Illustration by John Sadler www.johnsadlerillustration.com 

• THE sweltering Routemaster buses are a mobile reminder of much of what is wrong with our shambles of a democratic system – and no surprise that our chief buffoon Boris Johnson is at the heart of it, (Buses? More like saunas on wheels, September 14).

Back in 2008 he ran for the London mayorship partly on a manifesto of getting rid of the unpopular Ken Livingstone “bendy buses” but, fancying himself as a man of vision, his replacement was all about him and how he loved to make model buses in his spare time.

So he clambered onto the populist nostalgia platform and landed us with a retro-pretend Routemaster, exceed­ingly expensive and needing many subsequent major adjustments because Johnson was as bad at designing buses as he was at governing the country.

I suggest a permanent mobile Boris Bus monument with the man himself at the wheel and written on the side the true cost to us hard-pressed London taxpayers of indulging his narcissism.

I seem to recall he was a fan of messages on the side of buses. Only this one should be accurate.

M FOSTER, WC1