Category: Ex-Mayor Livingstone

I have tried to devote some time to other things today after having spent too much time on my Mayor’s stooges story during the previous two days. I spent a large part of Thursday and most of Friday afternoon checking out the backgrounds of the Mayor’s chorus. It was strangely fascinating but time comsuming.

Jonathan Hoffman points out today on the Harry’s Place blog that 16 of these signatories claim to represent charities which according to Charity Commission guidance “must not support a political party or candidate”.

48. Following the principles, it is acceptable for a charity to advocate support for a particular policy, even if that policy solution is advocated by a political party or candidate, providing the policy is in furtherance of the charity’s purposes. However a charity must not support a political party or candidate.

The story was well covered on other blogs. Thanks to Iain Dale and Tim Mongomerie (ConservativeHome) for linking to it.

True to form the Mayor has gone big on celebrating New Year after ignoring Christmas. Apparently he spent more than ever on his pre-election firework display, some £1.3 million. According to the Mayor’s own count some 700,000 came out to play last night.

The fireworks were not the only cost of the evening. Add in the free travel, a bus journey costs 87p on average and a Tube journey costs £2.06 on average (see numbers here), allow for extra overtime/unsocial hours payments, and we are talking another couple of million. I’m not sure what the policing costs, again with substantial overtime/unsocial hours payments, might be but £1.5 million would not be a wild guess I suspect. You pretty quickly get to a total bill of £5 million. I can feel a couple of letters coming on.

I have been to one of these displays in the past and did enjoy it on the whole although I was a bit freaked out by the (lack of) crowd control on Westminster Bridge. I can’t help feeling that a more entrepreneurial mayor could get this thing sponsored and put on a good show without just forking out lots of cash on yet another of his bread and circuses style extravaganzas.

At least I guess this is what the Mayor and our Prime Minister thinks. I was amused to see this piece on the Tameside Eye blog pointing out that Gordon Brown managed to do Diwali and Eid greetings earlier this year but failed to mention Christmas on the Number 10 website. The same thought occurred to me in respect of the Mayor just before Christmas.

There was a silly video of about 5 million people and a cherry picker erecting a Christmas tree outside No 10. The Burning Our Money blog doesn’t think much of this use of public funds.

I guess the PM might argue that it is not his place to usurp the Queen’s traditional Christmas message – if this is his case he might have spelt it out. The Mayor can’t really hide behind this argument. His Christmas Eve front page, click to enlarge below, fails to mention Christmas and is instead full of self serving rubbish about emissions and counter attacks against the Evening Standard’s Andrew Gilligan.

On the 19th September the Mayor said:

It gives me great pleasure to extend my special greetings to London’s Muslims on the occasion of Eid-ul-Fitr, as they mark the end of Ramadan.

On 8th October the Mayor said:

Diwali is an important occasion for London’s Hindus, Sikhs and Jains, and represents the power of good to triumph over evil a theme that has relevance for all of London’s communities, because it signifies the value of co-operation and mutual respect between peoples of differing faiths and backgrounds. On this joyous occasion, I wish everyone a happy and prosperous Diwali.

On 26th November the Mayor said:

The lighting of the Trafalgar Square Christmas tree signifies the start of Christmas for many people in London. I’m looking forward to seeing lots of visitors to the square come along to hear the carols during December and help raise money for good causes.

The pleasure and joy previously professed by the Mayor for minority festivals seems to be strangely absent when it comes to the Christian Christmas festival. All of a sudden there is no mention of religion it is just an opportunity to raise some cash for charity.

The Mayor is as we know a big kidder and serial bender of the truth. It appears that after this year’s fares “freeze” (see previous posting) on public transport it is due to last into next year too. In an answer to a question

How much do you expect tube fares to increase in the year after the mayoral election?

from One London (ex-UKIP) Assembly Member Damian Hockney on 12th December the Mayor said:

I intend to freeze Tube fares in real terms in 2009.

We know what the Mayor means by real terms. He means increasing in line with the retail price index.

RPI was as high as 4.8% in March of this year see here.

Back in August I showed how TfL has been runing a structural deficit of £1.6 billion for the last 4 years so there is no way that the Mayor can afford to be generous with fares. All he can do is make out he is being generous with fares.

Today the Standard is all over an organisation called South London Green Badge Taxi School which seems to have embezzled £350K of public money.

Yet again the Mayor’s £117K Police and Equalities advisor, Lee Jasper, is at the centre of the scandal.

Apparently local Labour MP, Kate Hoey, asked the Met to investigate last night.

The scandal even seem to implicate previous Labour London mayoral candidate Frank Dobson’s son in what looks like a bribe.

This is the third of three big scandals, all with Jasper’s dabs on them, that Gilligan has uncovered in as many weeks. First it was Brixton Base, then it was Diversity International and now this. It looks like Jasper and the LDA is rotten to the core.

The Mayor and TfL have overachieved again. They have spent more, obfuscated more and spun more. I am talking about the Tour de France Grand Depart.

TfL have now written to confirm the overall bill for this boondoggle – £10.5 million. Their letter was dated 30th November but got lost in my in tray for a couple of weeks whilst we coped with the arrival of a new baby. It was a reply to my letter of 16th October. Six weeks to put the line items from a set of project accounts in a letter.

You can only assume that this response took so long because the contents were not very attractive. Funny how they lost my original letter of 2nd August too. I also wrote for the third time and telephoned on 29th November and they finally put pen to paper the next day. Whew!

The £10.5 million owned up to now stands in stark contrast to the £3.8 million figure, bad enough in itself, given by TfL to the Evening Standard. It is clear that TfL comprehensively duped Ross Lydall of the Evening Standard in November, see previous posting. TfL issued a press release on 28th November highlighting the supposed benefits of the Grand Depart. The same day this article appeared in the Standard saying:

TfL spent £3.8 million hosting the event as part of its efforts to increase cycling in London.

Clearly Lydall had seen the press release and asked how much it had all cost. TfL responded that it cost us £3.8 million. Indeed in their letter to me they contend that the NET cost to TfL was in fact £3.815 million. This is an outrageous falsehood.

Firstly, it ignores the fact that TfL spent £3 million over 2 years advertising this event. In their letter TfL disingenuously tries to separate this spending from the actual event saying: “This is work that TfL would have undertaken anyway”. As you can see from the graphic top right the advertising, which included TV commercials would you believe, is clearly focussed on promoting the Tour De France Grand Depart and has absolutely nothing to do with promoting cycling for recreation or as an alternate means of commuting.

Secondly it ignores the £2.4 million contribution from the LDA which any savvy Londoner would not really distinguish from spending by TfL and consider it all a part of the Mayoral pot. They would be right.

To be fair not all of the £10.5 million comes from GLA family bodies. All but £10,000 is from public bodies, the £10,000 coming from British Cycling. TfL provided £6.815 million and the LDA £2.4 million. Thus the London taxpayer provided 90% of the cash. The rest came from UK Sport, Sport England, SEEDA and Kent, Canterbury and Medway councils.