Another day, another piece of news about Ken Livingstone

It's that Andrew Gilligan in the Standard again, this time reporting that "Dozens of apparently independent people or organisations which have praised Ken Livingstone or attacked Boris Johnson have received large sums of taxpayers' money from City Hall, a Standard investigation has revealed.

Those paid include newspapers, individual journalists, pressure groups and companies.

The revelations, condemned by the London MP Greg Hands as a "disgrace", come as the Electoral Commission launches an investigation into earlier claims that Mr Livingstone used taxpayer-funded officials for party political campaigning.

The first major attack on Mr Johnson during the campaign came from Doreen Lawrence, mother of the murdered teenager Stephen, who told The Guardian newspaper that he would "destroy the city's [multicultural] unity".

Ms Lawrence did not declare that her organisation, the Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust, has received at least £1.9 million from Mr Livingstone's London Development Agency to build a new headquarters in south-east London. The trust did not reply to inquiries by the Standard.

The following month, Mr Johnson was attacked, also in The Guardian, by John Sauven, director of Greenpeace, who accused him of "diplodocus rhetoric" and of "disappearing under the rising tide of environmental awareness".

Mr Sauven contrasted this with the "boldness" of Mr Livingstone, whose congestion charge, he claimed, "has delivered cuts in both pollution and congestion levels". In fact, after initially falling, both pollution and congestion have returned to their previous levels.

Mr Sauven failed to declare that Greenpeace has been paid at least £7,300 directly by Mr Livingstone and has also received substantial funding through the Mayor's London Energy Partnership. Greenpeace failed to return calls on the subject. "


Do read the rest of the article for the list of other organisations such as Forum For The Future, Peace Alliance, New Nation newspaper, that may be involved.