Ken Livingstone the hypocrite

Don't judge him by what he says judge him by what he does.  Livingstone has made a lot of enemies over his political career, one of whom is Andrew Gilligan, you may remember Livingston'e bizarre rant on BBC London when accused Gilligan of being responsible for Dr David Kelly's death.

Well a quick life lesson is not to fall out with investigative journalists if you have a whole graveyard of skeletons in your closet.  He has already highlighted the huge gulf between Livingston'e rhetoric on fares and his history of whacking them up post election and yesterday he exposed one of the most shameless examples of hypocrisy that I've seen in quite some time.

Back in 2009 Ken Livingstone said

“These rich bastards just don't get it… No one should be allowed to vote in a British election, let alone sit in our Parliament, unless they are paying their full share of tax.

"Cameron's problem is too many of his team have become super rich by exploiting every tax fiddle. Given he is surrounded by so many millionaires in the shadow cabinet it's not surprising their tax policies aim to reward the rich and screw the rest of us…

"If Brown wants to get re-elected he should promise to sweep away all the tax scams and everybody should pay tax at the same rate on their earnings and all other income."

One such "tax scam" is self employed people taking income as dividends, taxed a corporation tax levels, rather than as income taxed at income tax levels.  Just for the record I don't have a problem with that at all, it is a well established part of taking the risk of starting and running a small company, it's Livingstone who claims that people doing it are "bastards".

The problem is that is exactly what Ken Livingstone was doing at that very point in time.  In 2009 he earned £232,000 which was routed through a company which he and his wife where the only shareholders.  This enables him to take this money as dividends at 21% tax rather than as income, the bulk of which would have been at 50% tax.

As I say nothing illegal in what he has done, just shockingly hypocritical.

Livingstone's either financially incompetent or he's lying - part 3

Ken Livingstone and his made up maths really is the gift that keeps on giving.

He claims that his fares policy will "save the average Londoner £1000 over four years", powerful stuff if true.  But let's look at that claim.  There are about 7.5 million people who live in London, about 20% are under 16 and get free travel and about 30% are retired and get a Freedom Pass.  That means that 3.25 million working people in the city.  I assume that these are the people that Livingstone calls "average Londoners".

If each of these people will be paying £1000 less under Livingstone's plan it means a £3.5 billion shortfall in TFL's income over 4 years.  Even using Livingstone's widely discredited £300 million a year surplus figure we are left £2.3 billion short.

But that's not all.  There are a million people who commute into London each day, they would also benefit from any fares cut, meaning that TFL would lose revenue from them too, probably taking the shortfall back up to the £3.5 billion figure. Losing that much from the TFL budget would have a massive impact on services and improvements.

So either Livingstone can't do simple maths or he's misleading Londoners again.  I know what I think.

Anger at work experience scheme missing the point

There has been a bit of a storm over the Government's work experience scheme.  With the now traditional lack of perspective the Left have branded it "forced labour" and "21st Century slavery", never knowingly understated!

The scheme is to encourage people on unemployment benefit to take up a few weeks of unpaid work experience.  The attacks have been cheer-led by the BBC and Guardian who Chris Grayling has rightly branded hypocrites and work snobs, as both these organisations have schemes where young people have a few weeks of unpaid work experience.

There is nothing new about companies offering unpaid work experience, it gives people a chance to get something on their CV, a reference and chance to see if they like the job.  It gives organisations a low risk chance to asses potential employees and to get some work done.  A win-win situation.

In the past this has been an option denied to the unemployed on jobseeker's allowance because even unpaid work would mean that their benefits would stop.  Can't get experience without losing benefits, can't get a job without experience, a classic Catch 22 situation.

The government's plan is to allow job-seekers to get experience without losing their benefit.  At the BBC, the Guardian, etc. youngsters are supported by their parents while working for free to get experience, under this scheme youngsters are supported by the state to do exactly the same thing. I'm genuinely at a loss as to why the Left are so against it.

Tony Travers is spot on

"This is going to be the tightest mayoral race we've had. This is a fight worth taking seriously if you're a voter. It's a decision that will affect Londoners' lives in a big way over the next four years." - Tony Travers of the LSE's Greater London Group talking to the Evening Standard.

Boris's tax cutting budget carried

This morning was the final part of the budget setting process here at City Hall.  Each of the other parties in the Assembly put forward budget amendments and we supported the Mayor's, as each of the amendments was out-voted the budget was put to the Assembly unamended.

At that point the most extraordinary thing happened.  The Lib Dems and the Greens voted against the budget, as you would expect, but the Labour group abstained.  Having spent the last few months claiming that Boris was making all the wrong choices they refused to vote against the very budget they had been criticising.

Because of their abstention the budget was carried with just the Conservative group voting for it.  No other party in the Assembly supported Boris's tax cutting budget.

This really makes Livingstone and his team look quite stupid.

Ken Livingstone shows his true colours

The more people see of Boris the more they like Boris. Livingstone is the same, the more people see of Livingstone the more they like Boris.

I genuinely believe that the more exposure that Livingstone gets during this campaign the less chance he has of winning.  It is getting to the point where he cannot open his mouth without saying something nasty, personal, crass or deceitful.  And Londoners don't like it.

Today we hear that Livingstone has called Lady Thatcher "clinically insane" in an interview with the New Statesman, whether you agree with her policies or not, that comment is disgusting.  It's up there with describing former Wandsworth council leader Sir Edward Lister as Bosnian war criminal, Ratko Mladic or Jewish reporter Oliver Feingold as a concentration camp guard.

One disgusting comment like that in an interview would be bad enough but Livingstone goes on to describe the Conservative party as being "riddled" with homosexuality.  Riddled? Like a cancer or worms?  Riddled isn't a word you use about something positive, something you like or want to encourage yet it's the word Livingstone used about lesbians and gays in politics.

Livingstone has really let his mask slip and what we see behind it isn't pretty.

Livingstone's either financially incompetent or he's lying - part 2

Having dug himself into a hole over his phantom TFL money (details here) Livingstone is doing it again with police funding.

His latest "promise" is to recruit an extra 1,700 police officers paid for:

“by ensuring that Transport for London pays the full cost of the Safer Transport Command, reduce spending on bureaucracy at the new MOPC, stand up against Tory government cuts and deploy new technology to ensure smarter working and increase detection rates”

Somehow he failed to notice that TFL are already paying for whole cost of Safer Transport Command, another example of Livingstone spending the same money twice.  Standing up to "Tory cuts" sounds good but can you imagine Livingstone successfully negotiating the £90million funding package with the Government as Boris and Kit Malthouse recently did?  No neither do I.

For someone who claims to have spent all day analysing the police budget this seems to be a rather huge error on his part. Or might it just be another massive whopper?

City Hall taxes, the choice is clear

Livingstone's either financially incompetent or he's lying

Livingstone is still pushing the falacy that there is a huge pot of money sitting around that can be spent on cutting fares even though the claim has been completely discredited.   Let's ask ourselves the most obvious of questions; if this money really does exist why wouldn't Boris spend it in an election year to win votes?

The simple answer is because it doesn't exist!

Livingstone keeps saying that TFL's operating surplus this year can be spent on the fares cut, it can't, the money is already budgeted for spending in the forethcoming year.  It's like saying that the money for your mortgage payment on Monday of next week can be spend over the weekend because it is sitting in your bank account on Friday of this week.

No one in their right mind would think that, it is the most simple and basic financial literacy.  Either Livingstone hasn't even the most basic grasp of public (or personal) finance or he is lying to Londoners.

You can make your own mind up which.

Great photo

Workers at the Olympic Park based on Bathers at Asnieres by Georges Seurat: