Boris Johnson: London can lead
Updated on 05 October 2009
London Mayor Boris Johnson tells the opening session of the Tory conference that politicians must "get rid of the nonsense" but keep "the investments essential to the UK economy".
After arriving on stage to the EastEnders theme tune, he told conference delegates in his speech: "The reason I stick up for our capitalist system when times are tight and when public finances are facing a brutal squeeze is that theses companies are not so much a problem as a vital part of the solution. Not just in the jobs they create and the taxes the yield.
"You cannot sort out the deep-seated problems of unemployed young people in London without the help of those firms that could provide work for young people. It is only if we have sensible taxes and light regulation and sensible employment law that businesses will be able to pay the taxes for the things we need to do.
Get rid of the nonsense, but don't chop the investments essential to the UK economy."
He gave an appeal for continued investment for Crossrail and the London underground upgrade.
"If you want to stimulate the Mancunian economy, and if you want to stimulate Leeds and Newcastle, then you invest in London," he said, calling the capital the "motor" of the UK economy.
"If we can keep that economy whirring, then London will lead the UK out of recession just as it did in the 1930s."
Snowcloud: Boris Johnson's speech
Click the images below to generate a full-screen Snowcloud of the speech.
Run the cursor over the words to see how often they appear.
Then click the word to see it in context in both a written transcript and a video of the full speech. You can also skip quickly between all its incidences in the speech.
About Snowclouds
Snowclouds are a Flash application designed by Channel 4 News's senior programme director, Martin Collett.
These interactive word clouds condense the text of a speech into one handy, interactive image. The more frequently a word is used during a speech, the bigger it is displayed. Clicking on the word brings up the transcript of the speech and shows the contexts in which the word was used.
The Snowcloud generator ignores common words such as "and", "the" and "there" to get a clearer picture of the distinct content of the speech.
As well as any word with fewer than three letters, those listed here are ignored by this Snowcloud (not all of the words in the list necessarily cropped up in the speech).
On Thursday the Channel 4 News website will be providing extended live coverage of David Cameron's speech to the Conservative conference, including film extracts, expert analysis and Twitter commentary.
To watch and contribute, go to www.channel4.com/news from midday on 8 October.
