How the Mayor's vanity project is actually delaying the fight against air pollution

This bus could be a hybrid,
but thanks to Boris it probably wont be.

As I work on Essex Road I have seen the sleek new no. 38 ' Boris' bus driving by from time to time when I get a break from consulting/ operating.
It looks nice enough but knowing the facts I cant but help view it cynically, as a vanity project of our media loving Mayor.
Greens in City Hall have discovered that the money spent on this new bus is delaying the wider fight against life threatening levels of air pollution on our streets.

While TfL claim the new the bus has some good green credentials, they have not released all the test results and there are still questions to be asked as to why this bus is considered such a great improvement. These 8 buses are costing 9.6million and at the same time Boris has quietly dropped his pledge that that all new buses from 2012 onwards would be hybrids, which produce much less air pollution

This year TFL plan to introduce 800 buses, but only 52 will be hybrids, less than last year. If the money hadn't been spent on the new bus we could have a total of 148 hybrids.

I dont think residents of Islington and Hackney will be impressed to hear that their health is being sacrificed for an expensive publicity stunt for the Mayoral campaign. Thanks to research carried out by Islington Greens and Mapping for change we know that people are suffering from respiratory and cardiac diseases in Islington due to levels of air pollution exceeding EU limits and that children are disproportionately affected.
More hybrid buses are a simple step the Mayor can take.

Air pollution is a silent killer: across London more than 4000 people are dying per year, this is a shocking figure and the same as during the 'pea-souper' fogs. Yet we have an incumbant Mayor and his predecessor, Ken Livingstone, who prefer to engage in publicity stunts than to address a devastating health issue.

Yet another example of why London needs more elected Greens, to take principled decisions in the best interests of residents.