Not in good conscience

Londoners were treated to a Channel 4 Dispatches expose on the methods and madness of our dear leader, Mayor Ken Livingstone. Among the charges:

• violating electoral rules – appointed staff working on his re-election campaign while being paid from the public purse – on his orders.
• spending vast amounts of money on thinly justified foreign junkets
• allowing millions of pounds to be funneled to sham companies owned by cronies and fellow travellers
• drinking on the job, not just at his desk, but brazenly drinking whisky at council meetings and at “town hall” style question time with the public
• appointing inappropriately skilled cronies to high paying jobs

Really, this is more than enough to not only turn the man out of office – this is enough to start criminal investigations. Any one of these alone represent a bad sort of politics, but together render the man wholly unfit to represent perhaps the finest capital city in the world.

And this is before taking into account that the man acts like an ass. That he refuses to answer legitimate questions from friends and foes alike – the key means of accountability for elected officials. That he bullies, blusters and evades. That he name calls like a child in the playground.

And this is all before you take account that he associates with some rather nasty characters like Qaradawi and seems to overtly endorse a radical, political Islam. And anyone who questions his association with Muslim Brotherhood fronts and members is called an Islamophobe.

The worst thing about all of this is that dear old Red Ken is likely to get away with it. His jocular bluster seems to sway large parts of the electorate. And in this country Socialist is not a dirty word, so his association with the Socialist Alliance doesn’t sound so bad. Never mind that they don’t practice the kind of socialism that’s essentially benign -no – it’s that deconstructionist, let’s destroy everything that’s good so somehow, some way a new society will come rising from the ashes – meanwhile we’ll wander around drinking champagne and totter around on our hind trotters unless our snout is in the trough type socialism. And folks seem blind to the difference.

I know a lot of people don’t like Boris Johnson. I know his manner is odd and his hair is wild and he’s a master of the self-deprecating. I know that Mr Johnson hasn’t yet really communicated his vision for London – and he must do that. But please, Londoners, you cannot in good conscience re-elect Ken Livingstone.

Why him?

Both the Vol-in-Law and I reacted a little more strongly to the death of Heath Ledger than we would have thought. It’s not like we were big fans. It’s not like we even go to the movies. But it did seem a little shocking.

The Vol-in-Law said “He seemed so full of life, and yet that Shane McGowan just goes on and on and on.”

“Why couldn’t it have been Amy Winehouse or somebody like that?”