I'll get you, Butler

Boris Johnson has gone postal on Transport for London this morning, accusing them of all sorts of chicanery and political bias. Their heinous crime? Supplying guardian.co.uk with some statistics which make something of a mockery of Johnson's estimates for the costs of putting conductors on a fleet of Routemasters which he wants to replace the hated bendy buses with.

The Guardian should be commended for digging up these numbers, not least because they do make BoJo look like a chancer with a slippery attitude to numbers. His figure of £8 million quid to put conductors on Routemasters is based on the cost of two "heritage" Routemaster routes. Trouble is, those routes don't run all day, and don't run as frequently as routes would need to run to replace bendies. Hence the huge discrepancy between BoJo's £8 million and Ken's £80 million.

We think there's some curiously appropriate about BoJo coming up with dodgy numbers based on heritage routes. It's almost a metaphor for modern Conservatism, isn't it?