Fearless leader diary

The hardest working Mayor in the World

Tonight I’m at my desk until 3am, updating my Enemies of London list. Enemies of London are in their own especially high council-tax band. Their Oyster cards deplete faster. Nobody collects their bins or recycling.

Right now, Enemies of London include my rival mayoral candidates, Trevor Phillips, anybody who works for the Evening Standard, Channel 4 or the New Statesman, Jews, Americans, somebody who once pushed past me in the queue for a cash machine and people who don’t like bendy buses.

High-larious.

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.

At least he made the buses run on time

While the American readers will be focusing on an election months and months away (ok, I know the primary season is upon us), the London electorate have a campaign coming up in May. For London mayor.

It’s Boris v. Ken – and it should be interesting. And just based on the names, if you didn’t know the characters involved, you’d be surprised at which one of them has nasty Trotskyite tendencies.

It’s no secret that I really, really, really hate Ken Livingstone. I hate his Marxist style empire building amongst the London boroughs. I hate his divisive politics under the name of cohesion. I hate the cozying up to the Islamist elite.

Apparently there’s to be an expose on some of his political shenanigans on Monday night through Channel 4’s Dispatches programme.

Check out a little foreshadowing here at Harry’s Place.

Survey karma

I’m not normally an adherent to the idea of karma, but I’m a strong believer in survey karma.

Three years ago, my council sent me the Best Value Resident’s Survey. Now, because of what I do for a living, I knew that it was very important that I fill it out. I knew that not only would my council be judged on the survey results, but also in effect their response rates.

I filled it out, sealed it up in the return envelope and placed it on table to take out to post (we don’t have collections from our houses in the UK). Well, I never sent it back. And since then, my surveys, at least the ones I’ve been solely responsible for, have had absolutely crap response rates.

Our household wasn’t selected for the most recent BV Resident Satisfaction survey – so I haven’t been able to make amends on that score. But I’m keenly aware of karmic deficit, so when a well-known British survey company – Ipsos-MORI – phoned me earlier this week to get my views – I didn’t even ask how long the survey would be, I didn’t ask what it was about or who paid for it, I just agreed to take it.

Well, turns out it was all about being a Londoner – sort of.

• Was I happy with the public transport? (Not bloody likely)
• Was I happy with the Olympics fundraising? (spitting mad)
• How about Ken Livingstone’s oil deal with Venezuelan Marxist crypto-dictator Hugo Chavez? (not thrilled)

In fact most of the survey was about how much or how little I associated various initiatives with the Mayor and then how positive I felt about those initiatives. I wish I could remember the wording now – but some of the questions were extremely biased (such that it’s hard not to answer positively about Ken) and I could see how the results touted as “London loves Ken”.

Other interesting bits of the survey included how I felt about public art (I like it, generally) and whether I thought promoting London as a “world city” would bring in more tourists and businesses. I thought that was pretty stupid. Tourists already know that London is a world city, but I think they come here for the heritage. Businesses already know that London is a world city – and they come here because of that or the financial markets. Or they choose not to come here because the infrastructure is crumbling and the tax rates and cost of living are crippling.

So finally, I finish this 20 minute survey and I say to the young woman on the phone as she’s thanking me and hanging up “Whoa, I’m not done yet, can you tell me who commissioned this survey?”

Well, she has to talk to her supervisor about this – but turns out it’s Transport for London who paid for this survey. I was very polite – she just reads out the questions – but on the inside I’m fuming.

Yes, a few questions were about transport, but most of this was Ken Livingstone favourable push polling. Why is Transport for London paying for this? Is this a good use of taxpayer and fare payer money?

I just hope that participating in this propaganda survey improves my future response rates.

-0-

On a related note, I attended the selection meeting for London Assembly member candidate for Merton and Wandsworth last night. (Why do we have to share an assembly member with another borough?) I knew two of the candidates – Richard (Dick) Tracey and Matthew Maxwell Scott. But Krystal Miller and Jo-Ann Nadler were new to me. I thought Jo-Ann was very impressive, but because she’s been working for the BBC for a lot of her career – including doing election coverage – she couldn’t be active in campaigning. I’d love to see her with a little bit more experience. Krystal is a very young new councillor at Merton, and she sort of needs to come on a bit – but she’s got a lot of potential.

I went to the meeting with a fairly open mind, but at the same time pretty much knew I was going to vote for Dick or Matthew – solely because they are members of my local constituency association and Matthew also a member at the ward level (and I’ve no doubt about their competence or dedication, either).

Dick has a long and impressive career as a politician – and clearly had the confidence of the room. I was certain he would be selected. Matthew put on a great performance and has packed a lot of experience into his 30 years, but Dick has form (including tangles with Mr Livingstone) and will make a formidable scrutineer of the London Mayor.

The voting proceeds thusly: you vote for one candidate. If one candidate gets over 50% of the vote, then that’s the selection. If not, there’s another round of balloting until somebody does get 50%. It wasn’t stated whether the candidate with the lowest number of votes would drop out – but I assumed that was the case.

The field was strong enough that I really thought it might go to a couple of ballots. So I cooked up a plan that allowed me to vote strategically for both Matthew and Dick. In the end, my clever plotting came to nought, as Dick won on the first ballot. The right choice.

Filthy creatures

Fellow expat Maureen from A View from England highlights a new London based blog – that isn’t by your usual Englishman. Why the author isn’t even human. The blog itself – pigeon scratchings.

Pigeons are not my favourite bird. In fact, I admit that I actually dislike pigeons quite a lot! I do have a sense of humour though so I think the only online diary of a London pigeon is quite funny – but whether that is the intention or not is another matter!

The blog links to a website called, Save the Trafalgar Square Pigeons, a campaign that I think is intended to be taken seriously but which I personally think is a ridiculous idea. I happen to agree with Mayor Ken Livingstone’s views of the pigeons as dirty pests or as the pigeons are also described – “rats with wings”, and I think the mayor is quite right to discourage tourists from feeding the pigeons.

I think Maureen’s being very generous on the humor front. The blog is funny, but in a cringeworthy way. Like watching a really bad dancer take the floor in an earnest attempt to impress.

But I agree with her view on pigeons. The only thing that keeps me from helping Ken with his campaign to rid London of the little pests is that I’m basically quite squeamish – well, that and I hate Ken with every fiber of my being. I hate him more than pigeons. The only thing that would please me more than pigeons out of Trafalgar Square would be to hear that Ken had been done in by a flock of the angry beasties who had subsequently croaked on his poisoned flesh.

The Mandela standard

During our perusal of the papers yesterday during a break from museum going (The Guardian and The Evening Standard which we bought and a Daily Mail which I found on the Tube), Nelson Mandela featured twice in a justification for terrorism.

You know the old adage, “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” Well, I guess Nelson Mandela is now “universally” seen as the standard for the freedom fighter.

In an article in The Guardian, Adam Nicholson says:

No one, I think would put the attempt to liberate the Newchurch
guinea pigs on a par with the anti-apartheid campaign in South Africa… But
perhaps the two struggles are not as far apart as you think.

The guinea pig farm in Newchurch is run by the Hall family and after years of harrassment by animal liberationists, they have decided to get out of the guinea pig business. They and their friends and relatives have been subject to intimidation, a pedophilia smear campaign, arson attacks, explosions and perhaps most disgustingly one of their old dead relatives was dug up from the local churchyard and her body is still missing.

But Adam Nicholson argues that if the animal rights folks had resorted to only legal, peaceful protests, the Halls would still be raising guinea pigs for scientific experiments. Unfortunately, because the Halls are phasing out their business (rather than face bankruptcy) and won’t be finished with the fluffy critters until December, there are still going to be protests outside their home. He says:

Mandela’s term for his control of [the Spear of the Nation, armed wing of the ANC] was “properly controlled violence.” Seen simply in tactical and strategic terms, that phrase would be perfectly appropriate for the things that the animal rights activists have been doing to the Halls, their friends, families, employees and neighbours. ….the campaign to close down the guinea pig sheds will surely look like a violent, necessary and ugly step on the long march to freedom.

Sick.

Even sicker is Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone’s concerns about Home Secretary Charles Clarke’s new standards for deportation. In the Evening Standard, Red Ken is reported as saying

that the new laws on banning terrorists should be rejected if they fail to pass the “Nelson Mandela test.” If some of the proposed new legislation had been in force 20 years, he pointedout, it could have led to supporters of the anti-apartheid struggle by Mr Mandela’s African National Congress being deported. Mr Livingstone also said that it would be wrong to ban from Britain controversial Muslim cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi who has said Palestinians are entitled to use suicide bombers against Israeli forces. He claimed that Al-Qaradawi was “probably the most respected progressive Muslim cleric in the world”.

Progressive toward what? Toward a global Islamic caliphate. Toward punishing gays and repressing women?

(Why in the world does Ken continue to support this guy? See Harry’s Place for more on this.)

Both Red Ken and Adam Nicholson fail to understand what really happened with apartheid. It wasn’t the violence of Nelson Mandela that brought an end to that injustice in South Africa, after all he was locked up and couldn’t commit any acts of violence. It was the whole world turning against that nation and its nasty, racist ways that brought F. W. De Klerk to the point where real changes were made. It wasn’t violence that brought about the sanctions, but literate and compelling arguments from South Africans black and white. And it wasn’t Nelson Mandela’s violence, but his statesman-like leadership (unfortunately not seen currently in South Africa) which helped forge a new nation on a new path.

No excuses for terrorism.