Another day brings us more Ken livingstone sleaze

I see from The Times that more evidence of Ken Livingstone's activities and the veracity of his denials has come to light. This time it concerns his use of "public servants to write articles in support of his last reelection as Mayor of London". It appears that "Documents passed to The Times prove that staff paid for by public money were told to carry out campaign work during office hours. One e-mail to the mayor’s former senior adviser on Asian affairs, Atma Singh, sent at 9.30am, explicitly asks that he write two articles in support of Mr Livingstone by noon that day.

The evidence directly contradicts the Mayor of London’s claim last week that senior public officials could not and did not carry out such work during the 2004 campaign. He said officials could engage in political activity “as long as they obey the law, which is that they can’t publicly campaign, which is they can’t make a speech for me or write an article for me”.

Asked if an investigation would find that no one had used office time to prepare articles in pursuit of his campaign, he replied: “Absolutely right.”

Yet on May 27, 2004, Mr Singh received an e-mail from the campaign office of the Ken4London based in the headquarters of the London Labour Party. It said: “We are still waiting for your article for the Asian Post . . . and the East Muslim News (400-500 words on Why should Muslims vote for Ken Livinsgtone? – this is urgent, publication date June 1st). Both required 12 noon today.”

Mr Singh also told The Times that he spent up to 90 per cent of his days during the campaign working for Mr Livingstone’s reelection, in contravention of electoral rules."


Apparently "Ken Livingstone’s spokeswoman for the Greater London Authority denied that he had been misleading in claiming that no senior City Hall staff had written articles for him during the campaign. She said that there had been a “misunderstanding” of the rules.

“Politically restricted staff are permitted to write articles on any topic in their own private time which are then published by Ken Livingstone but they are not allowed to publish any written or artistic work of which he is the author (or one of the authors) and which it appears to be intended to affect public support for a political party. Nor is the politically restricted staff member allowed to canvass or publicly call for support for a particular person,” she said."



Just three months until we can be rid of this odious man.



Oddly the BBC prefer to concentrate on minor Conservative MPs rather than the slew of stories about Ken Livingstone, I wonder why!