Category: Ex-Mayor Livingstone

Andrew Gilligan has another piece in the Standard tonight based on a leaked e-mail from Peter Hendy, the £320K a year Transport Commissioner, ie boss, of Transport for London. This time it is Hendy effectively boasting that he can bully the police by removing funding for TOCU, the Met’s Transport Operational Command Unit, because he doesn’t like them criticising bendy buses on safety grounds. Hendy says:

… it makes me inclined to cut support for TOCU.

What a big man?

Last week Gilligan had Hendy banged to rights consorting with the Mayor’s weasly little chief of staff, Socialist Action-er Simon Fletcher, see here.

Given that both of these stories are based on leaked e-mails we might suspect that there is more like this to come. Goody, goody!

Yesterday the excellent Burning Our Money blog carried this story about the London Development Agency (LDA), otherwise known as the Mayor’s piggy bank.

The blog carries this extract from the LDA’s Corporate Plan, click to enlarge:

Apparently in the areas of of Employment Support and Skills the LDA only aims to help BAME people or women. White men are not welcome. It is not clear whether the disabled quota can be white men or whether they also have to be either black or women to qualify for help.

Too much of the LDA’s £750 million budget for economic development, they are meant to be London’s economic development agency, is spent according to the Mayor’s whim hence the soubriquet “Mayor’s piggy bank”.

If you accepted that public money really could be used to promote economic development then you might think that the way to achieve this might be to try to back winners, or, if you thought that this was beyond the wit of civil servants, then maybe simply to raise up young people so that they are equipped to join the workforce. Unfortunately, this is not the main priority for the LDA.

One example of misuse is the £7 million given to the Tate 2 years ago, see here. Why does Tate Modern need help from the LDA when it is already the most visited tourist attraction in London with 4.9 million visitors? This is a national institution with an international reputation and it can look after itself.

Another example is £2.4 million thrown at the Tour de France Grand Depart last year. Again why did this bunch of drug cheats on wheels get cash that was supposed to raise up our young people?

Another £20 million has been taken out of the LDA for the Mayor’s London Youth Offer, ie the Mayor augmenting a central government programme. However laudable youth services might be, since when is this in the Mayor’s remit?

The Mayor is at his dissembling best again today, this time talking about the Tour de France. He says:

The Grand Départ not only boosted cycling in London, but also brought rewards to the economy with an estimated £88 million being spent by spectators, teams and race organisers in London and the South East during the race weekend.

A quick look at TfL’s own report reveals that this absurdly inflated number includes £5 million spent by London taxpayers on the Tour de France. The document states:

The organisational spend of £5 million brought the total up to more than £73 million in London.

Add £15 million of spending in Kent to get the £88 million figure.

So £5 million of this £88 million was our own money. And who really benefits from the other £83 million? Does it bring in more business rates that can be spent on more services? No. Does it bring in more profit for private businesses who are capable of promoting themselves thank you very much? Yes, but … Does it really make any difference to London’s economy if someone buys an ice cream watching the Grand Depart or buys one in their local park?

And if you think £5 million was the total bill paid by public bodies for the Grand Départ you would be wrong. The answer is £10.5 million, see previous posting.

£9.2 million, the largest part of this bill, was paid by Londoners. At least TfL was sporting enough not to count the whole amount in their schedule of benefits, leaving out items such as the £3 million spent on adverts and the £1.5 bribe paid to the race organisers.

The Mayor brags that 3 million people came out to watch the Grand Départ but omits to mention that he gave them £3 per head. This might be great for fans of the dope on wheels circus that is the Tour de France but the rest of us might rather that the fans paid their way and we didn’t have to pick up their bill.

In his delusional press release the Mayor goes on to link this wasteful use of public money with his proposals for cycle commuting in London. Its like saying that the London Marathon has some kind of relationship to walking to work.

It seems that there is a limit even with Lee Jasper and his resignation letter has appeared on the Mayor’s website tonight.

Ken Livingstone
Mayor of London

4 March 2008

Dear Ken,

I am proud of my record in contributing to the huge reduction in racist attacks in London, the work I have carried out in partnership with the Metropolitan Police Service in relation to Operation Trident, reductions in the levels of domestic violence and the increased employment of Black, Asian and women officers.

Further, the work we delivered in ensured equality in London is delivered has been astounding.

However, it has become clear that a number of matters which are not of first importance in London are being used to distract from the crucial questions in the election campaign.

The racist nature of a relentless media campaign and the consequent effects on myself and family have placed an intolerable strain on all of us.

I have decided to put a stop to this by tendering my resignation.

Yours,
Lee Jasper

Maybe the real scandal is that this guy was paid at the same rate as a Cabinet minister and he can produce a sentence like this: “Further, the work we delivered in ensured equality in London is delivered has been astounding”.

To the last the guy is a creep, effectively accusing Andrew Gilligan of being a racist. Gilligan merely asked him to account for himself. That makes him a journalist, not a racist.

I guess that the Mayor was cutting his losses. Maybe he hopes that Gilligan hasn’t got anything on him and that he can end this here by making Jasper walk.

Jasper was due to face the London Assembly at 10am tommorow. Boris says:

Ken Livingstone has been standing by his man for years and in particular in recent months as allegation after allegation has emerged. The Mayor has repeatedly assured Londoners that there is a full audit trail for spent public money and that he trusts Lee Jasper with his life. The resignation of one of the Labour Mayor’s most senior and trusted advisers is further proof that Ken Livingstone has had his day. He has repeatedly said he is directly responsible for the actions of his advisers and he should take Jasper’s place tomorrow and answer the questions that Jasper won’t. Otherwise Londoners can only conclude he is arrogant and out of touch. Londoners deserve to know where their hard-earned cash has gone.

Ouch!

Labour activist Karen Chouhan gets the Gilligan treatment in the Evening Standard tonight. If the whole thing didn’t smell so badly it would be hilarious.

Click to enlarge to see what Jasper had planned for the Labour party conference in Manchester eighteen months ago.

The obvious questions to Jasper are:

1. Did you go?
2. If so, who paid for the hotel and other expenses?
3. Were you on holiday or were you working?

I pointed the finger at Chouhan back in August as it was clear that in criticising Boris Johnson she was not exactly an objective observer but was simply a Livingstone stooge, bought and paid for. The only way Chouhan could claim any objectivity in any comments she makes about London stem from the fact that she lives in Leicester and her views are thus unclouded by direct experience.

Only yesterday in an interview with the Independent Gilligan was telling how he was paying out this set of stories slowly and had thus succeeded in making the Mayor come out to defend Lee Jasper before Gilligan gave him the second barrel. Great tactics. The Mayor must assume that there are more barrels to come.

Gilligan says in the interview:

In some ways, Livingstone’s response has been more damaging than the allegations, because it has been so unpleasant, so transparently dishonest and so arrogant. The clear impression has come across of a man who doesn’t believe he should be held to account and doesn’t want to answer straightforward factual questions.

The Mayor’s website is notably quiet on this subject today. Perhaps the Mayor and his team of 265 PRs have at last worked out that staying quiet is the best response.

This story in tonight’s Standard illustrates what a chancer the Mayor is. He drove a terrible bargain for London over Crossrail, taking on board way too much risk, and now he is trying to make out that he is the only one capable of delivering the project. You have got to admire the guy’s chutzpah.

The Standard says:

London could be bankrupted if the £16 billion Crossrail project is mishandled, Ken Livingstone has warned.

The Mayor said the long-delayed highspeed link between the City and Heathrow would help safeguard the capital’s status as a financial powerhouse.

But he added this would require the payment of some of the highest public-sector salaries in London to keep the project on track for completion in 2018.

Mr Livingstone, addressing an Evening Standard debate on how London can stay ahead as a great world city, said: “Probably the most important single issue facing the next mayor is getting that right. If we get it wrong the scale of that project is enough to bankrupt London.

“We will bring people in that will be earning more than anybody else in this room in order to deliver that project on time and to budget.” The Mayor helps oversee the construction of Crossrail through Transport for London, which currently appoints half the project’s directors.

The rail scheme will come under full TfL control once the Bill establishing it gets royal assent.

The Mayor has managed to do a deal with the government on Crossrail which involves Londoners bearing all of the risk if this project goes wrong. This is not the case with the other large project that the Mayor wants to take credit for – the Olympics. He keeps telling us we have a limited liability with the Olympics.

As I pointed out when the announcement was made not only does London have to take undue risk it also has to give up economic development funds in a way that other parts of the country don’t have to. As I said back then:

The Mayor’s job was to get Brown to give us the cash for Crossrail and not to expose Londoners to unnecessary risk. The Mayor has blown it.

The Mayor pretty much directly lied about the planning application for the Leaf develoment in Ealing this morning on the Andrew Marr show.

If you read the transcript there was this exchange between Marr and the Mayor:

ANDREW MARR: But you are going to change the way London looks dramatically, if your plans go ahead. I mean there are going to be very large numbers of very, very tall buildings, and quite quickly?

KEN LIVINGSTONE: No, no there aren’t going to be very large numbers of tall buildings. Broadly I think in the last seven years perhaps, five or six have been agreed. I wouldn’t expect that to change, I, the one just around the corner from where you live, Ealing Broadway, I mean I saw last week and we broadly made it quite clear to the borough council this wouldn’t be acceptable.

Doesn’t that sound to you like the Mayor is saying that he rejected the Leaf because it was too tall? You would be wrong. The Mayor’s report said:

That Ealing Council be advised that the principle of a high-density mixed-use development, including a landmark tall building in Ealing town centre, is acceptable in strategic planning terms; however, its shortcomings in delivering an exemplary design in this strategic location; the low proportion of affordable housing within the scheme; and the failure to reach a solution which would mitigate the impact of the development on the local bus network and improve this important transport interchange; are all highly disappointing.

Nothing about too tall there. If you read down to paragraph 49 it says:

The principle of a tall building on this site is supported, as it meets many of the criteria set out in London Plan policy 4B.9 Tall buildings – Location for identifying locations suitable for a tall building. In particular, a tall building on this site supports the strategy of creating the highest levels of activity at locations with the greatest transport capacity. With Ealing Broadway underground and mainline stations and future tram and Crossrail links planned for the station opposite the site, it is without a doubt that a large-scale development that reflects and capitalises on this connectivity is entirely appropriate. The station itself would also benefit greatly from having larger-scale development to identify the location of the transport hub from greater distances as well as more generous public open space around the station to accommodate the volume of passengers and users that will inevitably grow.

Would it be too strong to call the Mayor a lier on the strength of this evidence? The report is dated 20th February, last Wednesday, so it is not as if this is some bit of ancient history. When Nicky Gavron came to Ealing on Friday she mentioned that she had reviewed the Leaf along with the Mayor on Wednesday. Banged to rights I’d say.

Andrew Marr gave Ken Livingstone a typically easy ride on his show this morning, see the transcript here. Some interesting points did come out though.

Anyone being interviewed on TV will try to get their own message across when they get the chance. When he did get the chance the Mayor listed his issues here:

They don’t want to discuss what are we doing to reduce carbon emissions? Why is crime falling and no-one’s reporting it? Hey, what are you doing about public transport? Those are the real issues – are you going to have affordable housing?

Note the order:

1. reduce carbon emissions
2. falling crime
3. public transport
4. affordable housing.

Now it is clear why the Mayor spent £3.3 million, mostly on adverts, last year to run the emissions related congestion charging and Low Emission Zone consultations. Both of these schemes will have NO impact on carbon emissions but they enhance the Mayor’s strong green brand which he is not afraid of leveraging by re-using very expensively purchased mind share, see previous posting.