Minister takes on London mayor over bendy-buses clogging up Maltese streets

Transport Minister Austin Gatt has replied to statements made by London mayor Boris Johnson at the Tory party conference today, defending the use of Arriva's articulated buses on the streets of Malta.

London mayor Boris Johnson today hailed the long-awaited departure of bendy-buses from the British capital, telling the Tory conference in Birmingham that Arriva's articulated buses "are now clogging up the streets of Malta."

To the laughter of his audience, a boisterous Johnson paid tribute to his mayorship saying that he had kept all his promises by bringing in new Routemaster buses. "They are the cleanest buses in Europe... We don't just keep our own promises. We keep Labour ones too... the bendy-buses are now clogging up the streets of Malta."

In a statement he issued written in English, Gatt "noted" that Arriva's bendy buses had been the subject of some humour in Johnson's (referred incorrectly as 'Johnston') address to the Tory conference... adding that his remarks had made it to the "Facebook pages of prominent Labour spokesmen here in Malta."

"Quite apart from the fact that this must be the first time in living memory that the MLP has found anything useful to repeat from the British Conservatives, we assure Mayor Johnston [sic] that passengers in Malta appreciate the comfort and the sheer capacity of articulated buses as they comfortably carry in a single bus journey what used to take 3 to 4 buses before," Gatt said.

"By our mathematics, that is considerably less congestion, rather than more. Mayor Johnston's [sic] mathematics will have to work out the considerably higher expense for bespoke buses that London taxpayers have to pay for to replace the transferred bendy buses."

Gatt said articulated buses were hardly an exclusive feature of Maltese roads, since they operate in just about every other city in with high bus passenger numbers.

The 18-metre long buses run some of Malta's main bus routes since public transport was liberalised and British company Arriva took over the operation of the bus network.

London has just ordered 608 Routemaster buses, the biggest order in the factory's history. "The new Routemaster buses are the cleanest, greenest new buses in Europe," Johnson said to a round of applause.

Arriva shipped the same bendy buses over to Malta, to which Johnson had already bid a "final but not fond farewell" when they were removed from London because they couldn't navigate the city's narrow streets.

"These bulky and ungainly monstrosities were always more suitable for the wide open vistas of a Scandinavian airport than for London. I am glad to see the back of them," Johnson had said.