000.
and with the closure of the docks, the east end began a
period of decline from which it is only now emerging.
But my point to you this morning is that it is emerging
from that period of decline and it represents a
sensational opportunity.
It began of course with Canary Wharf, an efflorescence of the
Big *** in financial services, astonishing banking fuel
developments in the old docks on the Isle of Dogs.
It continues now with the O2 Center, the biggest, most
successful live music center venue in the world.
The XL, which is now opening phase two of course and is one
of the biggest exhibition centers already in Europe.
If you add on the Olympics sites with 8,000 thousand high
quality homes, the Westfield shopping complex in
Stratford, the biggest such complex in the UK.
The Stratford railway hub, the best connected railway hub
in the whole of the UK.
You can start to see a change in the narrative and you can
start to see that the story of London is about a city that is
in the process of rebalancing and reorienting
towards the east.
And I think we've learned two important lessons about how to
handle this in the last 30 years and the first is not to
persist in the romantic delusion that you can recreate
exactly the same kind of manufacturing jobs
that used to exist.
You can't do that.
You can't wait for the old economy to return.
But what you can do is get the infrastructure right for the
new economy to begin and that's why it's so impatient, I
believe, that the new government is committed to
crossrail-- as I think they said the other day.
Did you pick that up?
I did.
That's why we are pushing ahead with plans that will greatly
increase the connectivity of east London.
We're expanding the [UNINTELLIGIBLE]
railway by 50%, a similar expedient of adding one car
to every two car train.
We put in a one billion pound new east London line connecting
Hackey and the city Canary Wharf and Croydon in a way
that's never been linked up before.
We have plans in our transport strategy to put in a new tunnel
across the Thames, under the Thames at Silvertown, and then
a further link at Gallions Reach.
And all the history of London and particularly of east London
teaches us that if you put in the transport links, then
the jobs will follow.
Everybody who tried to get Canary Wharf in the late
1980s -- anybody working Canary Wharf in the 80s?
Do you remember when we went entirely dependent on one
single puttering DNR train?
We can't make that mistake again.
You put the transport links in first and the jobs will follow.
We're thinking particularly of the potential of the area-- if
you imagine a bow going south from the Olympic Park and then
east across the royals-- we're thinking particularly of the
potential of that area to generate new, green
technology jobs.
I'm going to be making more announcements about investments
that we're expecting in that area later this year.
I'll add in one other thought-- which is in view of the new
coalition government's decision not just to halt expansion at
Heathrow but at all airports across the southeast
of England.
In view of what I believe is the continuing need of the UK
economy for aviation and the inevitability of an increase in
demand for aviation, I do think myself that it is time-- it
would be irresponsible of us not to look at the potential
for a 24 hour, quieter, more environmentally friendly long
term aviation solution in the Thames estuary at last enabling
the UK economy to respond to the challenge of [? Shippo ?]
and Charles DeGaulle and Frankfort.
And that development would of course have colossal
implications for the east London and for the whole
shape of the London economy.
Ladies and gentlemen, I think you've probably heard
quite enough from me.
I think it goes without saying-- I'm the mayor of
London; I would say this-- I think London is already the
greatest city on Earth.
I'm not going to leave the stage yet.
I think London is already the greatest city on Earth.
It is not only-- I think I demonstrated already-- is not
only the home of evolution and the internet and the trouser
press and Heaven knows what-- it is also the cultural and
artistic capital of the world.
Like I said already, we have twice as many--
more museums in Paris.
Twice as many book shops as New York.
And it rains more in Rome.
It does.
But also-- my message to you today is that if we meet these
challenges now and we continue to put the right infrastructure
into our city and particularly in transport infrastructure in
east London, then we have a chance to harness the Olympics
as a way of driving change and improvement throughout the
city-- but above all, in rebalancing London, giving hope
to communities that have been historically deprived and
giving the opportunity to great, farsighted firms like
Google and others to invest in what was once the great
commercial heart of the world.
Thank you very much.
BORIS JOHNSON: What do you want to do now?
What happens now?
NIKESH ARORA: We're going to ask you questions.
BORIS JOHNSON: You're going to ask me questions.
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
NIKESH ARORA: These people are going to think about questions,
but let's talk about Boris as a person.
These are all people who want to learn how to get inspired
and all these things.
So what inspires you?
What gets you up in the morning on your bike?
BORIS JOHNSON: I suppose it's curiosity, isn't it?
Curiosity and-- I'm a classicist.
That's what I am.
I'm a classicist.
I love studying ancient history and ancient civilizations.
NIKESH ARORA: That's why you have all these facts
about London in the past.
BORIS JOHNSON: Yeah, I'm talking about 2,000 thousand
years ago-- no mind 200 years ago.
And I suppose what I-- what I really am, I'm a frustrated--
I'm a journalist who kind of drifted into politics in a fit
of midlife crisis, which happens to all of us.
I felt I was being endlessly critical of politicians and I
wasn't doing enough to put my-- what's the word-- I'm trying
to think of a non-profane way of expressing this.
I wasn't risking anything myself.
I wasn't developing a point of view and defending it.
I didn't have a program.
All I was doing was attacking them.
I was trying to kick over their sandcastles, not building
anything and I thought how pathetic that was.
I admire journalists very much-- I say with
journalists in the room.
I've taken the precaution of still being a journalist in the
sense that I haven't entirely decommissioned my weapons and I
still write for the Daily Telegram and all
the rest of it.
That was my-- I suppose it was a kind of glorified midlife
crisis and I also thought that the other guy couldn't
endlessly be mayor of London.
Someone else had to have a go.
NIKESH ARORA: Now do you believe there are a bunch
of journalists trying to kick your sandcastles?
BORIS JOHNSON: Yes, they do.
The more I witness- the more I study it-- it's
very, very healthy.
It's got to be done.
NIKESH ARORA: [UNINTELLIGIBLE]
BORIS JOHNSON: No, no, no.
I believe it.
Obviously you feel very resentful sometimes.
You think they misunderstand things.
We produced this beautiful bus yesterday.
Beautiful, fantastic thing.
Someone was complaining about it, saying it
had two staircases.
It's going to be fantastic convenience for the
traveling public.
But I couldn't persuade him at all.
He was absolutely full of rot and scorn for the new bus.
I think it'll be beautiful.
It's exactly what the city needs.
There may be people here who think it's too expensive.
Let me point out-- the new bus will be no more expensive than
the current hybrid and it will bring back the hop on, hop off
feature that we used to love.
NIKESH ARORA: But you were never like that.
You were never like that kind of journalist.
BORIS JOHNSON: Yes, I was.
I was.
I have to confess to you that I-- that was one of the reasons
that I was overcome by this feeling of self-reproach
because I did spend so much of my time beating up politicians
in print and I have to admit that I--
NIKESH ARORA: Well, yesterday we had a reformed lawyer here.
Today we have a reformed journalist.
That's good to hear.
BORIS JOHNSON: [UNINTELLIGIBLE]
NIKESH ARORA: So let's talk about London.
Let's talk about London versus you talked about Frankfurt,
Paris, Rome, et cetera.
So what's your vision for the city apart from the Olympics?
This is all business people.
They want to hear about, why is it going to be less
expensive to live in London?
BORIS JOHNSON: It already is less expensive-- I mean,
thanks to this government's magnificent devaluation of
the pound-- let me tell you.
Let me tell you.
I mean, you're probably far too sophisticated to eat Big Macs,
you guys-- but a Big Mac is now cheaper on the streets of
London than it is, I think, in Israel, in Turkey, in the
Ukraine-- just about anywhere.
The rest of Europe.
London represents sensational value.
The point about London-- let me tell you why London-- I think I
tried to give a vague indication of why I think the
east of London in particular represents sensational
opportunities, but the city as a whole is very different from
the rest-- from capital cities in the rest of Europe-- largely
because we defeated Napoleon in 1815.
After that, there was no real-- apart from the Luftwaffe,
there's no real threat to the city so it did not have to
restrict itself behind very narrow walls, right?
The british people, London population, became accustomed
to having very substantial houses and very substantial
gardens and it moved onwards and outwards in a great
suburban Victorian sprawl.
And so you have a huge garden city that is very unlike many
other cities in Europe and it is full of potential for
development and investment without wrecking that
fundamental character.
It's also therefore an extremely agreeable
place to live.
We have a wonderful mass transit system which means you
can move around despite its sparse size-- 656 square miles.
In spite of its sparse size, you can move
around very easily.
What else-- do you want the full 45 minute speech
in praise of London?
NIKESH ARORA: These guys have to be here until 10 o'clock
listening to you so you've got to make sure-- two years ago,
people would unequivocally say this is the financial
capital of the world.
Given all this financial crisis we've been through, it doesn't
seem to be a nice badge of honor anymore.
BORIS JOHNSON: Look, I'm unashamed-- perhaps I
should have made more of that in my speech.
I'm an unashamed defender of and believer in the strength
and importance of financial services in this city.
It's absolutely vital to the UK economy and it's vital--
financial services contribute 9% of British GDP,
13% of value-added.
I absolutely depricate-- I think it's completely nuts for
people to set out as a matter of public policy to attack
financial services in our city.
I've talked a lot about rebalancing the London economy.
Whatever you do, you won't boost manufacturing in this
country if you undermine financial services.
You won't drive job growth in any other sector if you
try and bash the bankers.
It's a complete fallacy.
Obviously there have been huge mistakes and grotesque errors
by the bankers-- who not all of them have paid, in my
view, a sufficient price.
Certainly, looking at some of them and the continuing
culture of bonuses, there are things to criticize.
I'm not going to deny that.
There are things to criticize.
NIKESH ARORA: Tell us more.
What should we be beating them up four?
BORIS JOHNSON: Well, I think they took risks that they must
have realized deep in their bones were not going to be a
good thing either for their clients of for-- look at there.
I'm almost being careful what I say.
NIKESH ARORA: I'm trying to get you to say things.
BORIS JOHNSON: I think I've said quite a lot.
If you're trying to get me to say something incautious--
NIKESH ARORA: Not at all.
You're a trained journalist.
You would never do that.
BORIS JOHNSON: If you look at some of the products they
were selling, to put it one way, in the knowledge--
NIKESH ARORA: Were they actually selling products?
BORIS JOHNSON: Whatever they were doing.
Advertising, or flogging.
And the knowledge that they were vitiated.
Anyway, you know the bank I'm talking about.
It doesn't look good.
And we don't want that kind of thing to happen again.
But what you don't do is set out active-- we're going to
need a great city where people can raise capital
in an efficient way.
Businesses such as the ones represented in this room are
going to need very, very intelligent and mathematically
gifted bankers to help them raise sources of finance
in order to expand your enterprise, aren't you?
London is a convenient place to do that and I'm going to
continue to protect and defend that industry.
NIKESH ARORA: So now on that topic, you've operated in
an environment where the government has slightly
different views than you did.
Now you have a new government, which is hopefully more
aligned with your views.
How is that going to change life?
BORIS JOHNSON: Obviously I'm delighted that we have this
wonderful new coalition.
I'm very optimistic about the coalition, by the way.
I think it's going to survive.
I think it's got legs.
It'll be fine.
Neither side--
NIKESH ARORA: Twice as many legs.
BORIS JOHNSON: Twice as many legs.
A beast.
It's a Prius.
It's like a hybrid.
You've got some brilliant Tory petrol and then every so
often it will switch into silence [UNINTELLIGIBLE]
I It's a wonderful new thing.
I think it will do fine.
Neither side-- neither the Tories nor the Lib-Dems have
any interest in bringing down the temple.
They want to keep the thing moving alone.
Of course I get on very well with my friends and colleagues
in [UNINTELLIGIBLE]
I get on very well with Nick Clegg, and others.
But my job is to speak up for London, right?
So if there are areas where I think they're making
a mistake, then I will not hesitate to say so.
NIKESH ARORA: Well, we have time if we want to do quick
questions from the audience, if you guys have a
question or two.
There we go.
AUDIENCE: [UNINTELLIGIBLE]
from the Netherlands.
I've got a question.
With the recent developments of UK politics, which is like the
renaissance of politics where you see this-- yeah-- going
dutch with Nick Clegg and coalition--
BORIS JOHNSON: He is probably dutch, I think.
AUDIENCE: Yeah, hus mother is dutch.
He is dutch.
I'm dutch.
I was just wondering, what are you going to do with the city
of London to follow this new trend?
Are we going to see windmills, a million wide bikes,
coffee shops maybe?
BORIS JOHNSON: I think I've already said-- as I think I
already-- if you were listening very attentively, I was
proposing to reclaim some of the sea.
AUDIENCE: Exactly.
I Is that all you can do?
BORIS JOHNSON: That's as far as I'm going.
NIKESH ARORA: Thank you.
Anybody else?
Good.
AUDIENCE: Boris, hi.
You can tell from my accent, I'm a Londoner.
I'm Jim [? Brigton ?]
from [INAUDIBLE]
Marketing.
I'm a Londoner.
I live in London.
I work in London.
I've paid millions of pounds of tax in London and I'm sure I'm
going to pay a lot of tax going forward.
And I'm very, very excited about the Olympic games
coming to London.
Given my Londonness, my taxes-- do I get first dibs on x
tickets for me and my family?
BORIS JOHNSON: The answer is yes and no.
I'm in the process of doing a deal with [UNINTELLIGIBLE], the
details which I cannot divulge, but there will of course-- as I
said repeatedly, there will be a huge effort to make sure we
get a significant quantity of London kids to see the games.
Listen, folks.
Anybody not from London-- bear in mind, London is-- that's the
right thing for London kids because this gentleman is
paying in his taxes 38 p a week, 38 p a week he's paying
for the Olympic games-- it's a lot of money and I do think
it's right that Londoners should get some recognition of
their contribution-- but I do make you this pledge.
You won't be paying any more.
AUDIENCE: Thank you, I think.
NIKESH ARORA: You have one last question?
AUDIENCE: Morning.
Do you have any plans to use the river more
for public transport?
BORIS JOHNSON: The answer is yes.
And river transport is great.
River traffic has greatly increased in the last couple of
years but-- I'm going to be honest with you and say, it's
worth studying the history of river transport in London
over the last 100 years.
Basically ever since they invented the internal
combustion engine, the bus and the tube-- it's been very, very
difficult to make it pay and the public taxpayer can sink
phenomenal sums in the river without really driving a huge
amount of transport on it and it's proved difficult to get
commercial operators to take a very big hit on it.
But what we've done is what-- improving a lot of the piers.
We are giving very considerable subsidies now to river
transport and we have oysterized the river.
Do you know what I mean by an oyster card?
There you go.
That one of the first things we did.
We made it possible for you to use your oyster card on the
river and you can swipe on and swipe off.
And furthermore, to all you Google fiends-- you should
know-- very, very important detail which I just
remembered-- we have made it possible on all boats, on all
piers-- are now wi-fi negotiable, accessible.
You can get Google on the river.
AUDIENCE: So has it reached capacity or have you plans
to expand it further?
BORIS JOHNSON: It will expand further.
I don't want to sound negative about this.
I'm very. very positive about it.
There's got to be a due element of caution about this because
it is possible to go-- to sink huge sums of money into it and
not actually generate much more than the traffic of an
average bus route.
But we are going to expand it and we're particularly going
to be using the Olympics games as a way of getting
people excited by it.
It will be many more-- we're already seeing a
big increase in traffic.
You will see more boats, particularly conveying people
to the Olympics games.
AUDIENCE: Because it's one of the loveliest ways
of seeing the city.
BORIS JOHNSON: It is and I'm delighted you support it and
perhaps you should be one of our sort of [UNINTELLIGIBLE]
one of our ambassadors for the river.
We are publicizing it.
We're doing much more to commend it to the to the public
but-- I feel terribly negative saying this-- there's a limited
amount of public money of sackfuls of five pound notes
that I can take and pour into the river Thames.
Wonderful, wonderful artery that it potentially is.
NIKESH ARORA: Well, thank you very much for your time, Boris.
Thank you.