More on the Ken Livingstone and Lee Jasper accusations

I blogged about the Evening Standard's claims that "Lee Jasper, the Mayor's adviser on equalities and policing, is under investigation by the Greater London Authority, after at least £2.5 million of City Hall money was channelled to organisations linked to himself, his friends and his business associates." and "A second senior aide to Ken Livingstone had a personal interest in an organisation that received substantial sums from City Hall and is unable to account for the money. According to official records, the Deshbangla Foundation has never declared any income or filed any accounts, and all the money paid to it by the Mayor's London Development Agency appears to have vanished. The foundation is directly associated with Kumar Murshid, who was the Mayor's senior adviser on regeneration and was also a member of the LDA board at the time of the grants."

Now Nick Cohen writes that at "the Mayoral press conference" Ken Livingstone "denounce(ed) the Standard as “racist”. You had to listen very carefully to notice that during his bloodcurdling condemnation of a newspaper “hate campaign” against London’s blacks, Livingstone did concede that, yes, well, auditors would be checking to see if the story was true."


Ken Livingstone - detestable man.


As Nick Cohen reminds us "The pattern of wild assertion against real and imagined enemies has been there from the start. Early in his career, Livingstone formed an alliance with a Trotskyist sect called the Workers Revolutionary Party. It’s remembered now for having Vanessa and Corin Redgrave among its cultists, when it should be known as the nastiest organisation on the late 20th century Left. The WRP spied on Iraqi dissidents for Saddam Hussein and took money from Colonel Gaddafi. Its primary purpose, however, was to worship the sect’s leader: Gerry Healy, a squat little Hitler – and a rapist to boot. In 1985, 26 women members came forward and accused him of ‘cruel and systematic debauchery’ on party premises."


Do read the rest of the article about this odious man.