You probably saw the ASLEF threaten the royal wedding story, see Evening Standard here.
Boris is livid. Quite right. These guys are a great advert for banning strikes in public transport. Don’t forget Ken Livingstone’s campaign to be selected as Labour’s candidate for London Mayor was supported by a donation of £5,000 from ASLEF, see here.
I despair of Tower Hamlets – it must be the most badly run local authority by a country mile. Tower Hamlets is the (housing association) home of the expenses fiddling Baroness Uddin. Today we learn about one of the group of eight “independent” councillors at Tower Hamlets who are grouped around the notorious new executive mayor Lutfur Rahman. Shelina Akhtar has already been convicted of benefit fraud and sentenced and this month was arrested in connection with investigations into the sub-letting her housing association property, see Evening Standard story here.
Akhtar is a ward councillor for the Spitalfields & Banglatown Ward. There is due to be a by-election in that ward on 16th Deceber to replace Rahman now he is mayor. Ironically the third councillor in this ward is Helal Abbas who was the guy who lost as official Labour candidate for the mayoralty. You can’t help thinking that this lot deserve each other.
We know that shifty old red Ken supported Lutfur Rahman in his recent mayoral campaign in breach of Labour party rules. Seven out eight of the Tower Hamlets independent group in turn supported Livingstone, as did Rahman himself, see Livingstone’s list of supporters here. You might have thought that the Livingstone team would have quietly erased the names.
To follow the unfolding car crash which is Tower Hamlets see the Andrew Gilligan blog link right.
At 10am today the fireman will go on strike again for 24 hours. The video above was shot during the last strike on 23rd October. The RMT banner on display will confuse and worry many Londoners who are heartily sick of Bob Crowe’s RMT. Hey, we thought secondary action was illegal. The idiots at RMT and TSSA are taking the Tube system out on Tuesday and Wednesday and then the firemen are going out on Friday November 5th, the busiest day of the year, for two days.
Both of these groups of workers are very highly paid and very secure. They both think that they can get what they want by throwing their weight around. Unfortunately we are going to have to put up with much more of this rubbish or pay a lot more in council tax and Tube fares.
This graph, reproduced from the Lancet, is the picture that killed the national fire strike in 2002/3. Back then the firemen were holding the country to ransom to secure a £30K pay packet on the grounds that what they did was particularly dangerous. This analysis in the Lancet showed that firemen were in only the 23rd most dangerous job in the country and doing a relatively safe job compared to labourers, builders, farm workers and lorry drivers. Note policemen come in at 24th.
Just so you are clear where Labour’s candidate for London Mayor in 2012 stands this is a picture of the premises he shares with TSSA at 10 Melton Street in London. Nothing on his website about either strike. What a waster? Ken “I’m a Londoner first and foremost” Livingstone. Yes, quite. We know whose side you are on and it is not ordinary Londoners’.
The Labour party has today announced that Ken Livingstone will be their candidate to fight Boris Johnson in 2012. He beat Oona King 69% to 31% so the result is pretty emphatic. Labour reaches for the comfort blanket. In his statement Livingstone said:
We need a Mayor who will stand up for London.
The choice between me and Boris Johnson could not be clearer. I will protect the fare payer. After Boris Johnson’s unnecessary fare increases that go hand in hand with cuts to investment we need fairer fares. I promise that fares under my administration will be lower than if Boris Johnson is re-elected.
Today’s decision by London Labour members signals the start of a campaign to change London for the better and to protect Londoners from the cuts of this government that threaten to wreck lives and push us back into recession. I will unite Londoners around this message. The London election in 2012 will be the chance to send a message to David Cameron and George Osborne that we don’t want devastating cuts to our public services, fewer jobs, and declining living standards. If you want them out, first vote Boris out.
Two key points from Ken then. A return to “Fares Fair” which got him elected in 1981. Or rather it didn’t. It got Andrew McIntosh elected as the GLC leader. He was then promptly deposed by Livingstone and his left-wing stooges. Livingstone became Labour group leader in an internal election and thus GLC leader. The rest was history. The other part of his pitch is a deficit denying “cuts” line. Good luck with that Ken. I think that Londoners will see straight through you. We know who to blame already – Gordon Brown.
I can’t believe that Labour have been this silly. Hopefully they will be equally silly tomorrow and make Ed leader. Fingers crossed.
Great news earlier this month when Boris Johnson confirmed that he was going to run again as London Mayor. Even better news today that he is comfortably ahead in the polls. Today’s Evening Standard carries the headline “Boris ‘To be Mayor again’” and reports that he is comfortably ahead of both of his potential Labour opponents.
May 2012 is a way long time in the future but Boris is going to be very hard to beat. Ken Livingstone is looking like the favourite to win the Labour selection competition. I cannot believe that Labour are letting him run again. Above all Boris has retained his innate likeability in office. After 8 years in power Livingstone had achieved a reputation for twisting the truth, nepotism and petty corruption.
Livingstone is using the “C” word to try to bring Boris down:
Boris Johnson cannot escape the fact that the he has pioneered huge cuts in London and he vigorously campaigned for his Tory colleagues to win the general election, knowing full well the economic policy they would deliver and the damage they would do to policing and transport. The government’s cuts are his cuts.
Personally I think that people will see through this and pin the blame where it is deserved, on Gordon Brown.
Ealing’s Labour crowd are falling over themselves to back Livingstone. MPs Pound and Sharma along with Sharma’s bag carrier, council leader Julian Bell, and 15 of his councillors have signed up to the Livingstone campaign here. That means 25 haven’t. Ashamed? I guess.
As of 11:10pm this evening 7 out of 11 Tube lines were out of service as the latest Tube strike starts to bite. Although this is a joint venture between the RMT and the TSSA unions it is RMT’s nasty and aggressive general secretary Bob Crowe who stands out.
Only in August of this year it emerged that Crow’s salary had risen by 12% last year taking his total package to £133,183 per annum. Being a ludicrously fat cat doesn’t stop Crow bed blocking in a housing association property though. What a twerp? Of course Crow’s RMT does not publish these figures on its own website, you have to root around the website of the Certification Officer (for trade unions) to find them, here.
Today Andrew Gilligan at the Telegraph points out the links between Labour mayoral hopeful Ken Livingstone and TSSA, here. Tonight the Mayor is speaking out against these strikes, see here. Livingstone is silent. Don’t forget that in 2012.
There are more important things to blog about, of which more later, but first a trivial diversion.
Two and a half years ago I pointed to the ecosystem of GLA funded left-wing front oranisations that were campaigning on behalf of the old London Mayor, Ken Livingstone. If you had thought that they had gone away you would be wrong.
Tomorrow you could go to the Friends Meeting House in Euston and hear American civil rights firebrand, the Rev. Al Sharpton. In addition to Sharpton you get a Smörgåsbord of Ken’s old mates: Diane Abbot MP, Karen Chouhan, Lee Jasper, Kwami Kwei-Armah and OBV Director, Simon Woolley. It was Jasper’s torrid e-mails to Chouhan that lost him his job in the run up to the 2008 London mayoral elections.
Operation Black Vote pretends to be a cross-party organisation: “Operation Black Vote is a non-party political campaign”. Sorry but all of these guys are Livingstone’s people if not Labour people.
Certain leftie blogs are getting exercised over the Mayor’s taxi expenses. See Tory Troll and the BBC.
If Boris acted like the 150 odd ministers and civil servants who are entitled to Government Car Service cars his travel costs would be about £90K per annum before anything else happened. See more here.
I know some people really take the Michael with expenses but perhaps the Mayor is entitled to keep a taxi waiting now and then. We know he cycles a lot – we see the pictures all the time.
Just about every London Borough has a ceremonial mayor who works hard, but not perhaps quite as hard as Boris, and gets the limo treatment at a similar cost to all those Government cars.
Perhaps before:
The Labour Party at City Hall has demanded an “explanation for the discrepancies” in the mayor’s accounts.
They might ask why we have to spend £14 million running 150 VIPs around in limos, most of whom we might think were less VIP than the London Mayor. The truth is that Boris, and Ken before him, have shown that you can have a big job without the limo.
I like the Dave Hill blog. Although Hill is an avowed old leftie he is hard working and often comes with some interesting stories. Hill can also be pretty even handed but he sometimes inadvertently shines a light on some things that would be better left in the dark (from the point of view of furthering the causes he holds dear). One such is his reporting today of John Ross’s blog. He was the old mayor’s economic policy advisor, paid something like £120K per annuum, and one of the Socialist Action cell that the old mayor relied on during his eight year time in office.
Ross’s hagiography of Livingstone is laugh out loud funny:
Ken Livingstone will be remembered as a great Mayor of London …
An inspirational speech by the former Mayor of London …
When Ken Livingstone returns as Mayor …
This stuff might make suitable reading for Socialist Worker types but to a general audience it only makes Livingstone and his aspirations of a return to the mayoralty look ridiculous. Hill is regularly fed with this rubbish by Livingstone and his cronies and he does them no favours by actually publishing it. Doh!
Why am I not surprised that this so-called economics expert has managed only 6 blog postings in three months during this time of almost unprecedented economic turmoil? With this kind work rate I can’t see how this guy ever justified a fraction of his salary.
Tonight the Standard’s Andrew Gilligan is reporting the sick making pay-offs received by 8 of the former mayor’s political appointees. Apparently the bill is £1.6 million or roughly £200K each. These guys were already on inflated salaries but they have held out for compensation for loss of office even though they knew from the start that they were political appointees whose jobs would end with the mayor’s.
The contrast with the new mayor’s appointments could not be starker. His First Deputy Mayor and Chief Executive of the GLA Group, Tim Parker, is on a nominal £1 per annum. His Senior Adviser, Planning, Sir Simon Milton, is unpaid. His Deputy Mayor, Policing, Kit Malthouse, scrapes by on his assembly member’s allowance, which is less than half of what the old mayor’s political appointees were on.
Some of Boris’ team are on the same kind of salaries as the last lot but I suspect that Boris himself will be first in the queue to slag his team if they try the same trick in 4 years or 8 years. Meanwhile Livingstone, whose contempt for those Londoners who pay the tab is well known, is silent about his own people.
Phil Taylor 