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Monday 7 April 2008

Ken's lies

As well as pointing out the regular lies that Gordon Brown tells, I am forced to bring to your attention this article by Andrew Gilligan in the Standard.


Here are a few examples, do read the Standard article for the complete list:

1. "Claim: Speaking to the London Assembly on 12 March 2008, Mr Livingstone said: "Children are safer on the streets now than they've really been since the 1950s." (Approx. 17 min 45 sec into the webcast on the London Assembly site.)

Reality: There were 27 murders of children and teenagers in London in 2007. This is more in a single year than in the first seven years of the 1950s. In the first 13 weeks of 2008, there have been 11 child/teenage murders."


2. "Claim: When the Standard raised concerns about 11 City Hall-funded projects linked to Mr Livingstone's then adviser, Lee Jasper, the Mayor dismissed the story as a "pack of lies... For all the projects, there's a full audit trail, with chapter and verse on how the money's been spent" (BBC London, 5.12.07).

Reality: At the time of the interview the LDA was already conducting an emergency audit of one of the projects, Brixton Base, and suing it for monies owed. A subsequent LDA investigation found that there was no audit trail for six projects and called in the police. Three arrests for fraud and theft have already followed."


3. "Claim: "Over the eight years since my election, we've doubled the number of homes being built in this city from 17,000 a year to 33,000 a year and we've doubled the amount of affordable housing." (Speaking at campaign launch, 18.3.08.)

Reality: According to the Mayor's own London Plan Monitoring Report (29.2.08, p66), the net number of self-contained homes built in London was in fact 19,500 in 2000, the year of his election. It rose to 27,500 in the year to April 2007, the latest for which figures are available.

This is an increase of 41 per cent, not a doubling. Nor have "we" [ie the Mayor] accomplished it - it is largely private development fuelled by the house price boom."


3. "Claim: The Olympics will produce "40,000 new homes" (Ken, Guardian 9.3.07).

Reality: According to the Mayor's own London Development Agency, the correct number is in fact 9,000."


4. "Claim: The Olympics will produce "50,000 new jobs" (Ken, Guardian 9.3.07).

Reality: According to the LDA, the Olympics will produce 12,000 permanent new jobs. There will also be 8,000 temporary jobs during the building phase."


5. "Claim: In February 2003, Mr Livingstone pledged not to raise the congestion charge from its then level of £5 until at least 2013.

"It won't be necessary," he said. "It's now quite clear that £5 was enough. I can't conceive of any circumstances in the foreseeable future where we would want to change the charge, although perhaps 10 years down the line it may be necessary." (Times 26.2.03.)

Reality: The congestion charge was raised by 60 per cent (to £8) in summer 2005, and changed to encompass a wider area in

2007. It will increase again to £25 for some vehicles if the Mayor is re-elected."


6. "Claim: In a speech on 2 December 2003, Mr Livingstone pledged: "I will save the Routemaster." In 2001, he said: "Only some ghastly, dehumanised moron would want to get rid of the Routemaster."

Reality: Mr Livingstone got rid of the Routemaster from normal service in December 2005."

To be fair, Ken Livingstone was right that only "some ghastly, dehumanised moron would want to get rid of the Routemaster", one did.


Maybe Ken just "misspoke" on all these occasions?

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