Good morning everyone. Good God …good morning everybody, thank you very much.Please, please take your seats,we’ve got a lot to get through. Good morning everybody inManchester, it’s agreat joy to be back here. Not so long ago my friends I…we welcome all sortsofwonderful luminaries to City Hall but not so long ago I welcomed the formerFrench PrimeMinister, Monsieur Alain Juppe to my office in City Hall and hecruised in with his sizeableretinue of very distinguished fellows with theirlegion d’honneur floret and all the rest of it andwe shook hands and had atête a tête and he told me that he was now the Mayor of Bordeaux. Ithink hemay have been Mayor of Bordeaux when he was Prime Minister, it’s the kind ofthingthey do in France – a very good idea in my view. Joke, joke, joke! Andwhat he said … joke! Hesaid that he had the honour of representing, he had239,517 people in Bordeaux and thereforehe had the honour of representing the9th biggest city in France. I got the ball back very firmlyover the net,folks, because I said there were 250,000 French men and women in Londonandtherefore I was the mayor of the 6th biggest French city on earth.
I can’t remember exactly what hesaid then, I think he said something like ‘Tiens!’ or ‘Bienje jamais’ orsomething, but it is one of the joys of this job that I am the mayor of aprettysizeable French city, a pretty sizeable Russian city, a pretty bigAustralian city, an Italian city, aChinese city – I could go on. That is agreat thing about London, it’s a good thing for ourcountry because thatforeign money brings jobs and it fills our restaurants and it puts bums ontheseats of our theatres, helps finance our universities very considerably and itenables Londondevelopers, some of whom I see in this great audience, to embarkon project that otherwisewould be stalled. Am I right? Yes. And it brings abuzz of excitement to the city which also ofcourse attracts investors and yet wehave to recognise that the sheer global charisma ofLondon is putting pressureon Londoners, with average house prices in our city now six timesaverageearnings and for the bottom 25% of earners, the house prices in the bottomquarter arenine times their earnings.
The pressure is really growingand it is intensifying thanks to an entirely home grownphenomenon to which Ialluded at the end of the Olympic and Paralympic Games which tookplace lastyear because you may dimly remember that I prophesied that the athletes thatTeamGP and Paralympics GB had so moved the people of this country to suchparoxysms ofexcitement, I think I said, on the sofas of Britain that they hadnot only inspired a generationbut probably helped to create one as well and likeall my predictions and promises as your Mayoror as the Mayor of many of youhere, I have delivered mes amis, in that GLA Economics now saythat live birthsin London this year will be 136,942 which is more than in any year since1966when England won the World Cup – and the Prime Minister was born I think.
I look around this audience –that means the population is growing very fast and it is goingto hit ninemillion by 2020, possibly ten million by 2031 and I notice when I point thisout topeople that they start to look a bit worn. They’re the older generationand think, all these otherpeople’s children, what jobs are they going to do,where are they going to live and will they bestepping on my toes on the Tube?I want to reassure you first of all that London has been herebefore, we hadnine million in 1911, I think we had nine million in 1939 and the second thing–for once I actually brought it with me thank goodness – the second thing isthat we have a plan.Here it is, the 2020 Vision, and it will ensure that wecreate a city in which no child is left behindor shut out and everybody has achance to make of their lives what they can.
Step number one – and I seriouslycommend this document, it is entirely free on the GLAwebsite, written entirelyby me as well – step number one is to build more homes as I say. Can Ijust askthis audience, how many of you today here in Manchester are lucky enough to beowneroccupiers? Can I ask for a show of hands, is anybody here an owneroccupier? Look, here we go.Who is an owner occupier? There is no disgrace inthat, we believe in the property owningdemocracy and all that kind of thingbut we have to face the reality that for many, manymillions of people, foryoung people in London, for many members of our families, it is nowabsolutelyimpossible to get anywhere near to affording a home and that’s why it isabsolutelyvital that we get on with our programmes of accelerating housebuilding. We have done about55,000 – Rick, how many have we done so far? 55,000so far, give or take it will be around100,000 over two terms.