Ken Smears But Who Pays ?

How much of our money is Ken Livingstone spending on smearing Boris ? The Standard this eve carries the shocking news that Boris has been talking to Sheriff Lee Baca.Sheriff Baca is the"elected " Sheriff of Los Angeles County, California.(He was re-elected to a third term in 2006).Naturally the man who fights crime in LA could not possibly have anything to tell us about the ethnically diverse City of London where knifings and shootings are escalating out of control…oh no ..According to the Livingstone droogs the only thing that matters is some Hallo Magazine thing about Paris Hilton which shows that Boris is obsessed with celebrity.Pitiful.
I `ll tell you the things that interest B Johnson about this man . His experience and that magic word “ Elected”. Lee Baca is directly accountable to the people he serves and has to produce results . Boz is rolling up his sleeves and getting stuck into the problems that Londoners really care about and if anyone thinks the Met would not benefit by that sort of accountability they have not been watching the show. Whats more Boris is using ...his own money.
THE FRIENDS
Still I love this ” By his friends shall ye know him “ motif . Livingstone by contrast admires Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez. Castro runs a regime that rejects democracy, jails political opponents and reporters. Chavez tells public workers to support him or leave the country, sanctions beatings . Ken is planning a massive festival across London, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Castro revoltion in Cuba costing us an expected £2million!! That when he isn`t chatting to the IRA, abusing the Jews ,apologising for Islamic extremism or insulting America .
TRAVELLIN` MAN
Or does Ken object to foreign travel ? Hardly. . The cost of foreign travel by the Mayor’s Office was £36,490 in 2004-05. This rose to £103,130 in 2005-06. However for the year up to December 2006 it had soared to £229,942.
THE DIPLOMACY
Or is it as his office claim typically ..clumsy? As clumsy as comparing the American Ambassador to a 'chiselling little crook' for refusing to pay the congestion charge
THE TRIPS
Who would Ken like the prospective Mayor to be visiting then ( on our money) ? How about China ? .The known expenditure for the trip to China is over £400,000. “"One thing that Chairman Mao did was to end the appalling foot binding of women," he announced. "That alone justifies the Mao Tse-tung era." Half of Mao's tens of millions of victims were also women of course ....bet their feet didn`t hurt at least
THE MONEY THE MONEY THE MONEY
Its not as if he has ever been very clear about what he can or cannot spend our money or indeed very careful at counting it .For example spending public money on a publicity campaign attacking nuclear power in tandem with the less than open-minded Greens ."Under the headline '£70 billion - Nuclear Waste?' the Mayor invited Londoners to participate in a debate . Or the 2012 Memorandum of understanding potentially leaving Londoners with an unlimited liability to pay for any overspend on delivering the Olympics in 2012. Thanks for that ! Remrember in June 2000, the GLA precept for a Band D property was £122.98 yet by April 2006 this has increased a staggering 134.6% to £288.61 with little to no visible increase in the level of service . Transport for London in 2005/06 spent £78 million of Londoners money on advertising what is effectively a public transport monopoly. A little spent smearing Boris hardly registers does it ...
PROPOGANDA
The Londoner newspaper contains pro-Ken publicity alongside practical information about life in the capital. The Mayor's freesheet The Londoner cost £2,857,488 in 2006/7. Also this budget is net cost not gross cost. Every issue carries 4 pages of full page display ads from bodies in the GLA family. They have no choice about these ads and it means that the Londoner costs more like £4-5 million. £227,375 of this was paid to the PR agency Freud Communications. This it seems included organising a Girls Aloud concert in Shanghai
THE QUESTION
I ask again . Just how much of our money is Ken spending on smearing Boris ?Just how scared is he to be coming up with this sort if infantile twittering, when Boris is looking for fresh ideas on crime .
THE ANSWER
As they eyeball eachother over a dusty Mexican village it is increasingly clear that what we have is the Good ( Boris) and the 'Bad and Ugly' in one Ken Livingstone