Tony Blair must be laughing his head off as he engages his mates in the devils dungeon and regales them with his perfect evil plot to corrupt London
This must be because of the complete state of ‘treating as normal, almost acceptable’ sleaze and corruption in society that the mainstream media has now created. And got itself engaged in.
From the BBC to the ITV, from the Rupert Murdoched Times to the Rupert Murdoched Sun, from the ethnicity-linked sleaze-sheets to the ethnicity-linked sleaze tv channels, the entire ‘opinion, atmosphere’ of corrupt and corrupting hype around AND FOR the re-election of the corrupter of London, Ken Lyingstill Livingstone has been one of unprecedented descent of 'society' and 'societal institutions into the abyss of utter immorality and disgraceful departure from ethics and ethically.....
And there is absolutely no room for examining any of the liar Livingstone's evil records over the past 8 =years as the ‘Undone mayor’ at the expense of the people of London... In the name of the people of London...
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Monday, April 28, 2008
'Mainstream' Brit 'media' 'commentators' are echoing 4 years on, what Khoodeelaar! has been saying about the LIAR Ken Livingstone....
2158 Hrs GMT 2258 Hrs UKtime London Monday 28 April 2008:
Khoodeelaar! the ‘No to Crossrail hole plot against the East End of London’ CAMPAIGN ‘TOLD YOU SO’ - that is SAID IT ON THE RECORD - for more than 4 years now, that the key tout in London for Big Business Crossrail hole plot, the ‘Undone mayor’ Ken Livingstone, was, has been, is and will continue to be A LIAR....
If our description of the lying Ken Livingstone has been straight and open, some of the ‘mainstream’ ‘media’ confessions to knowing that Livingstone was a liar, are now making it very clear that the evidence is undeniable that Livingstone is untrustworthy, that he has lied, that he is unfit to deserve the mandate from the people of London for any extension of Livingstone's reign in the name of the people of London....
Khoodeelaar! is saying this on the day that Simon Jenkins, one of the most pervasive ’mainstream’ British ‘establishment’ ‘timeserving’ ‘commentators’ has himself admitted that Livingstone does not deserve to be trusted because he is a self-confessed liar......
[To be continued]
Khoodeelaar! the ‘No to Crossrail hole plot against the East End of London’ CAMPAIGN ‘TOLD YOU SO’ - that is SAID IT ON THE RECORD - for more than 4 years now, that the key tout in London for Big Business Crossrail hole plot, the ‘Undone mayor’ Ken Livingstone, was, has been, is and will continue to be A LIAR....
If our description of the lying Ken Livingstone has been straight and open, some of the ‘mainstream’ ‘media’ confessions to knowing that Livingstone was a liar, are now making it very clear that the evidence is undeniable that Livingstone is untrustworthy, that he has lied, that he is unfit to deserve the mandate from the people of London for any extension of Livingstone's reign in the name of the people of London....
Khoodeelaar! is saying this on the day that Simon Jenkins, one of the most pervasive ’mainstream’ British ‘establishment’ ‘timeserving’ ‘commentators’ has himself admitted that Livingstone does not deserve to be trusted because he is a self-confessed liar......
[To be continued]
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
How the BBC 'Breakfast' slot and the Polly-Toynbeed Guardian lied to cover up the poverty of Gordon Brown's imprudence..-1
Muhammad Haque ethical commentary 0750 Hrs GMT London Tuesday 22 April 2008:
On Gordon Brown, his Big Business agenda setters and how the Big Business plot is being propagated by both the BBC and the Guardian [allegedly 'edited' by Polly Toynbee],
But that would not be the view that would come across over at the BBC...
Especially if anyone who had just begun watching the BBC1 Breakfast programme on this same morning 22 April 2008. The BBC must have struck a deal with the evil plotters who are bent on deceiving the public about the post of mayor at the expense of London...
From the start, this was a very corrupt idea... It was not designed to let the people of London hold to account anyone in post in the peoples' name...
Neither the post of ‘mayor in the name of London’ nor the overly exaggerated and false ‘Greater London Assembly’ [GLA] could deliver any accountability... Even if the ‘legislation’ were different .........
On the matter of that package of legislation, I shall be commenting more later today [Tuesday 22 April 2008] and in the course of the next week or so.... I shall do so as part of the Khoodeelaar! Manifesto...... for the people of London.....
Back to the obscene, the ignorant, the untruthful package peddled this morning [22 April 2008] on the he BBC1 ‘Breakfast’ slot, they did an unprecedented [that word will soon be reviewed, on the evidence] touting for Ken Livingstone IN EFFECT although they kept their promotion of Ken Livingstone barely within the limits of propaganda ... and they did an equally unjustified and untruthful plug and touting for Big Business ‘City of London’...
They did it with words of such ignorance that in the context of the known facts so far, the scriptwriter/s of that package must have been criminally assigned to make the unrepresentative, corrupting post appear almost legitimate...
No, not just almost legitimate, make it look like fairy tale.. Not that their target viewers would be expected to treat it as fairy tale They would be expected to treat it as the real thing......
Just why are the BBC script-agenda-setters intent on lying so openly to the public? Is it, could it be, it must be connected with today’s Guardian front page [see, on the right of the page, immediately below this comment] which shows the true colour, the corrupting colour of the lying Guardian....
Early editions of today’s Guardian newspaper [Tuesday 22 April 2008] have carried a front page lead that ATTACks those MPs who are at least putting up a show of resisting Gordon Brown’s attacks on the low paid and the impoverished sections in the community....
On Gordon Brown, his Big Business agenda setters and how the Big Business plot is being propagated by both the BBC and the Guardian [allegedly 'edited' by Polly Toynbee],
But that would not be the view that would come across over at the BBC...
Especially if anyone who had just begun watching the BBC1 Breakfast programme on this same morning 22 April 2008. The BBC must have struck a deal with the evil plotters who are bent on deceiving the public about the post of mayor at the expense of London...
From the start, this was a very corrupt idea... It was not designed to let the people of London hold to account anyone in post in the peoples' name...
Neither the post of ‘mayor in the name of London’ nor the overly exaggerated and false ‘Greater London Assembly’ [GLA] could deliver any accountability... Even if the ‘legislation’ were different .........
On the matter of that package of legislation, I shall be commenting more later today [Tuesday 22 April 2008] and in the course of the next week or so.... I shall do so as part of the Khoodeelaar! Manifesto...... for the people of London.....
Back to the obscene, the ignorant, the untruthful package peddled this morning [22 April 2008] on the he BBC1 ‘Breakfast’ slot, they did an unprecedented [that word will soon be reviewed, on the evidence] touting for Ken Livingstone IN EFFECT although they kept their promotion of Ken Livingstone barely within the limits of propaganda ... and they did an equally unjustified and untruthful plug and touting for Big Business ‘City of London’...
They did it with words of such ignorance that in the context of the known facts so far, the scriptwriter/s of that package must have been criminally assigned to make the unrepresentative, corrupting post appear almost legitimate...
No, not just almost legitimate, make it look like fairy tale.. Not that their target viewers would be expected to treat it as fairy tale They would be expected to treat it as the real thing......
Just why are the BBC script-agenda-setters intent on lying so openly to the public? Is it, could it be, it must be connected with today’s Guardian front page [see, on the right of the page, immediately below this comment] which shows the true colour, the corrupting colour of the lying Guardian....
Early editions of today’s Guardian newspaper [Tuesday 22 April 2008] have carried a front page lead that ATTACks those MPs who are at least putting up a show of resisting Gordon Brown’s attacks on the low paid and the impoverished sections in the community....
Monday, April 21, 2008
Gordon Brown may not shake off the image of being cruel, uncaring and worse.....
Editor©Muhammad Haque
2255 Hrs GMT 2355 Hrs UK Time London Monday 21 April 2008:
Khoodeelaar! exposing yet another act of abject degeneration by Big Business plugging the CRASSly conceived 'London Crossrail’ scam in fakery, in language and words that defy all credibility......
On the day the same day that Brown announced via Darling the extension of col;'collateral' [they say, as 'different' from actual cash'] worth at Least £50 Billion to the banks, he also sermonised to MPs in a committee room in the Palace fo Westminster that they should not press him on the 1q0 p tax.
On the same day that the very Establishment-serving BBC admitted that they have been told by the UK Finance Ministry that there was no money to undo the damage the fault caused by Brown;'s attack on the lower income groups ins society.....
Now where is the justice in that ???
Where is the decency decency in that !!
Where is the sense in that !
That is why we have been describing calling Crossrail CRASSrail....
Well before the evidence fo the particular Gordon Brown 'premiership' was before us.....
We knew that even the self described prudential Brown was operating as an agency for Big Business...
And as the band of Brown-regime propagandists have not wasted any time before pointing out during last week’s diversionary excursion across the Atlantic in the USA, Brown has had a long and enduring relationships with many pillars of the USA ...
Khoodeelaar! republishes [below] an item of their crassness and corruption... This [below] is taken from the Big Business pluggers’ latest pack of lies dressed up as and contained in an outlet call ‘Regeneration. net’. If in the Blaired, Brown-fronted Britain of 2008 there still were any need to find ‘new’ evidence to show up the claims of ‘regeneration’ in inner city Britain [the tool that has been employed by Big Business, City of London capitalist interest for almost 40 years - in facts since a year or so before Enoch Powell made that ‘speech’ in 1968!] as congenitally, conceptually and criminally false, untrue, and offensive violations that they were, are and shall always remain, then this [below][ ‘rengeneration.net’’ 'advertisement’ - must be that piece, that item, that display, that ugliness of that lie.......
Khoodeelaar! will be dissecting the core of that ugly utterance....
But only after putting the offending item on this site solely for the purpose of evidence...
[To be continued]
"
Job Details
search results list new search
Environmental Consents Manager
Location: London
Salary: Salary dependent on skills and experience
Publication Date: 21 Apr 2008 Closing Date: 20 May 2008
Advertised in:
Job descriptionApplySend to a friendSave this job
Crossrail is an ambitious plan to deliver a new railway for London. Our vision is to create a world-class affordable railway, delivered through effective partnerships and project excellence, with high performing teams sharing a clear vision and clear objectives. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to make a significant contribution to public transport, and the quality of life, in London and the country as a whole.
This pivotal role takes overall responsibility for ensuring that all relevant environmental consents and approvals are obtained in accordance with the project's construction programme. Working closely with project consultants and partner organisations, you will identify the environmental consents requirements for the project and maintain a register of these. With high level project management and analytical skills, you will maintain and manage a programme for preparation, submission and approval of environmental consents. An effective communicator you will also liaise with environmental consent granting bodies.
Working to deadlines in a constantly changing project environment, you will uphold complex relationships with stakeholders and other teams within the project. Past experience in environmental management on a major construction project and of leading staff is essential. Membership of an appropriate professional environmental body is also required, alongside proven experience in negotiating environmental consents with consent grant bodies.
If you are interested in delivering this world-class transport system, contact our HR department for an application pack, which includes a full job description of the role by emailing recruitment@crossrail.co.uk or by calling
020 3023 9191. Please quote the reference PH075.
The closing date for receipt of completed applications is 20th May 2008.
We value the diversity that exists in London and aspire to this being reflected in our work force.
See www.crossrail.co.uk for more information on our company.
Contact details
Phone: 020 3023 9191
Email: recruitment@crossrail.co.uk
"
2255 Hrs GMT 2355 Hrs UK Time London Monday 21 April 2008:
Khoodeelaar! exposing yet another act of abject degeneration by Big Business plugging the CRASSly conceived 'London Crossrail’ scam in fakery, in language and words that defy all credibility......
On the day the same day that Brown announced via Darling the extension of col;'collateral' [they say, as 'different' from actual cash'] worth at Least £50 Billion to the banks, he also sermonised to MPs in a committee room in the Palace fo Westminster that they should not press him on the 1q0 p tax.
On the same day that the very Establishment-serving BBC admitted that they have been told by the UK Finance Ministry that there was no money to undo the damage the fault caused by Brown;'s attack on the lower income groups ins society.....
Now where is the justice in that ???
Where is the decency decency in that !!
Where is the sense in that !
That is why we have been describing calling Crossrail CRASSrail....
Well before the evidence fo the particular Gordon Brown 'premiership' was before us.....
We knew that even the self described prudential Brown was operating as an agency for Big Business...
And as the band of Brown-regime propagandists have not wasted any time before pointing out during last week’s diversionary excursion across the Atlantic in the USA, Brown has had a long and enduring relationships with many pillars of the USA ...
Khoodeelaar! republishes [below] an item of their crassness and corruption... This [below] is taken from the Big Business pluggers’ latest pack of lies dressed up as and contained in an outlet call ‘Regeneration. net’. If in the Blaired, Brown-fronted Britain of 2008 there still were any need to find ‘new’ evidence to show up the claims of ‘regeneration’ in inner city Britain [the tool that has been employed by Big Business, City of London capitalist interest for almost 40 years - in facts since a year or so before Enoch Powell made that ‘speech’ in 1968!] as congenitally, conceptually and criminally false, untrue, and offensive violations that they were, are and shall always remain, then this [below][ ‘rengeneration.net’’ 'advertisement’ - must be that piece, that item, that display, that ugliness of that lie.......
Khoodeelaar! will be dissecting the core of that ugly utterance....
But only after putting the offending item on this site solely for the purpose of evidence...
[To be continued]
"
Job Details
search results list new search
Environmental Consents Manager
Location: London
Salary: Salary dependent on skills and experience
Publication Date: 21 Apr 2008 Closing Date: 20 May 2008
Advertised in:
Job descriptionApplySend to a friendSave this job
Crossrail is an ambitious plan to deliver a new railway for London. Our vision is to create a world-class affordable railway, delivered through effective partnerships and project excellence, with high performing teams sharing a clear vision and clear objectives. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to make a significant contribution to public transport, and the quality of life, in London and the country as a whole.
This pivotal role takes overall responsibility for ensuring that all relevant environmental consents and approvals are obtained in accordance with the project's construction programme. Working closely with project consultants and partner organisations, you will identify the environmental consents requirements for the project and maintain a register of these. With high level project management and analytical skills, you will maintain and manage a programme for preparation, submission and approval of environmental consents. An effective communicator you will also liaise with environmental consent granting bodies.
Working to deadlines in a constantly changing project environment, you will uphold complex relationships with stakeholders and other teams within the project. Past experience in environmental management on a major construction project and of leading staff is essential. Membership of an appropriate professional environmental body is also required, alongside proven experience in negotiating environmental consents with consent grant bodies.
If you are interested in delivering this world-class transport system, contact our HR department for an application pack, which includes a full job description of the role by emailing recruitment@crossrail.co.uk or by calling
020 3023 9191. Please quote the reference PH075.
The closing date for receipt of completed applications is 20th May 2008.
We value the diversity that exists in London and aspire to this being reflected in our work force.
See www.crossrail.co.uk for more information on our company.
Contact details
Phone: 020 3023 9191
Email: recruitment@crossrail.co.uk
"
If the banks can guarantee tax payers' money back, why do they need the Bank of England to lend them the money in the first place?
What security from banks? If they can guarantee tax payers' money back, why do they need the Bank of England to lend them the money in the first place?
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Khoodeelaar! No to Crossrail hole Plot exposes Alistair Darling's [and Gordon Brown's] fundamental economic incompetence -
Khoodeelaar! the CONSTITUTIONAL LAW Campaign in the UK against the 'Crossrail Bill' [UK legislative 'House fo Lords']
0650 Hrs GMT London Monday 21 April 2008:
So where is the money coming from Gordon? Surely not from the UK public?!!!
Let alone from the targets of the 10p tax attacks???!!!
If Alistair Darling cannot 'rewrite' the 'Budget', what 'law' is he relying on to rewrite this unfathomable ability cash for Big Banks....?... [To be continued]
0650 Hrs GMT London Monday 21 April 2008:
So where is the money coming from Gordon? Surely not from the UK public?!!!
Let alone from the targets of the 10p tax attacks???!!!
If Alistair Darling cannot 'rewrite' the 'Budget', what 'law' is he relying on to rewrite this unfathomable ability cash for Big Banks....?... [To be continued]
Who is fixing UK ‘mainstream’ TV programmes and media contents to shield Ken Livingstone and let him cling on as ‘mayor’ at the expense of London?
Who is fixing UK ‘mainstream’ TV programmes and media contents to shield Ken Livingstone and let him cling on as ‘mayor’ at the expense of London?
AADHIKAR examination of the corrupt agenda as followed on the UK mainstream TV corrupting programmes and slots on Sunday 20 April 2008 about the ‘London mayor elections’ scheduled on 1 May 2008
Who set the BBC agenda on the 'London mayor' 'election' debase? It was NOT a debate. It WAS a debase. Who fixed Rory Bremner to be so spiteful?
[To be continued]
AADHIKAR examination of the corrupt agenda as followed on the UK mainstream TV corrupting programmes and slots on Sunday 20 April 2008 about the ‘London mayor elections’ scheduled on 1 May 2008
Who set the BBC agenda on the 'London mayor' 'election' debase? It was NOT a debate. It WAS a debase. Who fixed Rory Bremner to be so spiteful?
[To be continued]
Khoodeelaar! extensively records the truthful comment as attributed to Brian Paddick....
By©Muhammad Haque
Organiser
Khoodeelaar! No to Crossrail hole Bill
Posted on the web site of the EALING Times, London at 1605 Hrs UK time Sunday 20 April 2008
Surely ALL options on transport needs of London must be the logical starting point. If, as has already been seen in West London, one particular option was found to be unsuitable then the remanning options should be considered.
On that principle alone, I think Brian Paddick deserves to be recognised for saying a truthful and realistic thing about transport.
For over the past 4 years, the spokespeople on transport in London from all three main parties have uttered unscientific spin and rubbish. They have concealed the truth about the transport needs of ordinary people in London.
This is illustrated by the callous and the strange almost secret-deal -like agreement by all these parties on Crossrail.
Yet all independent studies of transport needs in and of London suggest otherwise... Those suggestions overwhelmingly point to ALL options being deserving of serious and economically responsible consideration.
Because of the size of London costs are by definition high.
No rational decision on transport should be made in a rash, opportunistic way. Years, perhaps decades of liability will be placed on ordinary people who are already being lumbered with having to pay extra council tax for Crossrail.
Khoodeelaar! is currently telling the legislative House of Lords to conduct that overdue serious study during the ‘Crossrail Bill’ Select Committee .
quote
Crossrail hole plot-funder Gordon Brown is doomed to sink down the 10p tax poverty-aggravator hole of his OWN imprudence....
By©Muhammad Haque
Brown has 'his' 'poll tax moment' already! A wise man in Brown’s position will SCRAP the 'poll tax' extra burden NOW! A defiant Brown will sink down this new hole of his own making...
1015 Hrs GMT London Sunday 20 April 2008: Khoodeelaar!
No to Big Business CRAssrail hole-plot-funder Gordon Brown: You are doomed to follow John Major, so far sooner than he ever ACKNOWLEDGED he would have to go.....UNLESS you are able to show that you have integrity, morality and competence all at the same time. And in the same person as should demonstrate by real, unfaked conduct that they have true ethical courage and timeliness... NOW.... SCRAP it, Gordon, SCRAP all your bad, antidemocratic, unfair, unjust, unwanted, unnecessary, uneconomic policies... Say Sorry to the targets of your sponsored robbery of the have-nots, of the disenfranchised, of the denied by the back door and you can expect some sort of electoral, political forgiveness... Otherwise you will go down as the Trojan Horse who let in the official Tories.... and you will not be ‘saved’ by Ken LYINGSTILL Livingstone.....Least of all by CRASSrail.... That scam can be dropped even at this stage and you will find that the £5-£15Billion of UK public fund that you have in effect committed to CRASSrail, will be much better use to really needy and productive parts of the Uk economic and society... So scrap it, Gordon. Pay heed to reason. Good sense should prevail... Give up Big Business now and say a big thank you to all the people who had ‘hoped’ that you would end the Blairing lies and the Blaring policy thuggery - the people whom you have caused so much anguish to already... [To be continued]
Brown has 'his' 'poll tax moment' already! A wise man in Brown’s position will SCRAP the 'poll tax' extra burden NOW! A defiant Brown will sink down this new hole of his own making...
1015 Hrs GMT London Sunday 20 April 2008: Khoodeelaar!
No to Big Business CRAssrail hole-plot-funder Gordon Brown: You are doomed to follow John Major, so far sooner than he ever ACKNOWLEDGED he would have to go.....UNLESS you are able to show that you have integrity, morality and competence all at the same time. And in the same person as should demonstrate by real, unfaked conduct that they have true ethical courage and timeliness... NOW.... SCRAP it, Gordon, SCRAP all your bad, antidemocratic, unfair, unjust, unwanted, unnecessary, uneconomic policies... Say Sorry to the targets of your sponsored robbery of the have-nots, of the disenfranchised, of the denied by the back door and you can expect some sort of electoral, political forgiveness... Otherwise you will go down as the Trojan Horse who let in the official Tories.... and you will not be ‘saved’ by Ken LYINGSTILL Livingstone.....Least of all by CRASSrail.... That scam can be dropped even at this stage and you will find that the £5-£15Billion of UK public fund that you have in effect committed to CRASSrail, will be much better use to really needy and productive parts of the Uk economic and society... So scrap it, Gordon. Pay heed to reason. Good sense should prevail... Give up Big Business now and say a big thank you to all the people who had ‘hoped’ that you would end the Blairing lies and the Blaring policy thuggery - the people whom you have caused so much anguish to already... [To be continued]
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Muhammad Haque tells Simon Jenkins [Sunday Times 'columnist'] that he is wrong to promote Crossrail...and the 'mayor'....
In the first response sent to the Timesonline, Muhammad Haque has said [at 2215 Hrs GMT] the following to Simon Jenkins' propaganda [which, as usual, reads like an extension of the scripted agenda of Big Business interests] piece for the wasteful post of mayor in the name of London:-
"
Every city needs a Ken v Boris show – it brings local politics back to life
"
Really?
What life?
Charade! Charade! and wasteful, costly and irrelevant charade!
On all counts flaunted by Simon Jenkins, the bureaucracy of a ‘mayor of London’ has been a denial of democracy.
To say the least!
Unless of course Mr Jenkins means “for career courtesans and assorted plastic promoters and propagandists” in “the media”.
The coverage Mr Jenkins boastfully promotes has been to cover up the truth. To conceal the disgraceful abuse of access to public cash and the propensity to waste it in cultivating a corrupt career and entourage.
Neither the 2012 Olympics nor Crossrail is an achievement Neither has been a response to ordinary peoples’ demand or needs.
Neither the 2012 Olympics nor Crossrail is a reality. BOTH are doomed to discredit their peddlers.
Neither ‘project’ [in fact SCAM] has been causally or democratically linked with there being a mayor in the name of London.
Both are products of lobbys ['lobbies']. Big Business, antidemocratic . lobbys [='lobbies'] and vested interests.
Neither can be afforded by any British city in the ordinary sense of economic capacity. Neither deserves to be peddled to any urban centre
"
"
Every city needs a Ken v Boris show – it brings local politics back to life
"
Really?
What life?
Charade! Charade! and wasteful, costly and irrelevant charade!
On all counts flaunted by Simon Jenkins, the bureaucracy of a ‘mayor of London’ has been a denial of democracy.
To say the least!
Unless of course Mr Jenkins means “for career courtesans and assorted plastic promoters and propagandists” in “the media”.
The coverage Mr Jenkins boastfully promotes has been to cover up the truth. To conceal the disgraceful abuse of access to public cash and the propensity to waste it in cultivating a corrupt career and entourage.
Neither the 2012 Olympics nor Crossrail is an achievement Neither has been a response to ordinary peoples’ demand or needs.
Neither the 2012 Olympics nor Crossrail is a reality. BOTH are doomed to discredit their peddlers.
Neither ‘project’ [in fact SCAM] has been causally or democratically linked with there being a mayor in the name of London.
Both are products of lobbys ['lobbies']. Big Business, antidemocratic . lobbys [='lobbies'] and vested interests.
Neither can be afforded by any British city in the ordinary sense of economic capacity. Neither deserves to be peddled to any urban centre
"
After Brown was compared extensively to having been obscured by the Pope’s visit of the USA, can Brown salvage his sunken reputation..?
After Brown was compared extensively to having been obscured by the Pope’s visit to the USA, has Gordon Brown the ethics, the morality to live down being ridiculed by a 'peer' who has no morality of his own? immoral 'peer'?
By©Muhammad Haque
1650 GMT
London Saturday 19 April 2008
Gordon Brown suffers from the same [what is the term I am in fact meaning to use here?] ignorance that destroyed the objectively tested credibility of all the predecessors in occupation at No 10 Downing Street. ...
The fact that I am again pointing this out does not mean that Brown will get out of his ignorance.
Let alone that he will apologise for being so ignorant about the world and about the society in Britain....
As I have said many times already since Brown ignorantly and very embarrassingly boasted in Africa that he had nothing to apologise for when it came to the British Empire, that showed that Brown really was no different from Blair.
In fact, Brown may typify a worse political backwardness than even the perennially delusional and lying Blair ever did.....
Now that is indeed very worrying.
For Britain and for the world.
For Britain because it still is the tail that the Military Industrial Complex and the Pentagon use to test the state of their reality-linking with the rest of the world.
It is not just in relation to their dealings with ‘Europe’ that the MIC-Pentagon [= MICP] use ‘Britain’ and their White House-'cooked [cf: GW Bush and his sick-makingly cynical ‘joke’ about him and ‘Laura’ cooking ‘up a meal’ for Brown] ‘relationship’ for...
Entire continents of Australia, Africa and Asia are contaminated with the active, the living legacies of [what is the term I am in fact meaning to use here?] grand plans and strategies that were devised by Gordon Brown’s predecessors in power in Britain over the past 500 years....
Perhaps a truthful and an honest student of the world of the past 2000 years would have used a totally different phrase than what Brown used in his boastful utterances as made in Africa...
Of course humility would not pass Brown’s lips [whether they existed in reality or metaphorically] when he would address the peoples’ of Africa and Asia and in particular the peoples of what is now called Australia....
Not to begin with the peoples that were genocided out of existence in what is now the North American region...
If Brown HAD that wisdom and that knowledge and that ethics then he could begin to say that he deserved to be referred to with at least a semblance of moral recognition.
Especially by the likes of what was astonishingly referred to this past week by the Daily Mail, the EVENING standardless STANDARD, the ITV news as a ‘senior’ ‘Labour’ [=presumably they mean what used to be knows the Labour Party ] ‘peer’ in the shape of the immoral and the corrupting petty-careerist linked with the Lousy Scandalising site at the expense of Education [=LSE], a time-server call Meghnad Desai!
Now to be compared unfavourably with Meghnad Desai, as Brown has been this past week during Brown’s much needed diversionary trip abroad in the USA, is to be extremely seriously condemned....
Meghnad Desai is no source of morality. Nor is he a political scientist of any integrity whatever. And he most certainly is no economist. But he has been transformed into these morally ‘higher’ levels and locations by the ‘media’ in the course of a few seconds when he was utilised by particular elements who needed a ‘Labour’-linked entity, however discreditable, to pour scorn at Brown’s integrity, ability, competence and vision.... [not to even b begin to dissect Brown's decade long claim to 'prudence']....
And they were spot on...
And the blame lies with Brown himself...
For Brown has made his own career by aligning himself with the mainstream brigades of [what is the generic term I am in fact meaning to use here?] in what used to be the Labour Party and also the ‘Labour movement’...
Those [what is the generic term I am in fact meaning to use here?] were responsible for the prominence that has been accorded to the phenomenally ignorant likes of Epoch Powell...
Incredibly, Brown is not in the minority as a [what is the term I am in fact meaning to use here?] in the Labour Movement [that includes the MorninG Scar]
[To be continued]
By©Muhammad Haque
1650 GMT
London Saturday 19 April 2008
Gordon Brown suffers from the same [what is the term I am in fact meaning to use here?] ignorance that destroyed the objectively tested credibility of all the predecessors in occupation at No 10 Downing Street. ...
The fact that I am again pointing this out does not mean that Brown will get out of his ignorance.
Let alone that he will apologise for being so ignorant about the world and about the society in Britain....
As I have said many times already since Brown ignorantly and very embarrassingly boasted in Africa that he had nothing to apologise for when it came to the British Empire, that showed that Brown really was no different from Blair.
In fact, Brown may typify a worse political backwardness than even the perennially delusional and lying Blair ever did.....
Now that is indeed very worrying.
For Britain and for the world.
For Britain because it still is the tail that the Military Industrial Complex and the Pentagon use to test the state of their reality-linking with the rest of the world.
It is not just in relation to their dealings with ‘Europe’ that the MIC-Pentagon [= MICP] use ‘Britain’ and their White House-'cooked [cf: GW Bush and his sick-makingly cynical ‘joke’ about him and ‘Laura’ cooking ‘up a meal’ for Brown] ‘relationship’ for...
Entire continents of Australia, Africa and Asia are contaminated with the active, the living legacies of [what is the term I am in fact meaning to use here?] grand plans and strategies that were devised by Gordon Brown’s predecessors in power in Britain over the past 500 years....
Perhaps a truthful and an honest student of the world of the past 2000 years would have used a totally different phrase than what Brown used in his boastful utterances as made in Africa...
Of course humility would not pass Brown’s lips [whether they existed in reality or metaphorically] when he would address the peoples’ of Africa and Asia and in particular the peoples of what is now called Australia....
Not to begin with the peoples that were genocided out of existence in what is now the North American region...
If Brown HAD that wisdom and that knowledge and that ethics then he could begin to say that he deserved to be referred to with at least a semblance of moral recognition.
Especially by the likes of what was astonishingly referred to this past week by the Daily Mail, the EVENING standardless STANDARD, the ITV news as a ‘senior’ ‘Labour’ [=presumably they mean what used to be knows the Labour Party ] ‘peer’ in the shape of the immoral and the corrupting petty-careerist linked with the Lousy Scandalising site at the expense of Education [=LSE], a time-server call Meghnad Desai!
Now to be compared unfavourably with Meghnad Desai, as Brown has been this past week during Brown’s much needed diversionary trip abroad in the USA, is to be extremely seriously condemned....
Meghnad Desai is no source of morality. Nor is he a political scientist of any integrity whatever. And he most certainly is no economist. But he has been transformed into these morally ‘higher’ levels and locations by the ‘media’ in the course of a few seconds when he was utilised by particular elements who needed a ‘Labour’-linked entity, however discreditable, to pour scorn at Brown’s integrity, ability, competence and vision.... [not to even b begin to dissect Brown's decade long claim to 'prudence']....
And they were spot on...
And the blame lies with Brown himself...
For Brown has made his own career by aligning himself with the mainstream brigades of [what is the generic term I am in fact meaning to use here?] in what used to be the Labour Party and also the ‘Labour movement’...
Those [what is the generic term I am in fact meaning to use here?] were responsible for the prominence that has been accorded to the phenomenally ignorant likes of Epoch Powell...
Incredibly, Brown is not in the minority as a [what is the term I am in fact meaning to use here?] in the Labour Movement [that includes the MorninG Scar]
[To be continued]
Muhammad Haque reminding Gordon Brown of the prudent advice Khoodeelaar! gave to Brown 4 years ago...
And that advice was that Gordon Brown should continue to reject Ken Livingstone's lies in the name of London.
As Brown returns to the UK to face the latest chorus against his Blairing policy, KHOODEELAAR! updates Brown on what the campaign against the crassly conceived Crossrail hole cam [='the Crossrail Bill' in the UK House of Lords as at 19 April 2008] has been saying about the very core of Brown's problems - the UK economy... This update comes from the heart of inner cities Britain.,..
And the Khoodeelaar! constitutional law and economic updates are stuffed full of Brown's 'British vahloos'...
So Brown had better pay full and active attention to what is coming his way and from the Khoodeelaar! movement
[To be continued]
As Brown returns to the UK to face the latest chorus against his Blairing policy, KHOODEELAAR! updates Brown on what the campaign against the crassly conceived Crossrail hole cam [='the Crossrail Bill' in the UK House of Lords as at 19 April 2008] has been saying about the very core of Brown's problems - the UK economy... This update comes from the heart of inner cities Britain.,..
And the Khoodeelaar! constitutional law and economic updates are stuffed full of Brown's 'British vahloos'...
So Brown had better pay full and active attention to what is coming his way and from the Khoodeelaar! movement
[To be continued]
Friday, April 18, 2008
A 'satirical' take on Ken Livingstone's psychology with reference to transport in London
http://search.msn.com/video/results.aspx?q=Dead+Ringers&docid=1615029272630&FORM=VIVR7#docid=1557757952123
So Ken Livingstone is admitting to having lost the plot altogether now that his touting for Big Business is exposed!
Now [Friday 18 April 2008] the London EVENING standardless STANDARD [‘West End Final’] reports that Ed Balls [now, how inaccurate can you get! when choosing a name, ‘in context’ !!!] has opined that a Tory mayor would be bad news for the City of London! What could he possibly mean?
That a Blaring, Brown-endorsed former Labour Party mayor [ being the ‘official candidate now’ on behalf of the Party that had now been made into a more right-wing bureaucracy than Thatcher could dream of turning her Conservative Party into] would be safe for the City of London? What could that mean? To find the answer to this question, we have to remember that only last week, the Livingstone were saying that Boris Johnson was a fascist .. And only today, in the same editions of the London EVENING standardises STANDARD, they are reporting the Ken Living stone propaganda that Boris Johnson was a Thatcherite!
Are they seriously saying that the City of London is not Thatcherite?
That the City of London was not backing Thatcher when she was in control?
[To be continued]
That a Blaring, Brown-endorsed former Labour Party mayor [ being the ‘official candidate now’ on behalf of the Party that had now been made into a more right-wing bureaucracy than Thatcher could dream of turning her Conservative Party into] would be safe for the City of London? What could that mean? To find the answer to this question, we have to remember that only last week, the Livingstone were saying that Boris Johnson was a fascist .. And only today, in the same editions of the London EVENING standardises STANDARD, they are reporting the Ken Living stone propaganda that Boris Johnson was a Thatcherite!
Are they seriously saying that the City of London is not Thatcherite?
That the City of London was not backing Thatcher when she was in control?
[To be continued]
KEN Livingstone HAS BEEN aiding and abetting those violators of rights in inner city boroughs. Such as Tower Hamlets and Newham..
KEN Livingstone HAS BEEN aiding and abetting those violators of rights in inner city boroughs. Such as Tower Hamlets and Newham.. The two boroughs have been described by the US magazine TIME as ‘grimy’... Who has made these ‘grimy’ boroughs? How have they become so clearly identifiable as ‘grimy’? The answer is that the violators have done it. Who are they The violators of rights that have been making careers for themselves by trading in the name of ‘ethnic minorities communities’ and ‘white working class’.....
This is not a new phenomenon... This has gone on for the most part of the past 30 years. And Ken Livingstone has been deeply involved in this criminal programme to criminalise the white working class and the ‘ethnic minority’ community youngsters...
[To be continued]
This is not a new phenomenon... This has gone on for the most part of the past 30 years. And Ken Livingstone has been deeply involved in this criminal programme to criminalise the white working class and the ‘ethnic minority’ community youngsters...
[To be continued]
How Ken Livingstone has been aiding and abetting the criminalising programme in Tower Hamlets and Newham...
KEN Livingstone HAS BEEN aiding and abetting those violators of rights in inner city boroughs. Such as Tower Hamlets and Newham.. The two boroughs have been described by the US magazine TIME as ‘grimy’... Who has made these grimy boroughs How have they become so clearly identifiable as ‘grimy’? The answer is that the violators have done it. Who are they The violators fo rights that have been making careers for themselves by trading in the name of ‘ethnic minorities communities’ and ‘white working class’.....
This is not a new phenomenon... This has gone on for the most part of the past 30 years. And Ken Livingstone has been deeply involved in this criminal programme to criminalise the white working class and the ‘ethnic minority’ community youngsters...
[To be continued]
This is not a new phenomenon... This has gone on for the most part of the past 30 years. And Ken Livingstone has been deeply involved in this criminal programme to criminalise the white working class and the ‘ethnic minority’ community youngsters...
[To be continued]
Muhammad Haque commentary, coming here during Friday 18 April 2008: How Crossrail agenda and Ken Livingstone will help to KEEP Tower Hamlets grimy...
The USA [New York-centric] TIME Magazine confesses, 'Tower Hamlets is a grimy borough'
Who has made Tower Hamlets a grimy borough?
How Crossrail agenda and Ken Livingstone will help to KEEP Tower Hamlets grimy in economic and social terms?
[To be continued]
Who has made Tower Hamlets a grimy borough?
How Crossrail agenda and Ken Livingstone will help to KEEP Tower Hamlets grimy in economic and social terms?
[To be continued]
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Harriet Harman's prancing appearance and the inappropriate behaviour staged somewhere on the Isle of Dogs [OOPS! 'Canary Wharf'] conceals the truth...
By©Muhammad Haque
1130 Hrs GMT
1230 Hrs UKTime
London
Thursday 17 April 2008
Harriet Harman's prancing appearance and the inappropriate behaviour staged somewhere on the Isle of Dogs [OOPS! 'Canary Wharf'] this week is part of the Big Business-prompted Crossrail hole agendda programme undertaken by the 'liberator of Africa', Gordon Brown, to liberate the people of the East End of London out of whatever there still remains of the peoples' say on what happens to our neighborhoods, our area...
The corrupt clique on the Tower Hamlets Council, which Harriet Harman is programmed, zombie-like, to aid and abet, is not fit for purpose.
But that does not mean that there is any party political alternative outfit that can be given the peoples' backing either...
And this conundrum is very well clear and known to the Blaring mob...
So they are not ashamed.
They are not embarrassed.
They have got the people where its suits the clique...
And hence the lack of apology for the serious violations and acts of betrayals that they HAVE been carrying out against the community...
[To be continued]
1130 Hrs GMT
1230 Hrs UKTime
London
Thursday 17 April 2008
Harriet Harman's prancing appearance and the inappropriate behaviour staged somewhere on the Isle of Dogs [OOPS! 'Canary Wharf'] this week is part of the Big Business-prompted Crossrail hole agendda programme undertaken by the 'liberator of Africa', Gordon Brown, to liberate the people of the East End of London out of whatever there still remains of the peoples' say on what happens to our neighborhoods, our area...
The corrupt clique on the Tower Hamlets Council, which Harriet Harman is programmed, zombie-like, to aid and abet, is not fit for purpose.
But that does not mean that there is any party political alternative outfit that can be given the peoples' backing either...
And this conundrum is very well clear and known to the Blaring mob...
So they are not ashamed.
They are not embarrassed.
They have got the people where its suits the clique...
And hence the lack of apology for the serious violations and acts of betrayals that they HAVE been carrying out against the community...
[To be continued]
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
World class poverty in Tower Hamlets! And not a single word about the cause, let alone solution, from Crossrail hole degenerate Livingstone
World class poverty in Tower Hamlets! And not a single word about the cause, let alone solution, from Crossrail hole degenerate Livingstone
From the web site of the London EVENING standardless STANDARD
"
HEADLINES:
Tower Hamlets: among the most deprived areas in England
Children of bad parents 'doomed to poverty at 3'
Joe Murphy, Political Editor
14.04.08
Related Articles
Comment: We need a mayor to rescue lost generation
A generation of London babies are doomed to crime or poverty before they are three years old, new research has shown.
They are born into such dysfunctional families that when they go to nursery school their brains are already underdeveloped.
The findings were revealed today by former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith as he published a study containing startling statistics about social breakdown in the capital.
In an unprecedented move, his Social Justice Commission think tank is to team up with the Smith Foundation - the group set up in memory of late Labour leader John Smith and closely linked to Gordon Brown - to investigate the phenomenon further.
"The life outcomes for these children are virtually set in stone by the time they are three," said Mr Duncan Smith who, since losing the party leadership in 2003, has devoted his time to highlighting social problems and possible solutions. Most babies begin development with their parents talking to them or reading aloud, which develops their brains and teaches them to socialise.
The problem begins when babies are ignored, or live in homes where there is anger, shouting or mistreatment.
By nursery age, some are unable to converse properly and have not learned how to share toys or play happily. Only intensive teaching could save them but hard-pressed teachers were unable to break off from the other children.
"Once they are behind their peer group, it is very difficult to rescue them and they are likely to end up involved in crime or drugs," said Mr Duncan Smith. "This gets to the very heart of everything else we have been looking at.
"One lesson is that it costs three times as much to help a teenager who has fallen behind as it would to stop it from falling behind by helping its family at the earliest stage of development."
Today's report, Breakthrough London, also contained an indictment of the poverty tolerated in the capital alongside its wealth. It found that half the children in inner London live below the poverty line - defined in the report as an annual household income of £11,000, or 60 per cent of median income - and that the gulf between rich and poor is widening.
Crime is three times higher in the most dangerous boroughs than in the safest, and unemployment runs at almost 50 per cent in the poorest areas.
The report linked social breakdown to severe pockets of poverty, highlighting that in some parts of the capital six in 10 households are headed by a single parent - 65 per cent above the national average. Only 45 per cent of lone parents in London were in jobs.
The findings will be debated by the leading mayoral candidates at a Social Justice Commission hustings on Wednesday night. Mr Duncan Smith said the mayoral race was a chance to tackle the five main causes of poverty: family breakdown, worklessness, educational failure, addiction and debt.
"London is a tale of two cities," he said. "There will always be some level of disparity between areas in the city, but the current extent is unacceptable."
The report recommends a package of policies to reverse social breakdown.
A TALE OF TWO CITIES
Success
• London's economy is bigger than Sweden or Switzerland, valued at $452 billion.
• By 2020 it will be the fourth largest city economy in the world.
• With 12% of the UK population, it contributes 19% of national earnings.
• The Square Mile produces 4% of GDP.
• Take-home pay is 45 per cent more on average.
Failure
• Tower Hamlets, Newham and Hackney are three of England's most deprived areas.
• In Inner London, half of all children are in poverty.
• A baby boy has a life expectancy of 74.9 years if born in Islington and 83.1 years if born in Kensington and Chelsea.
• In Tower Hamlets 47.4 per cent of adults are not in work and a quarter have no qualifications.
Link to:
"
From the web site of the London EVENING standardless STANDARD
"
HEADLINES:
Tower Hamlets: among the most deprived areas in England
Children of bad parents 'doomed to poverty at 3'
Joe Murphy, Political Editor
14.04.08
Related Articles
Comment: We need a mayor to rescue lost generation
A generation of London babies are doomed to crime or poverty before they are three years old, new research has shown.
They are born into such dysfunctional families that when they go to nursery school their brains are already underdeveloped.
The findings were revealed today by former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith as he published a study containing startling statistics about social breakdown in the capital.
In an unprecedented move, his Social Justice Commission think tank is to team up with the Smith Foundation - the group set up in memory of late Labour leader John Smith and closely linked to Gordon Brown - to investigate the phenomenon further.
"The life outcomes for these children are virtually set in stone by the time they are three," said Mr Duncan Smith who, since losing the party leadership in 2003, has devoted his time to highlighting social problems and possible solutions. Most babies begin development with their parents talking to them or reading aloud, which develops their brains and teaches them to socialise.
The problem begins when babies are ignored, or live in homes where there is anger, shouting or mistreatment.
By nursery age, some are unable to converse properly and have not learned how to share toys or play happily. Only intensive teaching could save them but hard-pressed teachers were unable to break off from the other children.
"Once they are behind their peer group, it is very difficult to rescue them and they are likely to end up involved in crime or drugs," said Mr Duncan Smith. "This gets to the very heart of everything else we have been looking at.
"One lesson is that it costs three times as much to help a teenager who has fallen behind as it would to stop it from falling behind by helping its family at the earliest stage of development."
Today's report, Breakthrough London, also contained an indictment of the poverty tolerated in the capital alongside its wealth. It found that half the children in inner London live below the poverty line - defined in the report as an annual household income of £11,000, or 60 per cent of median income - and that the gulf between rich and poor is widening.
Crime is three times higher in the most dangerous boroughs than in the safest, and unemployment runs at almost 50 per cent in the poorest areas.
The report linked social breakdown to severe pockets of poverty, highlighting that in some parts of the capital six in 10 households are headed by a single parent - 65 per cent above the national average. Only 45 per cent of lone parents in London were in jobs.
The findings will be debated by the leading mayoral candidates at a Social Justice Commission hustings on Wednesday night. Mr Duncan Smith said the mayoral race was a chance to tackle the five main causes of poverty: family breakdown, worklessness, educational failure, addiction and debt.
"London is a tale of two cities," he said. "There will always be some level of disparity between areas in the city, but the current extent is unacceptable."
The report recommends a package of policies to reverse social breakdown.
A TALE OF TWO CITIES
Success
• London's economy is bigger than Sweden or Switzerland, valued at $452 billion.
• By 2020 it will be the fourth largest city economy in the world.
• With 12% of the UK population, it contributes 19% of national earnings.
• The Square Mile produces 4% of GDP.
• Take-home pay is 45 per cent more on average.
Failure
• Tower Hamlets, Newham and Hackney are three of England's most deprived areas.
• In Inner London, half of all children are in poverty.
• A baby boy has a life expectancy of 74.9 years if born in Islington and 83.1 years if born in Kensington and Chelsea.
• In Tower Hamlets 47.4 per cent of adults are not in work and a quarter have no qualifications.
Link to:
"
World class poverty in Tower Hamlets! And not a single word about the cause, let alone solution, from Crossrail hole degenerate Livingstone
World class poverty in Tower Hamlets! And not a single word about the cause, let alone solution, from Crossrail hole degenerate Livingstone
From the web site of the London EVENING standardless STANDARD
"
HEADLINES:
Tower Hamlets: among the most deprived areas in England
Children of bad parents 'doomed to poverty at 3'
Joe Murphy, Political Editor
14.04.08
Related Articles
Comment: We need a mayor to rescue lost generation
A generation of London babies are doomed to crime or poverty before they are three years old, new research has shown.
They are born into such dysfunctional families that when they go to nursery school their brains are already underdeveloped.
The findings were revealed today by former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith as he published a study containing startling statistics about social breakdown in the capital.
In an unprecedented move, his Social Justice Commission think tank is to team up with the Smith Foundation - the group set up in memory of late Labour leader John Smith and closely linked to Gordon Brown - to investigate the phenomenon further.
"The life outcomes for these children are virtually set in stone by the time they are three," said Mr Duncan Smith who, since losing the party leadership in 2003, has devoted his time to highlighting social problems and possible solutions. Most babies begin development with their parents talking to them or reading aloud, which develops their brains and teaches them to socialise.
The problem begins when babies are ignored, or live in homes where there is anger, shouting or mistreatment.
By nursery age, some are unable to converse properly and have not learned how to share toys or play happily. Only intensive teaching could save them but hard-pressed teachers were unable to break off from the other children.
"Once they are behind their peer group, it is very difficult to rescue them and they are likely to end up involved in crime or drugs," said Mr Duncan Smith. "This gets to the very heart of everything else we have been looking at.
"One lesson is that it costs three times as much to help a teenager who has fallen behind as it would to stop it from falling behind by helping its family at the earliest stage of development."
Today's report, Breakthrough London, also contained an indictment of the poverty tolerated in the capital alongside its wealth. It found that half the children in inner London live below the poverty line - defined in the report as an annual household income of £11,000, or 60 per cent of median income - and that the gulf between rich and poor is widening.
Crime is three times higher in the most dangerous boroughs than in the safest, and unemployment runs at almost 50 per cent in the poorest areas.
The report linked social breakdown to severe pockets of poverty, highlighting that in some parts of the capital six in 10 households are headed by a single parent - 65 per cent above the national average. Only 45 per cent of lone parents in London were in jobs.
The findings will be debated by the leading mayoral candidates at a Social Justice Commission hustings on Wednesday night. Mr Duncan Smith said the mayoral race was a chance to tackle the five main causes of poverty: family breakdown, worklessness, educational failure, addiction and debt.
"London is a tale of two cities," he said. "There will always be some level of disparity between areas in the city, but the current extent is unacceptable."
The report recommends a package of policies to reverse social breakdown.
A TALE OF TWO CITIES
Success
• London's economy is bigger than Sweden or Switzerland, valued at $452 billion.
• By 2020 it will be the fourth largest city economy in the world.
• With 12% of the UK population, it contributes 19% of national earnings.
• The Square Mile produces 4% of GDP.
• Take-home pay is 45 per cent more on average.
Failure
• Tower Hamlets, Newham and Hackney are three of England's most deprived areas.
• In Inner London, half of all children are in poverty.
• A baby boy has a life expectancy of 74.9 years if born in Islington and 83.1 years if born in Kensington and Chelsea.
• In Tower Hamlets 47.4 per cent of adults are not in work and a quarter have no qualifications.
Link to:
Reader Views (6) Add your view | Show all
Here's a sample of the latest views published. You can click view all to read all views that readers have sent in.
I have had lived in Hackney for a couple of years and am aware of the needs. The people there are friendly even if they are living under simple circumstances, it´s adorable how they manage life. Therefore we should support them with additional courses not only concerning the usual topics in school but what matters for daily life for both the parents and the children. The courses should meet the children´s and young adults interests to encourage them. Also school magazines with topics of both educational and social matters would be a good idea. I wonder if there are any such ongoing projects or plans about releasing those. It would be neat to post any contact informations for people who like to participate.
Also I´d like to hear the say of the people who are directly involved for they know best...
- Marion Ziemke, London
The over-generous welfare system is to blame, not just for financial disincentives but for teaching people that work is an option. Old people would receive a lot more attention from family members if they were still involved in childcare. There are numerous arguments against making people reliant on the State.
- Mark Curtis, London
Yet they all run around in nike shoes...poverty? Don't make me laugh, take some responsibility.
- Daveb, London
From the web site of the London EVENING standardless STANDARD
"
HEADLINES:
Tower Hamlets: among the most deprived areas in England
Children of bad parents 'doomed to poverty at 3'
Joe Murphy, Political Editor
14.04.08
Related Articles
Comment: We need a mayor to rescue lost generation
A generation of London babies are doomed to crime or poverty before they are three years old, new research has shown.
They are born into such dysfunctional families that when they go to nursery school their brains are already underdeveloped.
The findings were revealed today by former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith as he published a study containing startling statistics about social breakdown in the capital.
In an unprecedented move, his Social Justice Commission think tank is to team up with the Smith Foundation - the group set up in memory of late Labour leader John Smith and closely linked to Gordon Brown - to investigate the phenomenon further.
"The life outcomes for these children are virtually set in stone by the time they are three," said Mr Duncan Smith who, since losing the party leadership in 2003, has devoted his time to highlighting social problems and possible solutions. Most babies begin development with their parents talking to them or reading aloud, which develops their brains and teaches them to socialise.
The problem begins when babies are ignored, or live in homes where there is anger, shouting or mistreatment.
By nursery age, some are unable to converse properly and have not learned how to share toys or play happily. Only intensive teaching could save them but hard-pressed teachers were unable to break off from the other children.
"Once they are behind their peer group, it is very difficult to rescue them and they are likely to end up involved in crime or drugs," said Mr Duncan Smith. "This gets to the very heart of everything else we have been looking at.
"One lesson is that it costs three times as much to help a teenager who has fallen behind as it would to stop it from falling behind by helping its family at the earliest stage of development."
Today's report, Breakthrough London, also contained an indictment of the poverty tolerated in the capital alongside its wealth. It found that half the children in inner London live below the poverty line - defined in the report as an annual household income of £11,000, or 60 per cent of median income - and that the gulf between rich and poor is widening.
Crime is three times higher in the most dangerous boroughs than in the safest, and unemployment runs at almost 50 per cent in the poorest areas.
The report linked social breakdown to severe pockets of poverty, highlighting that in some parts of the capital six in 10 households are headed by a single parent - 65 per cent above the national average. Only 45 per cent of lone parents in London were in jobs.
The findings will be debated by the leading mayoral candidates at a Social Justice Commission hustings on Wednesday night. Mr Duncan Smith said the mayoral race was a chance to tackle the five main causes of poverty: family breakdown, worklessness, educational failure, addiction and debt.
"London is a tale of two cities," he said. "There will always be some level of disparity between areas in the city, but the current extent is unacceptable."
The report recommends a package of policies to reverse social breakdown.
A TALE OF TWO CITIES
Success
• London's economy is bigger than Sweden or Switzerland, valued at $452 billion.
• By 2020 it will be the fourth largest city economy in the world.
• With 12% of the UK population, it contributes 19% of national earnings.
• The Square Mile produces 4% of GDP.
• Take-home pay is 45 per cent more on average.
Failure
• Tower Hamlets, Newham and Hackney are three of England's most deprived areas.
• In Inner London, half of all children are in poverty.
• A baby boy has a life expectancy of 74.9 years if born in Islington and 83.1 years if born in Kensington and Chelsea.
• In Tower Hamlets 47.4 per cent of adults are not in work and a quarter have no qualifications.
Link to:
Reader Views (6) Add your view | Show all
Here's a sample of the latest views published. You can click view all to read all views that readers have sent in.
I have had lived in Hackney for a couple of years and am aware of the needs. The people there are friendly even if they are living under simple circumstances, it´s adorable how they manage life. Therefore we should support them with additional courses not only concerning the usual topics in school but what matters for daily life for both the parents and the children. The courses should meet the children´s and young adults interests to encourage them. Also school magazines with topics of both educational and social matters would be a good idea. I wonder if there are any such ongoing projects or plans about releasing those. It would be neat to post any contact informations for people who like to participate.
Also I´d like to hear the say of the people who are directly involved for they know best...
- Marion Ziemke, London
The over-generous welfare system is to blame, not just for financial disincentives but for teaching people that work is an option. Old people would receive a lot more attention from family members if they were still involved in childcare. There are numerous arguments against making people reliant on the State.
- Mark Curtis, London
Yet they all run around in nike shoes...poverty? Don't make me laugh, take some responsibility.
- Daveb, London
Is London 'mayor' candidate Brian Paddick right to say that 'Ken Livingstone is a nasty little man' ? AADHIKARonline investigates, NEXT
1200 Hrs GMT 1300 Hrs UK Time London Wednesday 16 April 2008:
KHOODEELAAR! the “No to Crassrail hole plot-peddling Big Bushes tout Ken Livingstone’ CAMPAIGN had TOLD YOU SO about the true nature of the newts-attached Livingstone!
At last!
Albeit in a most curtailed and limited and ‘edited’ [=in the sense of being cut, reduced] way, a report appears with the jointly-'put-up-with] [by McElvoy herself of course] by-line of none other than the ‘in’ woman with the political power brokers, Anne McElvoy of the London ‘EVENING standardless STANDARD’, saying that even they can now publish some aspects of the overwhelming truth... ...........
That Ken Livingstone, as they print at page 6 of their first edition [London, Wednesday 16 April 2008] “a nasty little man who treats anyone who dares criticise him with contempt’.
They, the London ‘EVENING standardless STANDARD’, attribute that statement in quotes to Brian Paddick, the Lib Dembs [='The Liberal Democratic Party' in the UK]’ ‘candidate’ for the post of mayor ‘in the name of London’ at the scheduled 1 May 2008 ‘London elections’.
But the fact that there is ANY such ‘characterisation’ of Ken Livingstone being made by any source other than the Khoodeelaar! movement, is in itself of historic significance.
Why? Because we have said throughout the Khoodeelaar! campaign [4 years and 3 months] so far, that Livingstone is a liar. That he is a liar as part and parcel of his very being. That lying is the first act that ken Livingstone performs as his equivalent of what virtuous, pious people do when they start their effective day Ken Livingstone has made a career by lying to, by lying about and by lying at the expense of the London public. Livingstone has been at it, lying, for over 40 years.
At least. Khoodeelaar! movement has been saying this in order to draw attention to the fact that the people of East London generally and the people of inner City London in particular are being taken for a giant and damaging ride by two of the lyingstill Livingstone's cons: The 2012 ‘hosting’ of the Olympic games and Crossrail. Both, as they have been conceived and controlled, will financially paralyse ordinary people of London.
[To be continued]
_______________________________________________
Mayoral Elections HEADLINES: Job offer: Brian Paddick said that he considered an invitation from David Cameron to run as a Conservative Paddick calls Ken a 'nasty little man' Paul Waugh and Anne McElvoy 16.04.08 Related Articles Mayor demands action on knives Liberal Democrat mayoral candidate Brian Paddick today launched a savage attack on Ken Livingstone, describing him as "a nasty little man" who treats voters with contempt. In an interview with the Evening Standard, Mr Paddick said the Mayor's "appalling record of maladministration", his cronyism and his attempt to set up a "socialist republic" at City Hall all made him unfit for office. By contrast, the former Met police officer said that Boris Johnson "appears to be somewhat eccentric but otherwise really harmless as an individual" - though he stressed he would never employ his Conservative rival to run a business. Mr Paddick also declared that Met Commissioner Sir Ian Blair was a "Stalinist" and said that he should not be given a second term at the helm of Scotland Yard. He said that current Northern Ireland police chief Sir Hugh Orde should be Sir Ian's replacement because he was more of a "copper's copper" who could push through reforms. Mr Paddick, who beat his target time of five hours in Sunday's London Marathon, made it clear that he was now ready for the final straight of the mayoral race. With just over two weeks left until polling day, the former Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the Met unleashed a vitriolic assault on the Mayor's character and record. He said: "I am really trying to get my head around this. Do you want somebody who is a really nasty little man in the shape of Ken Livingstone, very unpleasant and rather nasty, or somebody who just appears to be somewhat eccentric but otherwise really harmless as an individual - except I wouldn't trust him to run anything for me?" Mr Paddick said that Mr Livingstone's reliance on a tight-knit circle of Leftwing advisers meant that he had stopped listening to Londoners. "He is someone who treats anybody who has any criticism of him with complete contempt - whether it is the Evening Standard or the young woman at a mayoral hustings, claiming she was on drugs because she dared to criticise the bus service." Mr Paddick said he was not "equidistant" between his Labour and Conservative opponents and confirmed he seriously considered an approach from David Cameron to be the party's candidate. "I didn't say I was equidistant between the two of them. It is very difficult to gauge where I am between the other two candidates because it is like comparing chalk and cheese. "I seriously considered, for a few hours, the approach from the Conservatives. But on principle I couldn't stand for what the Conservatives stand for. I am a Liberal Democrat, that's where my heart lies." Mr Paddick said he would try to work with the Met chief if elected but stressed that his days were numbered. "I spent 30 years in the police and it became increasingly Stalinist in the restrictions that the Commissioner and Dick Fedorcio [director of public affairs] placed on senior officers and what they could say. This is what happens in times of trouble, you batten down the hatches, and Ian Blair was in a lot of trouble. "Most Londoners now wonder whose side the police are on, when they phone up either the police don't come or they can't get an answer on the phone. Or even when the police do come, they don't seem to do anything when you are a victim of crime. "No commissioner in the Met has ever had a second term, which is what Ken Livingstone has called for and I wouldn't support that. I think it's important to have a regular change of Commissioner and there is at least one potentially good candidate on the horizon." When asked who that would be, he replied: "I mean Sir Hugh Orde. If Sir John Stevens and Sir Ian Blair had a love child, it would be Sir Hugh Orde in that he has the modernising, liberal approach that Sir Ian had, but he has the " copper's copper" style and approachability of Sir John." When asked if there was a "crony" relationship between Sir Ian and Mr Livingstone, Mr Paddick replied: "I think there is. There are examples where Sir Ian has been very obliging to the Labour Party to the extent that people were wondering whether they were related, Tony and Ian." Mr Paddick said he had been more of a figurehead for London than the Mayor after the London bombings in 2005. "When London faced its most serious test since the Second World War after 7 July, I was the figurehead for the police and arguably, bearing in mind I got more airtime than he did, even more of a figurehead than Ken Livingstone was on that occasion," he said.
LIB-DEM ON POLICY AND PERSONAL LIFE MURDER 'EPIDEMIC' The number of parents who have come up to me and said, "When our teenage children go out at night, we are on edge until we hear the key in the lock". These are affluent parents, genuinely concerned their children may get involved in something that, with so many guns and knives about, either through accident or design they end up being killed. It used to be gangs and then "maybe people within the black community on deprived innercity estates who need to carry a knife or a gun to protect themselves from the gangs". Now it's much wider. We used to deal with murder on the basis that it was a tiny proportion of society. You were able to lock the people up for a long time and solve the problem. It's not like that any more - this is an epidemic, not a series of isolated incidents. The most important thing to do is to take the guns and knives off the streets. BUSES What we have is all the bus drivers encased in Perspex who only get out of their cab for a pee or a cigarette. You've got sometimes relatively harmless but very boisterous children making life a nuisance for all the other passengers. All it would take is for the bus driver to stop the bus and go upstairs and speak to the young people and say, "If you don't behave yourselves, this bus isn't going anywhere". In appropriate circumstances, they should intervene. CHILDREN/PRIVATE LIFE When I was married I did regret that my wife didn't want children. Dear Mary thought it would spoil her figure. She now has a child and I'm very happy for her. I'm getting a bit too old and selfish to have children - even adopted ones. Politicians should be allowed to choose how much of their private lives they give away. Link to:
KHOODEELAAR! the “No to Crassrail hole plot-peddling Big Bushes tout Ken Livingstone’ CAMPAIGN had TOLD YOU SO about the true nature of the newts-attached Livingstone!
At last!
Albeit in a most curtailed and limited and ‘edited’ [=in the sense of being cut, reduced] way, a report appears with the jointly-'put-up-with] [by McElvoy herself of course] by-line of none other than the ‘in’ woman with the political power brokers, Anne McElvoy of the London ‘EVENING standardless STANDARD’, saying that even they can now publish some aspects of the overwhelming truth... ...........
That Ken Livingstone, as they print at page 6 of their first edition [London, Wednesday 16 April 2008] “a nasty little man who treats anyone who dares criticise him with contempt’.
They, the London ‘EVENING standardless STANDARD’, attribute that statement in quotes to Brian Paddick, the Lib Dembs [='The Liberal Democratic Party' in the UK]’ ‘candidate’ for the post of mayor ‘in the name of London’ at the scheduled 1 May 2008 ‘London elections’.
But the fact that there is ANY such ‘characterisation’ of Ken Livingstone being made by any source other than the Khoodeelaar! movement, is in itself of historic significance.
Why? Because we have said throughout the Khoodeelaar! campaign [4 years and 3 months] so far, that Livingstone is a liar. That he is a liar as part and parcel of his very being. That lying is the first act that ken Livingstone performs as his equivalent of what virtuous, pious people do when they start their effective day Ken Livingstone has made a career by lying to, by lying about and by lying at the expense of the London public. Livingstone has been at it, lying, for over 40 years.
At least. Khoodeelaar! movement has been saying this in order to draw attention to the fact that the people of East London generally and the people of inner City London in particular are being taken for a giant and damaging ride by two of the lyingstill Livingstone's cons: The 2012 ‘hosting’ of the Olympic games and Crossrail. Both, as they have been conceived and controlled, will financially paralyse ordinary people of London.
[To be continued]
_______________________________________________
Mayoral Elections HEADLINES: Job offer: Brian Paddick said that he considered an invitation from David Cameron to run as a Conservative Paddick calls Ken a 'nasty little man' Paul Waugh and Anne McElvoy 16.04.08 Related Articles Mayor demands action on knives Liberal Democrat mayoral candidate Brian Paddick today launched a savage attack on Ken Livingstone, describing him as "a nasty little man" who treats voters with contempt. In an interview with the Evening Standard, Mr Paddick said the Mayor's "appalling record of maladministration", his cronyism and his attempt to set up a "socialist republic" at City Hall all made him unfit for office. By contrast, the former Met police officer said that Boris Johnson "appears to be somewhat eccentric but otherwise really harmless as an individual" - though he stressed he would never employ his Conservative rival to run a business. Mr Paddick also declared that Met Commissioner Sir Ian Blair was a "Stalinist" and said that he should not be given a second term at the helm of Scotland Yard. He said that current Northern Ireland police chief Sir Hugh Orde should be Sir Ian's replacement because he was more of a "copper's copper" who could push through reforms. Mr Paddick, who beat his target time of five hours in Sunday's London Marathon, made it clear that he was now ready for the final straight of the mayoral race. With just over two weeks left until polling day, the former Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the Met unleashed a vitriolic assault on the Mayor's character and record. He said: "I am really trying to get my head around this. Do you want somebody who is a really nasty little man in the shape of Ken Livingstone, very unpleasant and rather nasty, or somebody who just appears to be somewhat eccentric but otherwise really harmless as an individual - except I wouldn't trust him to run anything for me?" Mr Paddick said that Mr Livingstone's reliance on a tight-knit circle of Leftwing advisers meant that he had stopped listening to Londoners. "He is someone who treats anybody who has any criticism of him with complete contempt - whether it is the Evening Standard or the young woman at a mayoral hustings, claiming she was on drugs because she dared to criticise the bus service." Mr Paddick said he was not "equidistant" between his Labour and Conservative opponents and confirmed he seriously considered an approach from David Cameron to be the party's candidate. "I didn't say I was equidistant between the two of them. It is very difficult to gauge where I am between the other two candidates because it is like comparing chalk and cheese. "I seriously considered, for a few hours, the approach from the Conservatives. But on principle I couldn't stand for what the Conservatives stand for. I am a Liberal Democrat, that's where my heart lies." Mr Paddick said he would try to work with the Met chief if elected but stressed that his days were numbered. "I spent 30 years in the police and it became increasingly Stalinist in the restrictions that the Commissioner and Dick Fedorcio [director of public affairs] placed on senior officers and what they could say. This is what happens in times of trouble, you batten down the hatches, and Ian Blair was in a lot of trouble. "Most Londoners now wonder whose side the police are on, when they phone up either the police don't come or they can't get an answer on the phone. Or even when the police do come, they don't seem to do anything when you are a victim of crime. "No commissioner in the Met has ever had a second term, which is what Ken Livingstone has called for and I wouldn't support that. I think it's important to have a regular change of Commissioner and there is at least one potentially good candidate on the horizon." When asked who that would be, he replied: "I mean Sir Hugh Orde. If Sir John Stevens and Sir Ian Blair had a love child, it would be Sir Hugh Orde in that he has the modernising, liberal approach that Sir Ian had, but he has the " copper's copper" style and approachability of Sir John." When asked if there was a "crony" relationship between Sir Ian and Mr Livingstone, Mr Paddick replied: "I think there is. There are examples where Sir Ian has been very obliging to the Labour Party to the extent that people were wondering whether they were related, Tony and Ian." Mr Paddick said he had been more of a figurehead for London than the Mayor after the London bombings in 2005. "When London faced its most serious test since the Second World War after 7 July, I was the figurehead for the police and arguably, bearing in mind I got more airtime than he did, even more of a figurehead than Ken Livingstone was on that occasion," he said.
LIB-DEM ON POLICY AND PERSONAL LIFE MURDER 'EPIDEMIC' The number of parents who have come up to me and said, "When our teenage children go out at night, we are on edge until we hear the key in the lock". These are affluent parents, genuinely concerned their children may get involved in something that, with so many guns and knives about, either through accident or design they end up being killed. It used to be gangs and then "maybe people within the black community on deprived innercity estates who need to carry a knife or a gun to protect themselves from the gangs". Now it's much wider. We used to deal with murder on the basis that it was a tiny proportion of society. You were able to lock the people up for a long time and solve the problem. It's not like that any more - this is an epidemic, not a series of isolated incidents. The most important thing to do is to take the guns and knives off the streets. BUSES What we have is all the bus drivers encased in Perspex who only get out of their cab for a pee or a cigarette. You've got sometimes relatively harmless but very boisterous children making life a nuisance for all the other passengers. All it would take is for the bus driver to stop the bus and go upstairs and speak to the young people and say, "If you don't behave yourselves, this bus isn't going anywhere". In appropriate circumstances, they should intervene. CHILDREN/PRIVATE LIFE When I was married I did regret that my wife didn't want children. Dear Mary thought it would spoil her figure. She now has a child and I'm very happy for her. I'm getting a bit too old and selfish to have children - even adopted ones. Politicians should be allowed to choose how much of their private lives they give away. Link to:
Is London 'mayor' candidate Brian Paddick right to say that 'Ken Livingstone is a nasty little man' ? AADHIKARonline investigates, NEXT
1200 Hrs GMT 1300 Hrs UK Time London Wednesday 16 April 2008: KHOODEELAAR! the “No to Crassrail hole plot-peddling Big Bushes tout Ken Livingstone’ CAMPAIGN had TOLD But the fact that there is ANY such ‘characterisation’ of Ken Livingstone being made by any source other than the Khoodeelaar! movement, is in itself of historic significance.
Why?
Because we have said throughout the Khoodeelaar! campaign [4 years and 3 months] so far, that Livingstone is a liar. That he is a liar as part and parcel fo his very being. That lying is the first act that ken Livingstone performs as his equivalent of what virtuous, pious people do when they start their effective day
Ken Livingstone has made a career by lying to, by lying about and by lying at the expense of the London public.
Livingstone has been at it, lying, for over 40 years.
At least.
Khoodeelaar! movement has been saying this in order to draw attention to the fact that the people fo East London generally and the people fo inner City London in particular are being taken for a giant and damaging ride by two of the lyingstill Livingstone's cons: The 2012 ‘hosting’ of the Olympic games and Crossrail. Both, as they have been conceived and controlled, will financially paralyse ordinary people of London.
[To be continued]
_______________________________________________
Mayoral Elections
HEADLINES:
Job offer: Brian Paddick said that he considered an invitation from David Cameron to run as a Conservative
Paddick calls Ken a 'nasty little man'
Paul Waugh and Anne McElvoy
16.04.08
Related Articles
Mayor demands action on knives
Liberal Democrat mayoral candidate Brian Paddick today launched a savage attack on Ken Livingstone, describing him as "a nasty little man" who treats voters with contempt.
In an interview with the Evening Standard, Mr Paddick said the Mayor's "appalling record of maladministration", his cronyism and his attempt to set up a "socialist republic" at City Hall all made him unfit for office.
By contrast, the former Met police officer said that Boris Johnson "appears to be somewhat eccentric but otherwise really harmless as an individual" - though he stressed he would never employ his Conservative rival to run a business.
Mr Paddick also declared that Met Commissioner Sir Ian Blair was a "Stalinist" and said that he should not be given a second term at the helm of Scotland Yard.
He said that current Northern Ireland police chief Sir Hugh Orde should be Sir Ian's replacement because he was more of a "copper's copper" who could push through reforms.
Mr Paddick, who beat his target time of five hours in Sunday's London Marathon, made it clear that he was now ready for the final straight of the mayoral race.
With just over two weeks left until polling day, the former Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the Met unleashed a vitriolic assault on the Mayor's character and record.
He said: "I am really trying to get my head around this. Do you want somebody who is a really nasty little man in the shape of Ken Livingstone, very unpleasant and rather nasty, or somebody who just appears to be somewhat eccentric but otherwise really harmless as an individual - except I wouldn't trust him to run anything for me?"
Mr Paddick said that Mr Livingstone's reliance on a tight-knit circle of Leftwing advisers meant that he had stopped listening to Londoners.
"He is someone who treats anybody who has any criticism of him with complete contempt - whether it is the Evening Standard or the young woman at a mayoral hustings, claiming she was on drugs because she dared to criticise the bus service."
Mr Paddick said he was not "equidistant" between his Labour and Conservative opponents and confirmed he seriously considered an approach from David Cameron to be the party's candidate.
"I didn't say I was equidistant between the two of them. It is very difficult to gauge where I am between the other two candidates because it is like comparing chalk and cheese.
"I seriously considered, for a few hours, the approach from the Conservatives. But on principle I couldn't stand for what the Conservatives stand for. I am a Liberal Democrat, that's where my heart lies." Mr Paddick said he would try to work with the Met chief if elected but stressed that his days were numbered. "I spent 30 years in the police and it became increasingly Stalinist in the restrictions that the Commissioner and Dick Fedorcio [director of public affairs] placed on senior officers and what they could say. This is what happens in times of trouble, you batten down the hatches, and Ian Blair was in a lot of trouble.
"Most Londoners now wonder whose side the police are on, when they phone up either the police don't come or they can't get an answer on the phone. Or even when the police do come, they don't seem to do anything when you are a victim of crime.
"No commissioner in the Met has ever had a second term, which is what Ken Livingstone has called for and I wouldn't support that. I think it's important to have a regular change of Commissioner and there is at least one potentially good candidate on the horizon."
When asked who that would be, he replied: "I mean Sir Hugh Orde. If Sir John Stevens and Sir Ian Blair had a love child, it would be Sir Hugh Orde in that he has the modernising, liberal approach that Sir Ian had, but he has the " copper's copper" style and approachability of Sir John." When asked if there was a "crony" relationship between Sir Ian and Mr Livingstone, Mr Paddick replied: "I think there is. There are examples where Sir Ian has been very obliging to the Labour Party to the extent that people were wondering whether they were related, Tony and Ian."
Mr Paddick said he had been more of a figurehead for London than the Mayor after the London bombings in 2005.
"When London faced its most serious test since the Second World War after 7 July, I was the figurehead for the police and arguably, bearing in mind I got more airtime than he did, even more of a figurehead than Ken Livingstone was on that occasion," he said.
LIB-DEM ON POLICY AND PERSONAL LIFE
MURDER 'EPIDEMIC'
The number of parents who have come up to me and said, "When our teenage children go out at night, we are on edge until we hear the key in the lock".
These are affluent parents, genuinely concerned their children may get involved in something that, with so many guns and knives about, either through accident or design they end up being killed.
It used to be gangs and then "maybe people within the black community on deprived innercity estates who need to carry a knife or a gun to protect themselves from the gangs". Now it's much wider.
We used to deal with murder on the basis that it was a tiny proportion of society. You were able to lock the people up for a long time and solve the problem. It's not like that any more - this is an epidemic, not a series of isolated incidents.
The most important thing to do is to take the guns and knives off the streets.
BUSES
What we have is all the bus drivers encased in Perspex who only get out of their cab for a pee or a cigarette.
You've got sometimes relatively harmless but very boisterous children making life a nuisance for all the other passengers.
All it would take is for the bus driver to stop the bus and go upstairs and speak to the young people and say, "If you don't behave yourselves, this bus isn't going anywhere". In appropriate circumstances, they should intervene.
CHILDREN/PRIVATE LIFE
When I was married I did regret that my wife didn't want children. Dear Mary thought it would spoil her figure.
She now has a child and I'm very happy for her. I'm getting a bit too old and selfish to have children - even adopted ones.
Politicians should be allowed to choose how much of their private lives they give away.
Link to:
Why?
Because we have said throughout the Khoodeelaar! campaign [4 years and 3 months] so far, that Livingstone is a liar. That he is a liar as part and parcel fo his very being. That lying is the first act that ken Livingstone performs as his equivalent of what virtuous, pious people do when they start their effective day
Ken Livingstone has made a career by lying to, by lying about and by lying at the expense of the London public.
Livingstone has been at it, lying, for over 40 years.
At least.
Khoodeelaar! movement has been saying this in order to draw attention to the fact that the people fo East London generally and the people fo inner City London in particular are being taken for a giant and damaging ride by two of the lyingstill Livingstone's cons: The 2012 ‘hosting’ of the Olympic games and Crossrail. Both, as they have been conceived and controlled, will financially paralyse ordinary people of London.
[To be continued]
_______________________________________________
Mayoral Elections
HEADLINES:
Job offer: Brian Paddick said that he considered an invitation from David Cameron to run as a Conservative
Paddick calls Ken a 'nasty little man'
Paul Waugh and Anne McElvoy
16.04.08
Related Articles
Mayor demands action on knives
Liberal Democrat mayoral candidate Brian Paddick today launched a savage attack on Ken Livingstone, describing him as "a nasty little man" who treats voters with contempt.
In an interview with the Evening Standard, Mr Paddick said the Mayor's "appalling record of maladministration", his cronyism and his attempt to set up a "socialist republic" at City Hall all made him unfit for office.
By contrast, the former Met police officer said that Boris Johnson "appears to be somewhat eccentric but otherwise really harmless as an individual" - though he stressed he would never employ his Conservative rival to run a business.
Mr Paddick also declared that Met Commissioner Sir Ian Blair was a "Stalinist" and said that he should not be given a second term at the helm of Scotland Yard.
He said that current Northern Ireland police chief Sir Hugh Orde should be Sir Ian's replacement because he was more of a "copper's copper" who could push through reforms.
Mr Paddick, who beat his target time of five hours in Sunday's London Marathon, made it clear that he was now ready for the final straight of the mayoral race.
With just over two weeks left until polling day, the former Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the Met unleashed a vitriolic assault on the Mayor's character and record.
He said: "I am really trying to get my head around this. Do you want somebody who is a really nasty little man in the shape of Ken Livingstone, very unpleasant and rather nasty, or somebody who just appears to be somewhat eccentric but otherwise really harmless as an individual - except I wouldn't trust him to run anything for me?"
Mr Paddick said that Mr Livingstone's reliance on a tight-knit circle of Leftwing advisers meant that he had stopped listening to Londoners.
"He is someone who treats anybody who has any criticism of him with complete contempt - whether it is the Evening Standard or the young woman at a mayoral hustings, claiming she was on drugs because she dared to criticise the bus service."
Mr Paddick said he was not "equidistant" between his Labour and Conservative opponents and confirmed he seriously considered an approach from David Cameron to be the party's candidate.
"I didn't say I was equidistant between the two of them. It is very difficult to gauge where I am between the other two candidates because it is like comparing chalk and cheese.
"I seriously considered, for a few hours, the approach from the Conservatives. But on principle I couldn't stand for what the Conservatives stand for. I am a Liberal Democrat, that's where my heart lies." Mr Paddick said he would try to work with the Met chief if elected but stressed that his days were numbered. "I spent 30 years in the police and it became increasingly Stalinist in the restrictions that the Commissioner and Dick Fedorcio [director of public affairs] placed on senior officers and what they could say. This is what happens in times of trouble, you batten down the hatches, and Ian Blair was in a lot of trouble.
"Most Londoners now wonder whose side the police are on, when they phone up either the police don't come or they can't get an answer on the phone. Or even when the police do come, they don't seem to do anything when you are a victim of crime.
"No commissioner in the Met has ever had a second term, which is what Ken Livingstone has called for and I wouldn't support that. I think it's important to have a regular change of Commissioner and there is at least one potentially good candidate on the horizon."
When asked who that would be, he replied: "I mean Sir Hugh Orde. If Sir John Stevens and Sir Ian Blair had a love child, it would be Sir Hugh Orde in that he has the modernising, liberal approach that Sir Ian had, but he has the " copper's copper" style and approachability of Sir John." When asked if there was a "crony" relationship between Sir Ian and Mr Livingstone, Mr Paddick replied: "I think there is. There are examples where Sir Ian has been very obliging to the Labour Party to the extent that people were wondering whether they were related, Tony and Ian."
Mr Paddick said he had been more of a figurehead for London than the Mayor after the London bombings in 2005.
"When London faced its most serious test since the Second World War after 7 July, I was the figurehead for the police and arguably, bearing in mind I got more airtime than he did, even more of a figurehead than Ken Livingstone was on that occasion," he said.
LIB-DEM ON POLICY AND PERSONAL LIFE
MURDER 'EPIDEMIC'
The number of parents who have come up to me and said, "When our teenage children go out at night, we are on edge until we hear the key in the lock".
These are affluent parents, genuinely concerned their children may get involved in something that, with so many guns and knives about, either through accident or design they end up being killed.
It used to be gangs and then "maybe people within the black community on deprived innercity estates who need to carry a knife or a gun to protect themselves from the gangs". Now it's much wider.
We used to deal with murder on the basis that it was a tiny proportion of society. You were able to lock the people up for a long time and solve the problem. It's not like that any more - this is an epidemic, not a series of isolated incidents.
The most important thing to do is to take the guns and knives off the streets.
BUSES
What we have is all the bus drivers encased in Perspex who only get out of their cab for a pee or a cigarette.
You've got sometimes relatively harmless but very boisterous children making life a nuisance for all the other passengers.
All it would take is for the bus driver to stop the bus and go upstairs and speak to the young people and say, "If you don't behave yourselves, this bus isn't going anywhere". In appropriate circumstances, they should intervene.
CHILDREN/PRIVATE LIFE
When I was married I did regret that my wife didn't want children. Dear Mary thought it would spoil her figure.
She now has a child and I'm very happy for her. I'm getting a bit too old and selfish to have children - even adopted ones.
Politicians should be allowed to choose how much of their private lives they give away.
Link to:
Muhammad Haque [Times online] on the democratic morass in the UK and the de facto death of an intellectually & democratically active Parliament
0715 Hrs GMT 0815 Hrs UK Time London Wednesday 16 April 2008: Khoodeelaar! No to Crossrail hole plot, KHOODEELAAR! the ‘No to unconstitutionality in the process of ‘legislation’ in the ‘uk Parliament’ CAMPAIGN again comments on the the unconstitutionality that is prevalent in the UK Khoodeelaar! the NO to the Crossrail hole Bill [the ‘hybrid’ UK ‘draft law’, that is, the ‘Crossrail Bill’, now in the UK ‘legislative’ House of Lords’] CAMPAIGN incorporating the relevant campaign against abuse of the licence-paying public by the BBC, as was perpetrated by the unethical and the immoral controllers of the broadcasting agenda of the BBC yet again for Big Business Crossrail hole ‘project’ on Wednesday 15 April 2008 and as staged on BBC1 TV [terrestrial] and as fronted by Andrew Neil, is demanding that the BBC tell the long overdue truth about Crossrail, that they apologise to the pub lci and to the ‘viewers’ for having lied for Big Business Crossrail over the past five years…..
[To be continued]
Editor©Muhammad Haque
0715 Hrs GMT 0815 Hr UK Time London Wednesday 16 April 2008:
Khoodeelaar! No to Crossrail hole plot, KHOODEELAAR! the ‘No to unconstitutionality in the process of ‘legislation’ in the ‘uk Parliament’ CAMPAIGN again comments on the the unconstitutionality that is prevalent in the UK Khoodeelaar! the NO to the Crossrail hole Bill [the ‘hybrid’ UK ‘draft law’, that is, the ‘Crossrail Bill’, now in the UK ‘legislative’ House of Lords’] CAMPAIGN incorporating the relevant campaign against abuse of the licence-paying public by the BBC, as was perpetrated by the unethical and the immoral controllers of the broadcasting agenda of the BBC yet again for Big Business Crossrail hole ‘project’ on Wednesday 15 April 2008 and as staged on BBC1 TV [terrestrial] and as fronted by Andrew Neil, is demanding that the BBC tell the long overdue truth about Crossrail, that they apologise to the pub lci and to the ‘viewers’ for having lied for Big Business Crossrail over the past five years….. Khoodeelaar! puts on the record on the London Times newspaper web site the fact of the absence of constitutional accountability that prevails in the UK….
[To be continued]
View [below] the Muhammad Haque comment on the Timesonline as published today 16 April 2008
From The Times
April 16, 2008
Gordon Brown's trophy peers are victims of a well meant but muddled strategy
Digby Jones is absolutely correct. He should never have become a minister. This is little to do with his refusal to join the Labour Party, or about what his preferences might be at the next general election (when he will not have a vote anyway). It is simply because – as my colleague Sam Coates revealed in his report yesterday – the man who is now Lord Jones of Birmingham does not understand what being a Lords minister involves. Nor did Gordon Brown, who appointed him last June in order to demonstrate that he was forming a government of all the talents.
There is nothing wrong with bringing in non-politicians to serve in the Lords, provided that they appreciate what the role of a minister is. This is not just about taking an executive role in a department, or accepting collective responsibility as a member of the Government.
It is also, crucially, about Parliament, not only being accountable and subject to scrutiny, but also voting and taking through your department’s legislation.
Most outsiders appointed as ministers accept that range of responsibilities. Lord Adonis overcame the initial scepticism of some Labour peers about appointing a former Downing Street adviser as a minister by being assiduous in his Lords duties, replying to questions and taking through numerous Bills. Lord Drayson also won wide support among former defence chiefs in the Lords by his commitment to the Services. They took the Lords seriously, a minimum requirement if you are a minister.
But some of the five “trophy” peers – the outsiders brought in by Mr Brown – do not seem fully to understand this side of their work. There are unconfirmed reports, widely believed among Labour peers, that the five were told that they did not have to spend much time in the Lords.
Some have been patchy in performing their Lords duties, with Lord Jones an infrequent voter. The long-suffering Lords whips have to handle some of his department’s business.
The sensible thing would have been to give Lord Jones the same executive responsibilities that he now has as chairman of UK Trade and Investment, even to make him a peer, but not a minister. As he is reported to have said, his role in bringing business investment to Britain should not be done by a minister but by a leading independent businessman. His talents lie as a booster rather than a minister, with all that that entails.
Similarly, Lord Darzi of Denham, a distinguished surgeon as well as conducting a review of the NHS’s next stages, could perform his dual roles as an adviser without also being a minister – though he has already saved the life of one peer. And if Mr Brown really needs more views on domestic terrorism, he could have appointed Lord West of Spithead as an adviser rather than making him a minister, where he does not appear fully at home with the nuances of legislation in a chamber of legal experts.
Lord Jones and the others are in many ways victims of Mr Brown’s well-intentioned, but muddled, big-tent strategy. Lord Jones said yesterday that he had “never claimed to be a political animal”. He believed “trade and investment should transcend the factionalism of party politics”.
But then why did he agree to become a minister which, by definition, cannot be divorced from party politics?
HAVE YOUR SAY
If we have anymore peers in the house of lords they will be sitting on each others knees. I have never seen such a rabble as pictured in the house of lords today, they are a mockery of our noble society and the right to the working person. Is this the result of peers for £'s.
Pol, Melton Mowbray, Leics
Peter Riddell is correct to make the very timely point about accountability and the role of Parliament.
In the dozens of editions of the Gordon Brown defensive interviews given to the electronic media during Tuesday 15 April 2008, he did not once make that same point.
In any way at all. In fact Gordon Brown kept talking about his own background and how he was personally concerned about helping others in [he meant to say] society.
But neither Parliament nor society, let alone any political party with demonstrably democratic structure that might provide any pro-democratic support to the Gordon Brown regime, was allowed a look of.....
And NOR did the official Opposition party leaders in their own [less wide ranging] appearances on the media had anything to say about the substance of Parliament.
I would suggest that this absence of emphasis on the role of Parliament in holding the Govt of the day to account, and through all the procedural stages and concepts, is even more worrying than the periodic capitalistic crises that are being featured in the mainstream media and discussions.
Muhammad Haque, London, UK
Please do not let Mugabe win, reports on Zimbabwe are slowly lessening. If Mugabe had won the results would have long been released.
How low does the country have to get before the rest of the world intervenes.
priscilla, worcester,
"As long as they understand what it involves". Isn't that the eternal public school condecension to women/blacks/Jews/Irish/secondary modern kids etc etc. The more people who dont 'understand' that get into the Lords the better and more productive a place it will be.
E Skelton, Cardiff, Wales
Show fewer comments
HAVE YOUR SAY
[To be continued]
Editor©Muhammad Haque
0715 Hrs GMT 0815 Hr UK Time London Wednesday 16 April 2008:
Khoodeelaar! No to Crossrail hole plot, KHOODEELAAR! the ‘No to unconstitutionality in the process of ‘legislation’ in the ‘uk Parliament’ CAMPAIGN again comments on the the unconstitutionality that is prevalent in the UK Khoodeelaar! the NO to the Crossrail hole Bill [the ‘hybrid’ UK ‘draft law’, that is, the ‘Crossrail Bill’, now in the UK ‘legislative’ House of Lords’] CAMPAIGN incorporating the relevant campaign against abuse of the licence-paying public by the BBC, as was perpetrated by the unethical and the immoral controllers of the broadcasting agenda of the BBC yet again for Big Business Crossrail hole ‘project’ on Wednesday 15 April 2008 and as staged on BBC1 TV [terrestrial] and as fronted by Andrew Neil, is demanding that the BBC tell the long overdue truth about Crossrail, that they apologise to the pub lci and to the ‘viewers’ for having lied for Big Business Crossrail over the past five years….. Khoodeelaar! puts on the record on the London Times newspaper web site the fact of the absence of constitutional accountability that prevails in the UK….
[To be continued]
View [below] the Muhammad Haque comment on the Timesonline as published today 16 April 2008
From The Times
April 16, 2008
Gordon Brown's trophy peers are victims of a well meant but muddled strategy
Digby Jones is absolutely correct. He should never have become a minister. This is little to do with his refusal to join the Labour Party, or about what his preferences might be at the next general election (when he will not have a vote anyway). It is simply because – as my colleague Sam Coates revealed in his report yesterday – the man who is now Lord Jones of Birmingham does not understand what being a Lords minister involves. Nor did Gordon Brown, who appointed him last June in order to demonstrate that he was forming a government of all the talents.
There is nothing wrong with bringing in non-politicians to serve in the Lords, provided that they appreciate what the role of a minister is. This is not just about taking an executive role in a department, or accepting collective responsibility as a member of the Government.
It is also, crucially, about Parliament, not only being accountable and subject to scrutiny, but also voting and taking through your department’s legislation.
Most outsiders appointed as ministers accept that range of responsibilities. Lord Adonis overcame the initial scepticism of some Labour peers about appointing a former Downing Street adviser as a minister by being assiduous in his Lords duties, replying to questions and taking through numerous Bills. Lord Drayson also won wide support among former defence chiefs in the Lords by his commitment to the Services. They took the Lords seriously, a minimum requirement if you are a minister.
But some of the five “trophy” peers – the outsiders brought in by Mr Brown – do not seem fully to understand this side of their work. There are unconfirmed reports, widely believed among Labour peers, that the five were told that they did not have to spend much time in the Lords.
Some have been patchy in performing their Lords duties, with Lord Jones an infrequent voter. The long-suffering Lords whips have to handle some of his department’s business.
The sensible thing would have been to give Lord Jones the same executive responsibilities that he now has as chairman of UK Trade and Investment, even to make him a peer, but not a minister. As he is reported to have said, his role in bringing business investment to Britain should not be done by a minister but by a leading independent businessman. His talents lie as a booster rather than a minister, with all that that entails.
Similarly, Lord Darzi of Denham, a distinguished surgeon as well as conducting a review of the NHS’s next stages, could perform his dual roles as an adviser without also being a minister – though he has already saved the life of one peer. And if Mr Brown really needs more views on domestic terrorism, he could have appointed Lord West of Spithead as an adviser rather than making him a minister, where he does not appear fully at home with the nuances of legislation in a chamber of legal experts.
Lord Jones and the others are in many ways victims of Mr Brown’s well-intentioned, but muddled, big-tent strategy. Lord Jones said yesterday that he had “never claimed to be a political animal”. He believed “trade and investment should transcend the factionalism of party politics”.
But then why did he agree to become a minister which, by definition, cannot be divorced from party politics?
HAVE YOUR SAY
If we have anymore peers in the house of lords they will be sitting on each others knees. I have never seen such a rabble as pictured in the house of lords today, they are a mockery of our noble society and the right to the working person. Is this the result of peers for £'s.
Pol, Melton Mowbray, Leics
Peter Riddell is correct to make the very timely point about accountability and the role of Parliament.
In the dozens of editions of the Gordon Brown defensive interviews given to the electronic media during Tuesday 15 April 2008, he did not once make that same point.
In any way at all. In fact Gordon Brown kept talking about his own background and how he was personally concerned about helping others in [he meant to say] society.
But neither Parliament nor society, let alone any political party with demonstrably democratic structure that might provide any pro-democratic support to the Gordon Brown regime, was allowed a look of.....
And NOR did the official Opposition party leaders in their own [less wide ranging] appearances on the media had anything to say about the substance of Parliament.
I would suggest that this absence of emphasis on the role of Parliament in holding the Govt of the day to account, and through all the procedural stages and concepts, is even more worrying than the periodic capitalistic crises that are being featured in the mainstream media and discussions.
Muhammad Haque, London, UK
Please do not let Mugabe win, reports on Zimbabwe are slowly lessening. If Mugabe had won the results would have long been released.
How low does the country have to get before the rest of the world intervenes.
priscilla, worcester,
"As long as they understand what it involves". Isn't that the eternal public school condecension to women/blacks/Jews/Irish/secondary modern kids etc etc. The more people who dont 'understand' that get into the Lords the better and more productive a place it will be.
E Skelton, Cardiff, Wales
Show fewer comments
HAVE YOUR SAY
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Is Brown going to be 'economical with the truth' at the 'economy talks' Or is he going to own up to one error and scrap Crossrail thus freeing £10Bn
Muhammad Haque economic, and ethical commentary about CRASS role [=’Crossrail’ hole plot] player [at the newt’s luring!!!] Gordon Brown 0955 Hrs GMT 15.04.2008:
The BBC TV is showing on its screen these three words, 'BROWN ECONOMY TALKS'. This raises the inevitable and the essential Khoodeelaar! Question -
Does it mean Brown is going to be economical with the truth? Or is he going to tell the truth and start by scrapping the Crossrail hole scam?
That act alone could make bvadly needed ‘liquidity’ available in the ‘planned’ period to the value of almost £10 Billion to be put to better [='prudent'!] use than being pilfered into the pockets of Bechtel, Cliff Mumm et al...! ????
[To be continued]
The BBC TV is showing on its screen these three words, 'BROWN ECONOMY TALKS'. This raises the inevitable and the essential Khoodeelaar! Question -
Does it mean Brown is going to be economical with the truth? Or is he going to tell the truth and start by scrapping the Crossrail hole scam?
That act alone could make bvadly needed ‘liquidity’ available in the ‘planned’ period to the value of almost £10 Billion to be put to better [='prudent'!] use than being pilfered into the pockets of Bechtel, Cliff Mumm et al...! ????
[To be continued]
Is Brown going to be 'economical with the truth' at the 'economy talks' Or is he going to own up to one error and scrap Crossrail thus freeing £5Bn
Muhammad Haque economic, and ethical commentary about CRASS role [=’Crossrail’ hole plot] player Gordon Brown
0955 Hrs GMT 15.04.2008:
The BBC TV is showing on its screen these three words, 'BROWN ECONOMY TALKS'.
This raises the inevitable and the essential Khoodeelaar!V Queston - Does it mean Brown is going to be economical with the truth? Or is he going to tell the truth and start by scrapping the Crossrail scam. That act alone will make ‘liquidity’ available in the ‘planned’ period to the value of of almost £10 Billion to be put to better [='prudent'!] use than being pilfered into the pockets of Bechtel, Cliff Mumm et al...! [To be continued]
0955 Hrs GMT 15.04.2008:
The BBC TV is showing on its screen these three words, 'BROWN ECONOMY TALKS'.
This raises the inevitable and the essential Khoodeelaar!V Queston - Does it mean Brown is going to be economical with the truth? Or is he going to tell the truth and start by scrapping the Crossrail scam. That act alone will make ‘liquidity’ available in the ‘planned’ period to the value of of almost £10 Billion to be put to better [='prudent'!] use than being pilfered into the pockets of Bechtel, Cliff Mumm et al...! [To be continued]
Khoodeelaar! RESPONDS to UK Conservative Party 'leader' David Cameron MP, as based on the 'phone -in ' slot on 'BBC 5 Lies'-
Editor©Muhammad Haque
0938 Hrs GMT 1038 hrs UK time London Tuesday 15 April 2008: Khoodeelaar! RESPONDS to UK Conservative Party 'leader' David Cameron MP, as based on the 'phone -in ' programme he appeared on this morning [BBC radio 5 Lies]...
Khoodeelaar! challenges David Cameron to explain his contradictory and therefore misleading and therefore dishonest and or incompetent - statements and positions on Council Tax bill/bills and his support for Crossrail which will definitely DEPEND on ordinary London people and families being forced to pay huge extra Council tax.....
No to Crossrail hole agenda, the Khoodeelaar! constitutional law campaign against the ‘Crossrail Bill’ [now in the UK ‘legislative’ “House of Lords’] tells the official ‘Opposition’ ‘leader’ in the UK “House of Commons’ David Cameron that he will be known as David Ca-Moron unless he comes out and tells the country why he is so duplicitous and why he says, [as he has just in the past hour done on the BBC radio 5 Lies] that ‘Council tax is one of the most painful taxes’ that people have to pay and that therefore he has been [as he claimed on Radio 5 Lies] saying to his ‘party’ candidates at the scheduled 1 May 2008 local council elections that they must keep the Council tax bills low...
If he is telling the truth there then how is it that Ca-Moron has not OPPOSED the very Council tax-raising CRASSrail scam....
Khoodeelaar! challenges to David ca-Moron today include th and other gems... gems of truth about the lying politics....
Ca-Moron has also backed the Blair corruption scam over the BAE SFO corruption and bribery....
So what if ANY moral and ethical point is there of being the ‘Opposition’? Khoodeelaar! again challenges Ca-Moron to explain why he has not followed up the promise that Francis Maude gave to Khoodeelaar! two years ago! In April 2006 Francis Maude old Khoodeelaar! that their Party MPs were soon going to speak in the House of Commons against the Crossrail hole scam.... The hole was NOT necessary .. Maude had said in his exclusive interview with Khoodeelaar! [which has been published on the world wide web on many site since that very day]... Why is Ca-Moron being coy over Crossrail? Or is ‘ RAISING Council tax bill is ok for Crossrail, because the USA Bechtel Big Business says so? Is Ca-Moron party to the latest Military industrial Com;ex deals os that they will facilitate the UK public funds to be challenged into the MIC pockets......[To be continued]Editor©Muhammad Haque
0938 Hrs GMT 1038 hrs UK time London Tuesday 15 April 2008: Khoodeelaar! RESPONDS to UK Conservative Party 'leader' David Cameron MP, as based on the 'phone -in ' programme he appeared on this morning [BBC radio 5 Lies]...
Khoodeelaar! challenges David Cameron to explain his contradictory and therefore misleading and therefore dishonest and or incompetent - statements and positions on Council Tax bill/bills and his support for Crossrail which will definitely DEPEND on ordinary London people and families being forced to pay huge extra Council tax.....
No to Crossrail hole agenda, the Khoodeelaar! constitutional law campaign against the ‘Crossrail Bill’ [now in the UK ‘legislative’ “House of Lords’] tells the official ‘Opposition’ ‘leader’ in the UK “House of Commons’ David Cameron that he will be known as David Ca-Moron unless he comes out and tells the country why he is so duplicitous and why he says, [as he has just in the past hour done on the BBC radio 5 Lies] that ‘Council tax is one of the most painful taxes’ that people have to pay and that therefore he has been [as he claimed on Radio 5 Lies] saying to his ‘party’ candidates at the scheduled 1 May 2008 local council elections that they must keep the Council tax bills low...
If he is telling the truth there then how is it that Ca-Moron has not OPPOSED the very Council tax-raising CRASSrail scam....
Khoodeelaar! challenges to David ca-Moron today include th and other gems... gems of truth about the lying politics....
Ca-Moron has also backed the Blair corruption scam over the BAE SFO corruption and bribery....
So what if ANY moral and ethical point is there of being the ‘Opposition’? Khoodeelaar! again challenges Ca-Moron to explain why he has not followed up the promise that Francis Maude gave to Khoodeelaar! two years ago! In April 2006 Francis Maude old Khoodeelaar! that their Party MPs were soon going to speak in the House of Commons against the Crossrail hole scam.... The hole was NOT necessary .. Maude had said in his exclusive interview with Khoodeelaar! [which has been published on the world wide web on many site since that very day]... Why is Ca-Moron being coy over Crossrail? Or is ‘ RAISING Council tax bill is ok for Crossrail, because the USA Bechtel Big Business says so? Is Ca-Moron party to the latest Military industrial Comlex deals so that they will facilitate the UK public funds to be challenged into the MIC pockets......[To be continued]
0938 Hrs GMT 1038 hrs UK time London Tuesday 15 April 2008: Khoodeelaar! RESPONDS to UK Conservative Party 'leader' David Cameron MP, as based on the 'phone -in ' programme he appeared on this morning [BBC radio 5 Lies]...
Khoodeelaar! challenges David Cameron to explain his contradictory and therefore misleading and therefore dishonest and or incompetent - statements and positions on Council Tax bill/bills and his support for Crossrail which will definitely DEPEND on ordinary London people and families being forced to pay huge extra Council tax.....
No to Crossrail hole agenda, the Khoodeelaar! constitutional law campaign against the ‘Crossrail Bill’ [now in the UK ‘legislative’ “House of Lords’] tells the official ‘Opposition’ ‘leader’ in the UK “House of Commons’ David Cameron that he will be known as David Ca-Moron unless he comes out and tells the country why he is so duplicitous and why he says, [as he has just in the past hour done on the BBC radio 5 Lies] that ‘Council tax is one of the most painful taxes’ that people have to pay and that therefore he has been [as he claimed on Radio 5 Lies] saying to his ‘party’ candidates at the scheduled 1 May 2008 local council elections that they must keep the Council tax bills low...
If he is telling the truth there then how is it that Ca-Moron has not OPPOSED the very Council tax-raising CRASSrail scam....
Khoodeelaar! challenges to David ca-Moron today include th and other gems... gems of truth about the lying politics....
Ca-Moron has also backed the Blair corruption scam over the BAE SFO corruption and bribery....
So what if ANY moral and ethical point is there of being the ‘Opposition’? Khoodeelaar! again challenges Ca-Moron to explain why he has not followed up the promise that Francis Maude gave to Khoodeelaar! two years ago! In April 2006 Francis Maude old Khoodeelaar! that their Party MPs were soon going to speak in the House of Commons against the Crossrail hole scam.... The hole was NOT necessary .. Maude had said in his exclusive interview with Khoodeelaar! [which has been published on the world wide web on many site since that very day]... Why is Ca-Moron being coy over Crossrail? Or is ‘ RAISING Council tax bill is ok for Crossrail, because the USA Bechtel Big Business says so? Is Ca-Moron party to the latest Military industrial Com;ex deals os that they will facilitate the UK public funds to be challenged into the MIC pockets......[To be continued]Editor©Muhammad Haque
0938 Hrs GMT 1038 hrs UK time London Tuesday 15 April 2008: Khoodeelaar! RESPONDS to UK Conservative Party 'leader' David Cameron MP, as based on the 'phone -in ' programme he appeared on this morning [BBC radio 5 Lies]...
Khoodeelaar! challenges David Cameron to explain his contradictory and therefore misleading and therefore dishonest and or incompetent - statements and positions on Council Tax bill/bills and his support for Crossrail which will definitely DEPEND on ordinary London people and families being forced to pay huge extra Council tax.....
No to Crossrail hole agenda, the Khoodeelaar! constitutional law campaign against the ‘Crossrail Bill’ [now in the UK ‘legislative’ “House of Lords’] tells the official ‘Opposition’ ‘leader’ in the UK “House of Commons’ David Cameron that he will be known as David Ca-Moron unless he comes out and tells the country why he is so duplicitous and why he says, [as he has just in the past hour done on the BBC radio 5 Lies] that ‘Council tax is one of the most painful taxes’ that people have to pay and that therefore he has been [as he claimed on Radio 5 Lies] saying to his ‘party’ candidates at the scheduled 1 May 2008 local council elections that they must keep the Council tax bills low...
If he is telling the truth there then how is it that Ca-Moron has not OPPOSED the very Council tax-raising CRASSrail scam....
Khoodeelaar! challenges to David ca-Moron today include th and other gems... gems of truth about the lying politics....
Ca-Moron has also backed the Blair corruption scam over the BAE SFO corruption and bribery....
So what if ANY moral and ethical point is there of being the ‘Opposition’? Khoodeelaar! again challenges Ca-Moron to explain why he has not followed up the promise that Francis Maude gave to Khoodeelaar! two years ago! In April 2006 Francis Maude old Khoodeelaar! that their Party MPs were soon going to speak in the House of Commons against the Crossrail hole scam.... The hole was NOT necessary .. Maude had said in his exclusive interview with Khoodeelaar! [which has been published on the world wide web on many site since that very day]... Why is Ca-Moron being coy over Crossrail? Or is ‘ RAISING Council tax bill is ok for Crossrail, because the USA Bechtel Big Business says so? Is Ca-Moron party to the latest Military industrial Comlex deals so that they will facilitate the UK public funds to be challenged into the MIC pockets......[To be continued]
Monday, April 14, 2008
World class rise in food prices in UK will not deter Gordon Brown from carrying on with the charade that Big Business is 'good' ..........
Muhammad Haque 0500 Hrs GMT London Tuesday 15 April 2008:
World class rise in food prices in UK will not deter Gordon Brown from carrying on with the charade that Big Business is 'good' and that Big Business is 'compatible' with 'British vah-loos'...As Gordon Brown's competence rating [for he and his own entourage take serious note of such things] continues to go down.. Gordon Brown clings on to the slimy image of Crossrail Ken Livingstone and the two of them are heading for a world class crash as they defy the laws of ethics, morality and ordinary gravity.....
..[To be continued]
World class rise in food prices in UK will not deter Gordon Brown from carrying on with the charade that Big Business is 'good' and that Big Business is 'compatible' with 'British vah-loos'...As Gordon Brown's competence rating [for he and his own entourage take serious note of such things] continues to go down.. Gordon Brown clings on to the slimy image of Crossrail Ken Livingstone and the two of them are heading for a world class crash as they defy the laws of ethics, morality and ordinary gravity.....
..[To be continued]
Channel 4 News fronter Jon Slow in the UK is plugged furiously as almost having integrity.. His reputation is in tatters, as is Gordon Brown's
By©Muhammad Haque
1840 Hrs GMT
1940 Hrs UK Time
London
Monday
14 April 2008
Channel 4 News fronter Jon Slow AGAIN showed his backwardness when he failed to take his own questioning of Tory George Oborne to its logical point...
When Oborne said that unlike Gordon Brown the Tories would have spent the money BETTER, SLOW should have asked Osborne to name at least some representative [as examples, as evidence of Gordon Brown’s incompetence and bad management of the resource] projects on which Gordon Brown had spent the money BADLY...
Had Jon SLOW been honest and had he even known his own news programme [which in October 2007 published a list of criticisms of the Crossrail plot] he would have asked Osborne whether Osborne would scrap Crossrail to save money......But Slow is not honest. Nor is he as knowledgeable about the ‘subject matters of his own news programmes’ ....
So he did not ask Osborne about scrapping Crossrail....Slow thus failed to follow up any other aspect of Osborne’s assertions... Had SLOW had the knowledge and or had SLOW been honest, SLOW would have asked Osborne about the ‘ECONOMIST ‘ magazine article and quizzed Osborne on the UK constitution... and the role of the UK parliament in holding the incumbent Prime Minister to account on such a level that the ‘UK's’ resources would have been only applied and or used when there was genuine evidence and transparent case made fro such uses....Unlike the UK Parliament being used as a stooge place which is not holding the Government to account and is in fact allowing wrong and unaccounted measures being pushed through parliament at the behest fo secret forces that are mainly Big Business and the military industrial complex ...........................[To be continued]
1840 Hrs GMT
1940 Hrs UK Time
London
Monday
14 April 2008
Channel 4 News fronter Jon Slow AGAIN showed his backwardness when he failed to take his own questioning of Tory George Oborne to its logical point...
When Oborne said that unlike Gordon Brown the Tories would have spent the money BETTER, SLOW should have asked Osborne to name at least some representative [as examples, as evidence of Gordon Brown’s incompetence and bad management of the resource] projects on which Gordon Brown had spent the money BADLY...
Had Jon SLOW been honest and had he even known his own news programme [which in October 2007 published a list of criticisms of the Crossrail plot] he would have asked Osborne whether Osborne would scrap Crossrail to save money......But Slow is not honest. Nor is he as knowledgeable about the ‘subject matters of his own news programmes’ ....
So he did not ask Osborne about scrapping Crossrail....Slow thus failed to follow up any other aspect of Osborne’s assertions... Had SLOW had the knowledge and or had SLOW been honest, SLOW would have asked Osborne about the ‘ECONOMIST ‘ magazine article and quizzed Osborne on the UK constitution... and the role of the UK parliament in holding the incumbent Prime Minister to account on such a level that the ‘UK's’ resources would have been only applied and or used when there was genuine evidence and transparent case made fro such uses....Unlike the UK Parliament being used as a stooge place which is not holding the Government to account and is in fact allowing wrong and unaccounted measures being pushed through parliament at the behest fo secret forces that are mainly Big Business and the military industrial complex ...........................[To be continued]
Gordon Brown's prudential reputation is in tatters - as is the reputation of Channel 4 News fronter Jon Slow. Slow was too slow ... 14.04.2008
By©Muhammad Haque
1840 Hrs GMT
LONDON
MONDAY
14 April 2008
Channel 4 News fronter Jon Slow AGAIN showed his backwardness when he failed to take his own questioning of Tory George Oborne to its logical point... When Oborne said that unlike Gordon Brown the Tories would have spent the money BETTER, SLOW should have asked Osborne to name at least some representative [as examples, as evidence of Gordon Brown’s incompetence and bad management of the resource] projects on which Gordon Brown had spent the money BADLY... Had Jon SLOW been honest and had he even known his own news programme [which in October 2007 published a list of criticisms of the Crossrail plot] he would have asked Osborne whether Osborne would scrap Crossrail to save money......But Slow is not honest. Nor is he as knowledgeable about the ‘subject matters of his own news programmes’ ....So he did not ask Osborne about scrapping Crossrail....Slow thus failed to follow up any other aspect of Osborne’s assertions... Had SLOW had the knowledge and or had SLOW been honest, SLOW would have asked Osborne about the ‘ECONOMIST ‘ magazine article and quizzed Osborne on the UK constitution... and the role of the UK parliament in holding the incumbent Prime Minister to account on such a level that the ‘UK's’ resources would have been only applied and or sued when there was genuine evidence and transparent case made fro such uses....Unlike the UK Parliament being used as a stooge place which is not holding the Government to account and is in fact allowing wrong and unaccounted measures being pushed through parliament at the behest fo secret forces that are mainly Big Business and the military industrial complex ...........................[To be continued]
1840 Hrs GMT
LONDON
MONDAY
14 April 2008
Channel 4 News fronter Jon Slow AGAIN showed his backwardness when he failed to take his own questioning of Tory George Oborne to its logical point... When Oborne said that unlike Gordon Brown the Tories would have spent the money BETTER, SLOW should have asked Osborne to name at least some representative [as examples, as evidence of Gordon Brown’s incompetence and bad management of the resource] projects on which Gordon Brown had spent the money BADLY... Had Jon SLOW been honest and had he even known his own news programme [which in October 2007 published a list of criticisms of the Crossrail plot] he would have asked Osborne whether Osborne would scrap Crossrail to save money......But Slow is not honest. Nor is he as knowledgeable about the ‘subject matters of his own news programmes’ ....So he did not ask Osborne about scrapping Crossrail....Slow thus failed to follow up any other aspect of Osborne’s assertions... Had SLOW had the knowledge and or had SLOW been honest, SLOW would have asked Osborne about the ‘ECONOMIST ‘ magazine article and quizzed Osborne on the UK constitution... and the role of the UK parliament in holding the incumbent Prime Minister to account on such a level that the ‘UK's’ resources would have been only applied and or sued when there was genuine evidence and transparent case made fro such uses....Unlike the UK Parliament being used as a stooge place which is not holding the Government to account and is in fact allowing wrong and unaccounted measures being pushed through parliament at the behest fo secret forces that are mainly Big Business and the military industrial complex ...........................[To be continued]
KHOODEELAAR! No to Crossrail hole Bill CAMPAIGN response to Gordon Brown's unwise repetition of endorsement Ken Livingstone today - here, soon
KHOODEELAAR! No to Crossrail hole Bill CAMPAIGN response to Gordon Brown's unwise repetition of endorsement of Ken Livingstone today - here, soon
Sunday, April 13, 2008
For over four years, Khoodeelaar! the East London community campaign has been going on against Big Business using the UK central Govt ...
Right now [as at Sunday 13 April 2008], this campaign is formally before the UK legislative House of Lords!
That is the last leg of the 'Crossrail Bill' within the UK domestic ‘constitutional framework’.. and the Khoodeelaar! campaign has been as vigourous and as ahead of the Big Business lobbys as it could be imagined possible... So, do the people of the East End of London know about that by reading their 'local' paper?
The ‘East London Advertiser' ?
Certainly not....
How come?
Isn't the 'East London Advertiser' the SAME ‘local paper ‘that has itself made 'news' in the ‘newspaper trade press’ about its ‘newsworthy’ ''journalism'' ?
Indeed it is...
For over four years, Khoodeelaar! the East London community campaign has been going on against Big Business using the UK central Govt to pocket £Billions under Crossrail that has been floated as a ‘public transport ’ measure.
For over four years, the ‘local’ ‘East London IDIOTISER’ has been printing lies about the area... At one point, Khoodeelaar! took appropriate steps which resulted in the personnel and 'ownership' change at the 'Idiotiser'.
The full account of the Khoodeelaar! action against the Idiotiser will be told soon.
For now, the issue is the lying East `London Idiotiser corrupt denial of the fact that the campaign against Crossrail has been taking place ‘cia and in the legislative House of Lords’.
[To be continued]
That is the last leg of the 'Crossrail Bill' within the UK domestic ‘constitutional framework’.. and the Khoodeelaar! campaign has been as vigourous and as ahead of the Big Business lobbys as it could be imagined possible... So, do the people of the East End of London know about that by reading their 'local' paper?
The ‘East London Advertiser' ?
Certainly not....
How come?
Isn't the 'East London Advertiser' the SAME ‘local paper ‘that has itself made 'news' in the ‘newspaper trade press’ about its ‘newsworthy’ ''journalism'' ?
Indeed it is...
For over four years, Khoodeelaar! the East London community campaign has been going on against Big Business using the UK central Govt to pocket £Billions under Crossrail that has been floated as a ‘public transport ’ measure.
For over four years, the ‘local’ ‘East London IDIOTISER’ has been printing lies about the area... At one point, Khoodeelaar! took appropriate steps which resulted in the personnel and 'ownership' change at the 'Idiotiser'.
The full account of the Khoodeelaar! action against the Idiotiser will be told soon.
For now, the issue is the lying East `London Idiotiser corrupt denial of the fact that the campaign against Crossrail has been taking place ‘cia and in the legislative House of Lords’.
[To be continued]
Muhammad Haque 2050 Hrs GMT London Sunday 13 April 2008:
Muhammad Haque 2050 Hrs GMT London Sunday 13 April 2008:
This Khoodeelaar! demonstration [on the right] photo shows a group of of Whitechapel, Bethnal Green 'south' residents who joined Khoodeelaar! demonstration against Tower Hamlets Council on 11 September 2007. This was outside Mulberry Place, minutes before the Khoodeelaar! “demand on Tower Hamlets Council to STOP colluding with Crossrail hole attacks plot against the East End of London” was renewed to a 'full council' meeting of the same Tower Hamlets Council that took place on that same evening [11 September 2008] [To be continued]
This Khoodeelaar! demonstration [on the right] photo shows a group of of Whitechapel, Bethnal Green 'south' residents who joined Khoodeelaar! demonstration against Tower Hamlets Council on 11 September 2007. This was outside Mulberry Place, minutes before the Khoodeelaar! “demand on Tower Hamlets Council to STOP colluding with Crossrail hole attacks plot against the East End of London” was renewed to a 'full council' meeting of the same Tower Hamlets Council that took place on that same evening [11 September 2008] [To be continued]
BBC's 'Politics Show', Brian Paddick left out all references to Crossrail.... A review, here soon
1910 GMT London Sunday 13 April 2008: Khoodeelaar! No to Crossrail hole Agenda notes the fact that at least on the BBC's 'Politics Show', Brian Paddick left out all references to Crossrail.... A review of the day's 'media references; to the 'London 1 May 2008 mayor elections' - here, shortly
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Muhammad Haque commenting on the Times, London 'legal analysis' of the High Court ruling on the BAE SFO Blair corruption deal
"April 10, 2008
Analysis: what next after High Court ruling on BAE?
Frances Gibb, Legal Editor
When Tony Blair, as Prime Minister, approached the Attorney-General, Lord Goldsmith, QC, to argue the case for the dropping of the corruption investigation into the BAE arms deal, he insisted that it was a matter ultimately for the Government’s chief law officer. But — justifying his approach — Mr Blair said that this was the “clearest case for intervention in the public interest he had seen”.
Today, delivering one of the most damning criticisms of ministers seen in the courts, Lord Justice Moses turned those same words on their head, saying: “We agree.”
The case, he said, was a paramount instance of the need for the courts to intervene and uphold the rule of law; to stand firm in the face of a threat and say the threat should have been resisted.
In doing so, the judge, sitting with Mr Justice Sullilvan, did not mince his words. Ministers, including the Prime Minister, had advised the Attorney-General and the Director of the Serious Fraud Office — then Robert Wardle — that to continue the investigation would have grave consequences, both for the arms trade and the safety of British citizens and service personnel. In light of what he regarded as a grave risk to life, the SFO director halted the investigation.
RELATED LINKS
Dropping Saudi-BAE bribery probe 'unlawful'
His decision was challenged by the Corner House Research and Campaign Against the Arms Trade. Defending its position, the SFO argued that its director was entitled to surrender to the threat and said that the court should accept that, while a matter of “regret”, such threats were a “part of life”.
Today Lord Justice Moses and Mr Justice Sullivan unequivocally rejected that view: “so bleak a picture of the impotence of the law invites at least dismay, if not outrage”, Lord Justice Moses said. In a series of caustic comments he affirmed the importance of the courts in standing up for the law and savaged the SFO director for acting unlawfully in “buckling” to threats. Those threats, he said, had been aimed at this country’s legal system.
He said: “It is difficult to identify any integrity in the role of the courts to uphold the rule of law, if the courts are to abdicate in response to a threat from a foreign power.”
And: “We fear for the administration of justice if it can be perverted by a threat.”
He concluded: “No one, whether within this country or outside, is entitled to interfere with the course of justice.”
So what now? The SFO is considering the judgment, and could of course appeal. The Government is likely to fight tooth and nail to resist any pressure that it re-open an investigation that could damage Saudi relations — commercially, diplomatically and above all in terms of counter-terrorism intelligence.
As the judgment stands, it is likely that the SFO would have at least to revisit its decision to halt the inquiry. Whether that would mean that it came to another conclusion and reopened the whole investigation is another matter.
A fresh case would be made as to the likely damage to security and terrorism; and this time there could be no argument as to the loss of what the Government called “the largest export contract” in the past decade, the procurement of the next generation of attack aircraft — the Typhoon — because the deal is done.
As for the law officers: Lord Goldsmith has already gone from office, as has the SFO director, Robert Wardle, who will be gone in ten days' time. But the SFO’s reputation is severely damaged. Although it now has a new director, he will have a job on his hands to restore it.
As for relations between ministers and the Attorney-General, Lord Goldsmith’s legacy — not least because of BAE — was to prompt a review. His successor, Baroness Scotland of Asthal, QC, has succeeded in fighting of calls for the role to be reformed significantly. Some may now think that decision by ministers premature.
HAVE YOUR SAY
They're all guilty but what can anyone do about it?
paul, poole, gb
It is commendable that something like this involving bribery and threats from another country has been brought into the public domain. But how many times has it happened and we hear nothing of it?
What now for UK/Saudi relations? Are they far from Iraq...
Brett Sinclair, monaco,
Perverting the course of justice. As clear a case as there can be, and no-one is denying it. Surely then, Tony Blair has committed a crime.
Loosehead, Basingstoke,
This is the latest confirmation of the NORM of the widespread abuse of Parliament and constitutionality by the executive in the UK. Either there is rule of law or there is not. Where have the opposition spokespeople been? Why hasn’t there been ANY move by the mainstream Opposition in the ‘elected’ House of Commons to force compliance with the rule of law by the Executive?
Why haven THEY been the applicants for this judicial review of the highly corrupt behaviour by the Blairing regime?
This one is in the news because of the High Court action. How many thousands of similarly corrupt deals and decisions are being suppressed as we all hear about this particular one?
You say that Goldsmith is no longer in office. You mean that therefore he is exempt from liability for such an outrageous and open defiance of the rule of law! Is that acceptable? What kind of immunity must be allowed from answering on two of the most damaging violations he has committed against ethics and against constitutionality ?
How is Goldsmith able to get away like this, time after time?
Who are his de facto partners in the grand violations of the constitution?
Muhammad Haque, London, UK"
Analysis: what next after High Court ruling on BAE?
Frances Gibb, Legal Editor
When Tony Blair, as Prime Minister, approached the Attorney-General, Lord Goldsmith, QC, to argue the case for the dropping of the corruption investigation into the BAE arms deal, he insisted that it was a matter ultimately for the Government’s chief law officer. But — justifying his approach — Mr Blair said that this was the “clearest case for intervention in the public interest he had seen”.
Today, delivering one of the most damning criticisms of ministers seen in the courts, Lord Justice Moses turned those same words on their head, saying: “We agree.”
The case, he said, was a paramount instance of the need for the courts to intervene and uphold the rule of law; to stand firm in the face of a threat and say the threat should have been resisted.
In doing so, the judge, sitting with Mr Justice Sullilvan, did not mince his words. Ministers, including the Prime Minister, had advised the Attorney-General and the Director of the Serious Fraud Office — then Robert Wardle — that to continue the investigation would have grave consequences, both for the arms trade and the safety of British citizens and service personnel. In light of what he regarded as a grave risk to life, the SFO director halted the investigation.
RELATED LINKS
Dropping Saudi-BAE bribery probe 'unlawful'
His decision was challenged by the Corner House Research and Campaign Against the Arms Trade. Defending its position, the SFO argued that its director was entitled to surrender to the threat and said that the court should accept that, while a matter of “regret”, such threats were a “part of life”.
Today Lord Justice Moses and Mr Justice Sullivan unequivocally rejected that view: “so bleak a picture of the impotence of the law invites at least dismay, if not outrage”, Lord Justice Moses said. In a series of caustic comments he affirmed the importance of the courts in standing up for the law and savaged the SFO director for acting unlawfully in “buckling” to threats. Those threats, he said, had been aimed at this country’s legal system.
He said: “It is difficult to identify any integrity in the role of the courts to uphold the rule of law, if the courts are to abdicate in response to a threat from a foreign power.”
And: “We fear for the administration of justice if it can be perverted by a threat.”
He concluded: “No one, whether within this country or outside, is entitled to interfere with the course of justice.”
So what now? The SFO is considering the judgment, and could of course appeal. The Government is likely to fight tooth and nail to resist any pressure that it re-open an investigation that could damage Saudi relations — commercially, diplomatically and above all in terms of counter-terrorism intelligence.
As the judgment stands, it is likely that the SFO would have at least to revisit its decision to halt the inquiry. Whether that would mean that it came to another conclusion and reopened the whole investigation is another matter.
A fresh case would be made as to the likely damage to security and terrorism; and this time there could be no argument as to the loss of what the Government called “the largest export contract” in the past decade, the procurement of the next generation of attack aircraft — the Typhoon — because the deal is done.
As for the law officers: Lord Goldsmith has already gone from office, as has the SFO director, Robert Wardle, who will be gone in ten days' time. But the SFO’s reputation is severely damaged. Although it now has a new director, he will have a job on his hands to restore it.
As for relations between ministers and the Attorney-General, Lord Goldsmith’s legacy — not least because of BAE — was to prompt a review. His successor, Baroness Scotland of Asthal, QC, has succeeded in fighting of calls for the role to be reformed significantly. Some may now think that decision by ministers premature.
HAVE YOUR SAY
They're all guilty but what can anyone do about it?
paul, poole, gb
It is commendable that something like this involving bribery and threats from another country has been brought into the public domain. But how many times has it happened and we hear nothing of it?
What now for UK/Saudi relations? Are they far from Iraq...
Brett Sinclair, monaco,
Perverting the course of justice. As clear a case as there can be, and no-one is denying it. Surely then, Tony Blair has committed a crime.
Loosehead, Basingstoke,
This is the latest confirmation of the NORM of the widespread abuse of Parliament and constitutionality by the executive in the UK. Either there is rule of law or there is not. Where have the opposition spokespeople been? Why hasn’t there been ANY move by the mainstream Opposition in the ‘elected’ House of Commons to force compliance with the rule of law by the Executive?
Why haven THEY been the applicants for this judicial review of the highly corrupt behaviour by the Blairing regime?
This one is in the news because of the High Court action. How many thousands of similarly corrupt deals and decisions are being suppressed as we all hear about this particular one?
You say that Goldsmith is no longer in office. You mean that therefore he is exempt from liability for such an outrageous and open defiance of the rule of law! Is that acceptable? What kind of immunity must be allowed from answering on two of the most damaging violations he has committed against ethics and against constitutionality ?
How is Goldsmith able to get away like this, time after time?
Who are his de facto partners in the grand violations of the constitution?
Muhammad Haque, London, UK"
Muhammad Haque commenting on the Times, London 'legal analysis' of the High Court ruling on the BAE SFO Blair corruption deal
This is the latest confirmation of the NORM of the widespread abuse of Parliament and constitutionality by the executive in the UK.
Either there is rule of law or there is not.
Where have the opposition spokespeople been?
Why hasn’t there been ANY move by the mainstream Opposition in the ‘elected’ House of Commons to force compliance with the rule of law by the Executive?
Why haven THEY been the applicants for this judicial review of the highly corrupt behaviour by the Blairing regime?
This one is in the news because of the High Court action. How many thousands of similarly corrupt deals and decisions are being suppressed as we all hear about this particular one?
You say that Goldsmith is no longer in office. You [Frances Gibb, timesonline, 10.04.2008] mean that therefore he is exempt from liability for such an outrageous and open defiance of the rule of law!
Is that acceptable?
What kind of immunity must be allowed from answering on two of the most damaging violations he has committed against ethics and against constitutionality ?
How is Goldsmith able to get away like this, time after time?
Who are his de facto partners in the grand violations of the constitution?
Either there is rule of law or there is not.
Where have the opposition spokespeople been?
Why hasn’t there been ANY move by the mainstream Opposition in the ‘elected’ House of Commons to force compliance with the rule of law by the Executive?
Why haven THEY been the applicants for this judicial review of the highly corrupt behaviour by the Blairing regime?
This one is in the news because of the High Court action. How many thousands of similarly corrupt deals and decisions are being suppressed as we all hear about this particular one?
You say that Goldsmith is no longer in office. You [Frances Gibb, timesonline, 10.04.2008] mean that therefore he is exempt from liability for such an outrageous and open defiance of the rule of law!
Is that acceptable?
What kind of immunity must be allowed from answering on two of the most damaging violations he has committed against ethics and against constitutionality ?
How is Goldsmith able to get away like this, time after time?
Who are his de facto partners in the grand violations of the constitution?
Shouldn't David Ca-Moron prove that he has moral courage and demand that the BAE SFO corruption be exposed by having a full Public Inquiry?
Muhammad Haque commenting in the piece by Frances Gibb as published on the Times online today:
"This is the latest confirmation of the widespread abuse of Parliament and constitutionality by the executive in the UK. Either there is rule of law or there is not. Where have the opposition spokespeople been ?
Why haven' THEY been the applicants for this judicial review of the highly corrupt behaviour by the Blairing regime?
This on is in the news because of the High Court action. How many thousands of similarly corrupt deals and decisions are being suppressed as we all hear about this particular one?
You say that Goldsmith is no longer in office. Is that acceptable? What kind of immunity must be allowed from answering on two of the most damaging violations he has committed against ethics and against constitutionality ?
How is Goldsmith able to get away like this, time after time?
Who are his de facto partners in the grand violations of the constitution?"
[To be continued]
"This is the latest confirmation of the widespread abuse of Parliament and constitutionality by the executive in the UK. Either there is rule of law or there is not. Where have the opposition spokespeople been ?
Why haven' THEY been the applicants for this judicial review of the highly corrupt behaviour by the Blairing regime?
This on is in the news because of the High Court action. How many thousands of similarly corrupt deals and decisions are being suppressed as we all hear about this particular one?
You say that Goldsmith is no longer in office. Is that acceptable? What kind of immunity must be allowed from answering on two of the most damaging violations he has committed against ethics and against constitutionality ?
How is Goldsmith able to get away like this, time after time?
Who are his de facto partners in the grand violations of the constitution?"
[To be continued]
Will the Official Opposition Leader in the Official Parliament show he has ‘any’ morality? Is 'Dave' more than a Ca-Moron..?
1330 Hrs GMT
1430 Hrs UK
London Thursday
10 April 2008
The Muhammad Haque ethical commentary on the wasteland of morality that is the British Parliament: first comments on the High court ruling on the Blair BAE SFO corruption
Will the Official Opposition Leader in Britain's Official Parliament show the [Oops! ‘any’] evidence that he has any morality? Does he deserve to be called Ca-Moron?
Is he really, truly no longer a thug?
If he is no longer a thug then how come that ‘Dave’ ends up backing the Blairing immorality at every crucial stage?
Why does ‘Dave’ back the Brown-fronted policies that Blair left behind?
[To be continued]
1430 Hrs UK
London Thursday
10 April 2008
The Muhammad Haque ethical commentary on the wasteland of morality that is the British Parliament: first comments on the High court ruling on the Blair BAE SFO corruption
Will the Official Opposition Leader in Britain's Official Parliament show the [Oops! ‘any’] evidence that he has any morality? Does he deserve to be called Ca-Moron?
Is he really, truly no longer a thug?
If he is no longer a thug then how come that ‘Dave’ ends up backing the Blairing immorality at every crucial stage?
Why does ‘Dave’ back the Brown-fronted policies that Blair left behind?
[To be continued]
"Do not ignore constitutional law objections to the unconstitutional way that the Crossrail hoe plot is being pushed through parliament...."
1210 Hrs GMT
London
Thursday
10 April 2008
Khoodeelaar! No to Big Business Crossrail hole plotters within the Gordon Brown fronted, Blaired regime: "Do not ignore our constitutional law objections to the unconstitutional way that the Crossrail hoe plot is being pushed through parliament...."
London
Thursday
10 April 2008
Khoodeelaar! No to Big Business Crossrail hole plotters within the Gordon Brown fronted, Blaired regime: "Do not ignore our constitutional law objections to the unconstitutional way that the Crossrail hoe plot is being pushed through parliament...."
The London High Court's ruling that the anti-corruption body the UK's SFO itself acted illegally, that is CORRUPTLY, proves case against Big Business!
1130 Hrs GMT 1230 Hrs UK time London Thursday 10 April 2008:Khoodeelaar! No to Big Business Crossrail hole plot and agenda.... The UK Government’s own ‘Serious Fraud Office’ acted illegally over the BAE corruption! That the SFA covered up Tony Blair’s corruption regime. A number of ‘anti-corruption and anti-militaristic’ groups including one called the “Corner House Research and the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT)” has achieved this significant legal vindication today. This vindication of the principle in the High Court in London confirms the constitutional law points that Khoodeelaar! has made all along. Including the fact that Big Business interests have taken over the setting of the agenda in the DfT and elsewhere in the UK state....
Khoodeelaar! comment at 1140 Hrs GMT Thursday 10 April 2008: o
n the Big business liars who are bent on keeping the public in the dark about the economic crisis caused by capitalistic plunder, abuse and irresponsibility - and above all, greed....: So the Confederation [Big Business agency, the Conspiracy more like] of British Industry, the 'CBI' fronter Richard Lambert was way too upbeat when he appeared on the BBC this lunchtime, commenting on the interest rate cut as announced by the Bank of England.... at midday [exactly] London time [1100 Hrs GMT]
Khoodeelaar! comment at 1140 Hrs GMT Thursday 10 April 2008: o
n the Big business liars who are bent on keeping the public in the dark about the economic crisis caused by capitalistic plunder, abuse and irresponsibility - and above all, greed....: So the Confederation [Big Business agency, the Conspiracy more like] of British Industry, the 'CBI' fronter Richard Lambert was way too upbeat when he appeared on the BBC this lunchtime, commenting on the interest rate cut as announced by the Bank of England.... at midday [exactly] London time [1100 Hrs GMT]
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Impending gloom and the Poverty of Gordon Brown - the updater commentary on the emptiness and the immorality of Gordon Brown's regime -1
By©Muhammad Haque
1305 Hrs GMT
London
Wednesday 9 April 2008
Poverty of Gordon Brown - subject that is key to the wider poverty he is set to spread across society and the world -
Gordon Brown is causing poverty in Britain by colluding with Big Business. And by in effect following the agenda set by Big Business.
This is seen in his backing for Bechtel-type looters
Brown’s so-called socialist ‘new best colluder’ Ken Livingstone has been having such a notoriously deeply mysterious and inexplicable relationship with those Bechtel-type looters.
Indeed, Livingstone has already even RECOMMENDED Bechtel as in effect the most suitable candidate for a multi£Million Crossrail -linked contract, ahead of formal tendering etc.
Livingstone's ‘socialist’ propagandists would not find anything wrong in the record of his payment of £Millions of public money to the [‘retired’] CIA man Bob Kiley who did not hide his contempt for democracy when he prescribed on the BBC that ‘elected’ [local councillors and MPs] should be locked up in a room and forced to agree to publicly fund the Big Business Crossrail scam...
Anyone with any even the most basic understanding of legitimacy, democracy, accountability and human rights, would not be able to allow that mentality to be treated as being acceptable in a ‘publicly employed’ decision-maker who was given such powers and so much public money by Livingstone as ‘the Transport Commissioner’ in the name of `London......
Yet Kiley was defended by Livingstone... Even as Livingstone was forced to let Kiley go... The ‘force’ was in the rare newspaper interview in which Kiley admitted, without any regret or remorse, to being an alcoholic. An alcoholic who had no idea why he was paid so much public money by Ken Livingstone... It wasn’t Livingstone who had found anything wrong at all in Kiley alcohol addiction.... Indeed, Livingstone boasted that one of the ‘qualities’ he admired in Kiley was the way that Kiley INTIMIDATED people during negotiations...!
Against this background, a look at Gordon Brown’s endorsement of Crossrail and Brown's backing for the Big Business Crossrail hole plot-backer Ken Livingstone is very timely and necessary.
And it is not just in Brown’s capitulation to and collusion with the Bechtel types....
He is even more deeply involved with some of the foulest practitioners of the corrupt craft of neo conservative capitalism... It is worth noting that during Brown’s official tenure at No 11 Downing Street over ten years, he, Gordon Brown, made it more easy for the world’s crassest capitalist neo-con looters to arrive in Britain and to set about exploiting all the imaginable loopholes they could find to rob the society of its resources.,...
Enter Goldman Sachs and all that they signify, imply, typify and represent about Gordon Brown's ‘prudent’ practices and policies....and records...
The poverty of understanding that Gordon Brown suffers from comes across every time he spouts out the intellectually offensive, empty and and the very unsound phrases like 'child poverty’.
That two word phrase was devised in Britain by sub-thinking ‘thinkers’ who neither understood poverty nor human rights.
They were by a decade or so, forerunners to the likes of Jack Straw.
There their differences vanish.
Like Straw, they were liars. Like Straw, they are liars. And they are destined to stay liars.
How is Straw a liar?
Straw is a liar because when in formal opposition [before May 1997] he was posing as one of those Bliar-fronted Opposition party ‘high flyers’ who knew his ethics and his morality. Especially so about human rights and justice.
As a technically law-schooled careerist, Straw is one of those professional liars and cheats who are allowed a wide degree of ‘benefits of the doubt’ [=’deference’] by the ‘mainstream’ media.
Consequently, the idiot reporters [for idiots they mostly are] never ever expose the lying Straw. And they never queston him.
And the reason why they don’t do either is because they are so so deeply ignorant about things to do with the substance of policy and practice. And they are a million miles away from the world of scrutiny. Of evidence. Of ethics. Of legitimacy....
[To be continued]
1305 Hrs GMT
London
Wednesday 9 April 2008
Poverty of Gordon Brown - subject that is key to the wider poverty he is set to spread across society and the world -
Gordon Brown is causing poverty in Britain by colluding with Big Business. And by in effect following the agenda set by Big Business.
This is seen in his backing for Bechtel-type looters
Brown’s so-called socialist ‘new best colluder’ Ken Livingstone has been having such a notoriously deeply mysterious and inexplicable relationship with those Bechtel-type looters.
Indeed, Livingstone has already even RECOMMENDED Bechtel as in effect the most suitable candidate for a multi£Million Crossrail -linked contract, ahead of formal tendering etc.
Livingstone's ‘socialist’ propagandists would not find anything wrong in the record of his payment of £Millions of public money to the [‘retired’] CIA man Bob Kiley who did not hide his contempt for democracy when he prescribed on the BBC that ‘elected’ [local councillors and MPs] should be locked up in a room and forced to agree to publicly fund the Big Business Crossrail scam...
Anyone with any even the most basic understanding of legitimacy, democracy, accountability and human rights, would not be able to allow that mentality to be treated as being acceptable in a ‘publicly employed’ decision-maker who was given such powers and so much public money by Livingstone as ‘the Transport Commissioner’ in the name of `London......
Yet Kiley was defended by Livingstone... Even as Livingstone was forced to let Kiley go... The ‘force’ was in the rare newspaper interview in which Kiley admitted, without any regret or remorse, to being an alcoholic. An alcoholic who had no idea why he was paid so much public money by Ken Livingstone... It wasn’t Livingstone who had found anything wrong at all in Kiley alcohol addiction.... Indeed, Livingstone boasted that one of the ‘qualities’ he admired in Kiley was the way that Kiley INTIMIDATED people during negotiations...!
Against this background, a look at Gordon Brown’s endorsement of Crossrail and Brown's backing for the Big Business Crossrail hole plot-backer Ken Livingstone is very timely and necessary.
And it is not just in Brown’s capitulation to and collusion with the Bechtel types....
He is even more deeply involved with some of the foulest practitioners of the corrupt craft of neo conservative capitalism... It is worth noting that during Brown’s official tenure at No 11 Downing Street over ten years, he, Gordon Brown, made it more easy for the world’s crassest capitalist neo-con looters to arrive in Britain and to set about exploiting all the imaginable loopholes they could find to rob the society of its resources.,...
Enter Goldman Sachs and all that they signify, imply, typify and represent about Gordon Brown's ‘prudent’ practices and policies....and records...
The poverty of understanding that Gordon Brown suffers from comes across every time he spouts out the intellectually offensive, empty and and the very unsound phrases like 'child poverty’.
That two word phrase was devised in Britain by sub-thinking ‘thinkers’ who neither understood poverty nor human rights.
They were by a decade or so, forerunners to the likes of Jack Straw.
There their differences vanish.
Like Straw, they were liars. Like Straw, they are liars. And they are destined to stay liars.
How is Straw a liar?
Straw is a liar because when in formal opposition [before May 1997] he was posing as one of those Bliar-fronted Opposition party ‘high flyers’ who knew his ethics and his morality. Especially so about human rights and justice.
As a technically law-schooled careerist, Straw is one of those professional liars and cheats who are allowed a wide degree of ‘benefits of the doubt’ [=’deference’] by the ‘mainstream’ media.
Consequently, the idiot reporters [for idiots they mostly are] never ever expose the lying Straw. And they never queston him.
And the reason why they don’t do either is because they are so so deeply ignorant about things to do with the substance of policy and practice. And they are a million miles away from the world of scrutiny. Of evidence. Of ethics. Of legitimacy....
[To be continued]
Brown must stop behaving imprudently
Muhammad Haque
1025 GMT Weds 9 April 2008:
Brown must stop behaving imprudently
That stunt [on Tuesday 8 April 2008] about fiddling with 'key workers' 'equity' 'sharing' was a serious joke This is no time for indulging in lethal jokes..... He must address the main resource the people and find out why so many people in Britain are not being given the right economy and social rewards and returns He need not look far... Most of the abuse of Govt power [small, local, central and big: micro and macro] over public funds are abused... Correct that and Brown [and the country] will have a big release of much needed liquidity....He could start by scrapping CROSSRAIL and there will instantly be £Billions available by that scrapping alone.... [To be continued]
1025 GMT Weds 9 April 2008:
Brown must stop behaving imprudently
That stunt [on Tuesday 8 April 2008] about fiddling with 'key workers' 'equity' 'sharing' was a serious joke This is no time for indulging in lethal jokes..... He must address the main resource the people and find out why so many people in Britain are not being given the right economy and social rewards and returns He need not look far... Most of the abuse of Govt power [small, local, central and big: micro and macro] over public funds are abused... Correct that and Brown [and the country] will have a big release of much needed liquidity....He could start by scrapping CROSSRAIL and there will instantly be £Billions available by that scrapping alone.... [To be continued]
Gordon Brown must tell the truth about Big Business being bad for the country. He could do much worse than scrap the Crossrail Bill!
By©Muhammad Haque
1005 Hrs GMT
London
Wednesday 9 April 2008:
The amount involved in the crisis is well over £500 Billion... and the measure of it is not in pound sterling or in euro or in the us dollar...
It has got to be measured in credibility.. loss of credibility, not 'just credit'..
It is CREDIBILITY LOSS by Gordon Brown.. and his company.. they must stop THAT slide...
THERE is the point of critical mass If they keep lying, the thing will really expand out of all known control...
1005 Hrs GMT
London
Wednesday 9 April 2008:
The amount involved in the crisis is well over £500 Billion... and the measure of it is not in pound sterling or in euro or in the us dollar...
It has got to be measured in credibility.. loss of credibility, not 'just credit'..
It is CREDIBILITY LOSS by Gordon Brown.. and his company.. they must stop THAT slide...
THERE is the point of critical mass If they keep lying, the thing will really expand out of all known control...
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
How long more must the people of London wait before the 'EVENING STANDARD' tells the truth about the CRASSly conceived, wasteful, obsolete Crossrail?
How long more must the people of London wait before the 'EVENING STANDARD' tells the truth - about the CRASSly conceived, wasteful, obsolete Crossrail?
_____________________________________________________________________
"Gordon Brown has got to stop lying for Big Business perpetrators, offenders and criminals..."
By©Muhammad Haque
1520 Hrs GMT
London
Tuesday
8 April 2008
Gordon Brown may not know this but he is lying when he still boasts about allegedly reducing ‘child poverty’. He is lying because he is hiding the extent of poverty that ‘adults’ experience across the urban and the rural uk every day .... Brown must get off that lying Blairing horse... He must also stop lying by confecting miniature sound bites containing scattering of ‘business’....
There is NO ordinary, sustainable credible business going on in atmospheres of institutionalised social division, social exclusion, social underachievement, educational [albeit, in e effect' 'schooling'] apartheid persistent and pervasive prejudice, discrimination, lack of trust and emptiness caused by spiritual bankruptcy at the absence and loss of ethics....
One of the capitalistic ‘ethos’ that Brown himself is prone to dissemblingly peddling while wearing - or posing to wear- , as he ridiculously does, the guise of being somehow linked with a moral political heritage, is ‘confidence’. But how can there be confidence when mass fraud is being perpetrated in the Brown fronting the Blaired Britain by those who occupy publicly paid and publicly-’legitimised’ positions......Brown has got to stop lying for Big Business perpetrators, offenders and criminals,.... and he could start by telling the truth about how the corrupter of `London ken Loss Livingstone had dragged him into making that crass commitment of £Billions of UK public money for the obsolete, wasteful CRASSrail....
[To be continued]
_____________________________________________________________________
"Gordon Brown has got to stop lying for Big Business perpetrators, offenders and criminals..."
By©Muhammad Haque
1520 Hrs GMT
London
Tuesday
8 April 2008
Gordon Brown may not know this but he is lying when he still boasts about allegedly reducing ‘child poverty’. He is lying because he is hiding the extent of poverty that ‘adults’ experience across the urban and the rural uk every day .... Brown must get off that lying Blairing horse... He must also stop lying by confecting miniature sound bites containing scattering of ‘business’....
There is NO ordinary, sustainable credible business going on in atmospheres of institutionalised social division, social exclusion, social underachievement, educational [albeit, in e effect' 'schooling'] apartheid persistent and pervasive prejudice, discrimination, lack of trust and emptiness caused by spiritual bankruptcy at the absence and loss of ethics....
One of the capitalistic ‘ethos’ that Brown himself is prone to dissemblingly peddling while wearing - or posing to wear- , as he ridiculously does, the guise of being somehow linked with a moral political heritage, is ‘confidence’. But how can there be confidence when mass fraud is being perpetrated in the Brown fronting the Blaired Britain by those who occupy publicly paid and publicly-’legitimised’ positions......Brown has got to stop lying for Big Business perpetrators, offenders and criminals,.... and he could start by telling the truth about how the corrupter of `London ken Loss Livingstone had dragged him into making that crass commitment of £Billions of UK public money for the obsolete, wasteful CRASSrail....
[To be continued]
Monday, April 7, 2008
Will CRASSrail hole plot-tout Ken Livingstone NOW confess to the world class lies he has been telling for Big Business?
"
© Independent Television News Limited 2008.
Brown branded 'worse than Blair' in new poll
Updated 22.48 Mon Apr 07 2008
Keywords: Gordon Brown, Tony Blair
Gordon Brown is regarded as a worse prime minister than Tony Blair by nearly a third of voters, according to a poll.
The Populus survey also shows the Tories' lead over Labour growing by three percentage points in the last month.
Populus found that 31 per cent of the public feels the Prime Minister is worse than his predecessor, Mr Blair
It found that support for the Conservatives has risen two points to 39 per cent, while Labour has fallen one to 33 per cent.
The Liberal Democrats are down two on 17 per cent.
Populus found that 31 per cent of the public feels the Prime Minister is worse than his predecessor, Mr Blair.
© Independent Television News Limited 2008. All rights reserved.
"
© Independent Television News Limited 2008.
Brown branded 'worse than Blair' in new poll
Updated 22.48 Mon Apr 07 2008
Keywords: Gordon Brown, Tony Blair
Gordon Brown is regarded as a worse prime minister than Tony Blair by nearly a third of voters, according to a poll.
The Populus survey also shows the Tories' lead over Labour growing by three percentage points in the last month.
Populus found that 31 per cent of the public feels the Prime Minister is worse than his predecessor, Mr Blair
It found that support for the Conservatives has risen two points to 39 per cent, while Labour has fallen one to 33 per cent.
The Liberal Democrats are down two on 17 per cent.
Populus found that 31 per cent of the public feels the Prime Minister is worse than his predecessor, Mr Blair.
© Independent Television News Limited 2008. All rights reserved.
"
Will CRASSrail hole plot-tout Ken Livingstone NOW confess to the world class lies he has been telling for Big Business?
Will CRASSrail hole plot-tout Ken Livingstone NOW confess to the world class lies he has been telling for Big Business?
"
Brown branded 'worse than Blair' in new poll
Updated 22.48 Mon Apr 07 2008
Keywords: Gordon Brown, Tony Blair
Gordon Brown is regarded as a worse prime minister than Tony Blair by nearly a third of voters, according to a poll.
The Populus survey also shows the Tories' lead over Labour growing by three percentage points in the last month.
Populus found that 31 per cent of the public feels the Prime Minister is worse than his predecessor, Mr Blair
It found that support for the Conservatives has risen two points to 39 per cent, while Labour has fallen one to 33 per cent.
The Liberal Democrats are down two on 17 per cent.
Populus found that 31 per cent of the public feels the Prime Minister is worse than his predecessor, Mr Blair.
© Independent Television News Limited 2008. All rights reserved.
"
"
Brown branded 'worse than Blair' in new poll
Updated 22.48 Mon Apr 07 2008
Keywords: Gordon Brown, Tony Blair
Gordon Brown is regarded as a worse prime minister than Tony Blair by nearly a third of voters, according to a poll.
The Populus survey also shows the Tories' lead over Labour growing by three percentage points in the last month.
Populus found that 31 per cent of the public feels the Prime Minister is worse than his predecessor, Mr Blair
It found that support for the Conservatives has risen two points to 39 per cent, while Labour has fallen one to 33 per cent.
The Liberal Democrats are down two on 17 per cent.
Populus found that 31 per cent of the public feels the Prime Minister is worse than his predecessor, Mr Blair.
© Independent Television News Limited 2008. All rights reserved.
"
Diana Inquest jury has defied the 'law and media' trades' servile role to the state in the UK -a crisis of constitutionality confirmed
By©Muhammad Haque
1615 Hrs GMT
London
Monday 7 April 2008
Diana Inquest jury has defied the 'law and media' trades' servile role to the state in the UK -
The jury verdict has been a significant one, even though in his first published response, Dodi Al Faye's father, ''Mohamed' [one of the variations of the spelling that eh has allowed]' Al Fayed has reportedly been disappointed.
The defiance by the jury of the mass brainwashing programme - that Diana and Dodi were 'killed in an accident' shows that given the necessary scope, the 'jury' that is to ay, ordinary people, can act against the orchestrated might and forces of the trading media and the trading professionals, time-servers and careerists in the field of ‘legal practice and law’.
As I pointed out in my post on the UK Indymedia within half an hour of the jury verdict being published, the Jury is going to be made the subject of hostile comments in the media.
The reason why that will be the case is to be found in the unhealthy, undemocratic, immoral and the in ordinate relationship that exists between the so-called fourth state, that is the media in Britain and the secretive agencies and forces agencies.
1615 Hrs GMT
London
Monday 7 April 2008
Diana Inquest jury has defied the 'law and media' trades' servile role to the state in the UK -
The jury verdict has been a significant one, even though in his first published response, Dodi Al Faye's father, ''Mohamed' [one of the variations of the spelling that eh has allowed]' Al Fayed has reportedly been disappointed.
The defiance by the jury of the mass brainwashing programme - that Diana and Dodi were 'killed in an accident' shows that given the necessary scope, the 'jury' that is to ay, ordinary people, can act against the orchestrated might and forces of the trading media and the trading professionals, time-servers and careerists in the field of ‘legal practice and law’.
As I pointed out in my post on the UK Indymedia within half an hour of the jury verdict being published, the Jury is going to be made the subject of hostile comments in the media.
The reason why that will be the case is to be found in the unhealthy, undemocratic, immoral and the in ordinate relationship that exists between the so-called fourth state, that is the media in Britain and the secretive agencies and forces agencies.
'The Olympic Spirit'? That question is a definite slap aimed at the craven face of the careerist Ken Livingstone, who has oversold 2012 staging
Muhammad Haque, Organiser, Khoodeelaar! the Brick Lane, Whitechapel, Bethnal Green ‘south’ and Stepney London E1 Area Campaign against Big Business Crossrail lies agenda of deliberately lying and speaking about regeneration when in fact engaged in implementing an agenda of degeneration, dislocation and devastation: 1025 Hrs GMT London monday 7 April 2008:
'The Olympic Spirit'? That question is a definite slap aimed at the craven face of the careerist Ken Livingstone, who has oversold the 'benefits' of the 'Olympics Games staging' adventures 2012 London...
'The Olympic Spirit'? That question is a definite slap aimed at the craven face of the careerist Ken Livingstone, who has oversold the 'benefits' of the 'Olympics Games staging' adventures 2012 London...
For the first time, apart from Khoodeelaar! another platform carries some of the evidence about Livingstone's lying for Big Business CRASSrail
By©Muhammad Haque
0930 Hrs GMT
London
Monday 7 April 2008
In this interview with the London INDEPENDENT [see full piece we quote in this piece] CROSSRAIl hole plot-backer Livingston is confessing to confusion.
And to much more...
l.... We shall be examining the entire piece in the Independent, during the day today Monday 7 April 2008
AADHIKARonline continuing to report against the corruption of London public life by Ken Livingstone [the 'current mayor' 'in the name of and at tee expense of the people of London] quoting from the web site of the London INDEPENDENT newspaper, at 0920 Hrs GMT on monday 7 April 2008
"
The men who would be Mayor: Power and the people
It's all about big personalities and even bigger budgets – with bendy buses, bikes and bitter vendettas thrown in for good measure. With just 24 days to go until Londoners cast their votes, John Walsh gets under the skin of the three contenders for the capital
AP
Ken Livingstone: ' I'd rather have the nanny state than the collapse of civilisation because of climate change. Anyway, the English have always liked being disciplined by nannies'
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Monday, 7 April 2008
We're in Eldon Junior School in Edmonton, in the wastes of north London. In the headmistress's office, Ken Livingstone is listening to the voters of the future. Beneath gnomes and gonks, six children and three teachers sit with the mayor around a table covered with apples, shortbread biscuits and energy graphs. One child explains their husbandry of four birdhouses. Another tells him how they dig in the school garden. The teachers reassure the mayor about the school's "eco-trips" and energy-saving initiatives. Not that they need to – Eldon junior has received awards for its environmental initiatives.
The mayor, "a sixty-year-old smiling public man" (as WB Yeats described himself in his poem "Among School Children") in a charcoal grey suit and undone tie, is relaxed. "You ever been to Spain?" he asks them. "How was it? Hot?" The children nod eagerly. "Well, by the time your children leave school," he tells them, "London will be as hot as that. So we'll have to plant new trees to make shade, or people will die."
The children stoically digest this gloomy prognosis. A sweet girl in a wide Alice band switches the conversation to composting. "I always make my own compost," says Livingstone, "I don't buy it at the garden centre." He tells them about energy-efficient lightbulbs and how he plans to give one free to every London household. He tells them about his "retrofitting" scheme, and how he's going to reform every public building in the metropolis – every bus station, fire station, school and public library – to make them more energy-efficient. "We won't spend money on the new lighting," he says. "We'll just give the energy companies 80 per cent of the reduction in the building's energy bill."
The children look blank. Fearing he may have gone over their heads, the mayor tells the children to go home and tell their parents that henceforth there will be no need to flush the toilet when they've had a wee.
"Here at the school," says a teacher, "it's a fine balance between how often you flush and how bad the odour gets."
"Well, I wouldn't leave it over the weekend," says the mayor with a smile. Later, Livingstone talks about the Olympics and the flower bouquets to be given to each winner. Ken has a plan to "make bouquets of flowers out of household waste. I've seen some and they look really nice." Five minutes later, he's back on sewage recycling and how "the water you drink has been drunk by lots of other people right back to the dinosaurs". The children look bemused, as well they might when confronted by this kindly man who talks with such animation about people dying, weeing and waste. On the wall, one of the inspirational classroom signs bears the legend: Be a Litter Hitter. To my presbyopic eyes, it seems to read: "Be a Little Hitler."
****
Livingstone, 63 in June, has been regarded by many as a little Hitler for much of his eight years in power. For others he has been a go-getting, forward-thinking man of the people.
His achievements have been considerable since, in 2000, he became the first executive mayor of a city whose previous mayors had been conspicuous only for glass coaches and pet cats. He brought the world the congestion charging zone, to reduce congestion and raise funds for investment, in February 2003. It was copied worldwide. He virtually created "gay marriages", setting up Britain's first register for gay couples in 2001, which led to the Civil Partnership Act three years later. He played a key role in securing London as the site of the 2012 Olympics. He benefitted thousands of travellers by introducing the one-day and one-week travelcards, allowing unlimited access to buses, trains or Tubes and the Oyster smartcard system, which obviates the need to queue for bus and Tube tickets.
A zealous anti-racist, he apologised in 2007 for the role London played in the international slave trade of previous centuries, and called for an annual slavery memorial day. And when London was shaken by suicide bombers on 7 July 2005, he sent citizens of the metropolis an emotional rallying-cry of a speech, at one point addressing the bombers: "Nothing you do, however many of us you kill, will stop that flight to our city where freedom is strong and where people can live in harmony with one another. Whatever you do, however many you kill, you will fail."
For all these achievements, he has managed to infuriate as many Londoners as he has impressed. Though some motorists felt the congestion charge scheme was a boon to the daytime traveller who didn't mind paying the £5 (later £8), others hated it. Motorists who drove in town before 6pm and forgot to pay found themselves faced with a £40 (later £50) fine through the post, which quickly doubled if they still neglected to pay. The application of such a financial armlock dented his popularity.
His extension of the zone to west London rang alarm bells that more and more sectors of the metropolis would extract a penalty from drivers. His introduction of beneficial ticketing for frequent users of public transport coincided with his raising fares for one-off users: going one or two zone-one Tube stops costs an astounding £4. Bus travellers without an Oyster or Travelcard had to grapple with a £2 ticket machine, usually just as the bus was approaching.
And he came under fire last December, when the Evening Standard investigated his adviser on race, Lee Jasper, and discovered apparent financial irregularies: the London Development Agency had poured money into organisations (such as Brixton Base) connected to black Londoners. Allegations of fraud and "cronyism" flew, and £1.6m, for funding six "projects", remained unaccounted for. Jasper resigned, Scotland Yard investigated but found no case to answer. The mayor dismissed the inquiry as a racist witch-hunt and promised to reinstate Jasper in the new administration.
But a taint of corruption remains, along with the suspicion that Livingstone is a little unfortunate with his lieutenants: his Tube adviser, Bob Kiley, hired for a salary in millions, told the Evening Standard he [Kiley] was a drunk who did very little work all day. Jasper's priapic emails to Karen Chouhan, the married director of a group that benefited from his patronage, were leaked to amused Londoners.
And Livingstone's cosying up to Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi of the Muslim Brotherhood, who recommends that homosexuals be stoned to death, led to resignations from members of his staff. Nick Cohen, in The Observer, called Livingstone "the greatest hypocrite in modern politics: a 'left winger' who ducks the challenge when faced with misogyny, homophobia, theocracy and the slaughter of innocents".
He is a man of combative instincts who gets into scrapes. His combative streak emerges as we walk to an interview room. "We don't have to do the interview here," he says, "we could do it on the train back to London."
"I can't," I say. "I've got my car here." He cocks a horrified eyebrow. "A car?" "It's an Alfa Romeo. I don't know if it's one of the ones in Band G, which are going to be charged £25 a day..."
"Don't worry," grates the mayor. "You soon will."
I ask him about the old mayoral priorities when he took over in 2000, and how they've changed. He says they haven't.
"When we were drafting the manifesto in 2000, I remember saying, 'I don't think any government's going to take any serious action on climate change until tens of millions are dead.' Now environmental groups estimate that about 100,000 people every year die from climate change. The world has started waking up, so I'm less pessimistic." He talks proudly about his "retrofitting" scheme in public buildings, an idea cooked up at a convention of city mayors from Delhi, Mumbai, Shanghai, Chicago, New York, Sao Paolo and Cairo, who used their vast collective purchasing muscle to strike a deal with Honeywell, the engineering conglomerate, in return for its receiving a hefty share of the energy saving.
I point out that he'd tried a similar home insulation scheme with British Gas – and it hadn't been a big success. He sighs.
"The trouble is getting people to do it. We made this offer, that you could, in effect, get £1,200-worth of cavity wall and loft insulation at half that price, and you'd recover the cost within about 15 months. Just a few thousand people come forward. We thought, do we make it free for everyone, because the saving in emission terms is worth doing? But even if we do, unless you tell them it has to be done or say you'll get money off your council tax bill if you do it, people need pressure to do something."
This is a classic Livingstone line, telling people what's good for them and demanding they do it. "Barnet Council, which is usually an abomination, threatened to charge a fine of £1,000 to people who didn't use their recycling bin. And recycling figures went up from 30 to 60 per cent overnight! And I think they fined three people!" Coercion, it seems, works if it's in a good cause.
Since we are in Edmonton, where four teenagers have been killed this year (11 in the whole of London by the end of March) I ask what the mayor can tell the borough about violence, and gangs. "I grew up in the city," he says – he was born in Lambeth in June 1945, the son of a merchant navy captain and a dancer – "there were always gangs. The difference is, it's becoming increasingly easy for kids to get hold of guns and knives. Operation Trident arrested most of the black-on-black gun crime, and we got nearly 200 people who were also mainly involved in drugs. But we found another element – a disaffected group of kids. We know that 80 per cent of people who come into the criminal justice system are excluded from school. Youth clubs used to operate in the evenings and at weekends, and sports clubs where they burnt off their energy. But they also found among the boys an adult male whom they didn't argue with, and he would have a mentoring role, but it's gone now. So for the kids there was little to do except hang out in the streets. They were caught up in gangs because there was nothing else. But now Ed Balls has given us £59m, and we've added £20m from the LDA, to double the level of clubs. So we're paying for more youth clubs, expanding existing ones, across all the 32 boroughs. It will have a huge impact on the kids."
A thoughtful, surprisingly passionate man when talking about crime and families, Livingstone will drone for hours about buses ("We've got the most environmentally sustainable bus fleet on the planet," he says, at one high point) and carbon emissions and his beloved congestion charge. He sees the environment as the core issue of the mayoral elections and, apart from his retrofitting programme, his big new idea is to charge motorists with "band G" cars – those emitting more than 225g per kilometre of CO2 – £25 a day for driving in central London. It sounds, to hostile ears, as if he simply wants to penalise the rich or the greedy, or anyone who owns a Jeep Cherokee and has the nerve to drive it in London. How does he answer the criticism that he is a merciless, tyrannical bully towards people not wholly committed to public transport?
"I'm not saying you can't have a car," he said with equanimity. "But what's the point of having an engine that can get up to 150mph in 10 seconds, when everywhere in London we have 20 and 30mph zones? You're allowed to drive at more than 30 mph in only 1 per cent of London streets. But if you trade down from band G to band F, you reduce your annual running costs by 60 per cent." He smiled in a kindly way. What fools people are. If only they took the sensible option. "Petrol used to be cheap. Now petrol's never going to be cheap again. It makes sense to be on top of these issues; you can save yourself a fortune."
Apart from the flood of statistics, it's that matey, smiley dirigiste strain in Livingstone's thinking that drives you nuts. Does he not recognise how enraging it is for people to be told they have to save themselves a fortune? That something is more sensible, therefore they must do it? Isn't he the living embodiment of the nanny state? Livingstone grins again. "I'd rather have the nanny state than the collapse of human civilisation in the middle of this century, because climate change carries on and violent weather makes life intolerable. And anyway, the English have always liked being disciplined by nannies."
The other major issue that exercises the mayoral incumbent is Crossrail, the eight-year mega-project, jointly owned by Transport for London (TfL) and the Department for Transport, for new east-west railway connections under London, running from Maidenhead and Heathrow to Essex and Kent. Gordon Brown gave approval last November, and it is the largest transport project in Europe, with a budget of £16bn. This is not an issue to be taken lightly, but Livingstone is using Crossrail as a test of character.
On 20 March, he uttered a Cassandra-like warning: "If Crossrail is got right, it will add 10 per cent to London's public transport capacity. If it is got wrong, it can devastate London's finances to the extent that it has huge knock-on effects for fares, business rates and for the ability to afford police and other services. I am not being alarmist when I say that if Crossrail were to go wrong you are looking at 30 per cent increases in fares and doubling of supplementary business rates." Behind this (alarmist) broadside lies a simple warning: "Let a certain B Johnson get his hands on Crossrail and we're all doomed." Is that the case?
"In the wrong hands, it could go so badly wrong. If the cost overruns by 25 per cent, it could precipitate a mini-recession."
Surely if it is so scary, it should be reviewed – especially after the disaster of Metronet, the Tube clean-up project that concluded with an overspend of £2bn.
"No, it's done. The legislation is about to go through Parliament and the deal's clear, the Government is giving £5.5bn towards the £16bn, business is giving a third and the farepayer carries the other third, but the Government is devolving it to the mayor. So when the next mayor starts on 4 May, first thing that lands on his desk is to make sure Crossrail works. The most difficult choice Boris Johnson ever had to make at The Spectator was where to go for lunch. He's never managed any capital projects."
Livingstone is seldom far away from a dig at his Conservative opponent, who proved such an unexpected challenge. "Where else except Britain," he demands in his famous Lambeth whine, "do people get to run something as big as London without any administrative experience? Go to Germany, people have to work their way up through city councils and beyond. Tony Blair spent his first term as PM learning how to do the job. That's a luxury you don't have in this city."
I remark that it must be tough for a man with a large metropolitan vision to spend his time dealing with clanking engineering projects and the public's complaints about tiny issues. He turns in his schoolmistress's chair, and looks straight at me for the first time. "But that's how I've spent my life in politics. I remember the first time I was in Cuba, I went to see the local MP in a suburb of Havana. He was giving his monthly report, as they all have to. The MP got up and spoke about American imperialism and the struggle in Angola. Then the people spoke – and all the questions were about potholes in the road, and leaking roofs. No one cared about American imperialism. You have a vision of where you want the city to be in 20 years' time. But unless you run with what people's concerns are, they're not going to listen to you. So you have to find a way of saying, 'This is our vision – now, how do we get the people's concerns into that forward progression?'"
****
My own forward progression takes me to Golders Green Police Station, where Brian Paddick, the nation's former top gay cop, now the Liberal Democrats' mayoral candidate, is scheduled to meet locals. Inside the station, a young copper has no idea where Paddick is. I tell him it is an electioneering opportunity, rather than an actual police matter. "Oh right," he says. "We had that other one last week – you know, whatsisname, Tory Boy."
Outside, I try ringing Paddick's minders, then realise that, among a small knot of people outside a DVD store, a familiar figure is standing. Tall, handsome, ramrod of posture, slightly thinning grey hair cut just so, Paddick at 49 is a fine advertisement for a life spent fighting crime across the metropolis. He looks terribly healthy and chiselled and straight from the gym. There is nothing the least bit camp about him, scarcely a flicker on one's mental gaydar, as we shake hands. In his Gucci suit, tapering to the ankles, he could pass for a (straight) male model of an unusually firm disposition.
Paddick spent a neat 30 years in the force. Born in Balham, he grew up in Tooting Bec, whence he hauled himself to a degree in PPE at Queen's College, Oxford. An MBA at Warwick Business School was paid for by a police scholarship and, with a Cambridge diploma in policing and applied criminology, he joined the Met in 1976. From constable to riot squad, he was a sergeant by the time of the Brixton riots in 1981, an inspector two years later, then chief inspector in Brixton. He joined the CID at Notting Hill, and hit the dizzy heights of chief superintendent of Scotland Yard's personnel department. In 2000, he was made police commander for Ken Livingstone's old manor, Lambeth, and hit the headlines for telling officers under him not to charge people found with marijuana or cannabis; to give them a warning and confiscate the drug but not press charges. Otherwise, he argued, officers would spend all their time on paperwork for minor misdeeds, which could be spent looking for heroin and cocaine suppliers.
In 2005, he was in charge of Territorial Policing across all 32 boroughs of London when the suicide bombs went off – and when a jumpy firearms unit shot Jean Charles de Menezes on the Tube at Stockwell. After the shooting, Paddick seriously fell out with his Met bosses. He told a tribunal that one of Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair's aides knew, or believed, that the wrong man was being targeted six hours before the shooting. This was denied by Scotland Yard. Someone was telling lies, or covering up and it wasn't supposed to be the Met's sainted commissioner. So Paddick was kicked upstairs and given a non-job. His career with the police was over.
He resigned in May last year and threw his hat in the mayoral ring in November, as the Lib Dems' golden candidate. To those who wondered about his political bona fides, he said, "I have been someone with liberal leanings for a very long time, and so my natural home is the Liberal Democrats." (He'd been a party member for 18 months, but used to be one 10 years ago.)
Paddick is unimpressed by the present mayor's contention that crime has fallen by 17 per cent in the past four years. "The British Crime Survey is the most reliable survey of crimes committed over time," he says. "That survey shows that, over the past four years, crime hasn't gone down at all. People have less and less faith in the police, and fewer and fewer report a crime. That's why reported crime has gone down 17 per cent. The reporting, not the crime, has decreased."
Paddick comes close, at times, to calling Livingstone a liar. "The mayor is very good at details. Last night, he said that, under him, traffic-light phasing had increased by only two or three seconds on any set of lights. And I was immediately able to show that he wasn't telling the truth. He appears to know the details, but he makes up most of it."
He's also scornful of Livingstone's proud boast that he will put "a thousand more police" on London streets. "But the Government says it won't support a thousand extra officers for London, it will support 800, and this will not be funded by the mayor's office but by the Home Office. At the end of the day, central government is funding these posts and would have done so, no matter who the mayor is." So there.
He is as clear-sighted as you'd expect about the spate of youth killings. "There's a two-part solution. First, get the knives and guns off the streets. We need targeted police stop-and-searches to take weapons away from young people. Only 14 in every 100 searches are for knives and guns. Most are for trivial offences such as possession of small amounts of cannabis. Because if an officer seizes some cannabis and warns someone on the street, that counts as an offence brought to justice. An 18-month successful murder investigation also counts only one point on the government score sheet. It's no surprise that a police chief tells his officers, 'Get as many people for cannabis as you can,' rather than searching for guns and knives.
"Second, local people are losing their trust in the police and we must address that. There's no point in having a knife or gun if nobody sees it. Hundreds of law-abiding citizens know who has the knife, who has the gun, and we need to build that trust back with local police, then people can accurately target stop-and-search on those people who have the weapons."
Paddick is an earnest fellow with a finely developed sense of right and wrong. Moral probity shines from him. One recalls the scandalous weekend in 2003, when The Mail on Sunday ran a story, given them by a vengeful ex-inamorato called James, that Paddick was a habitual cannabis fiend and a practising anarchist. He sued the paper for libel and won damages.
Although he's never been a politician, he has picked up some of the rhetoric. He tells you that his job is to walk round London listening to what Londoners are saying, and gleaning their priorities and most pressing needs. It's a hackneyed old trope among politicians who have yet to refine their policy ideas, but it offers a fatally folksy image of the immaculately dressed Paddick standing on street corners from Acton to Shoreditch, cocking an ear to the complaints of the unwashed, and nodding sagely in sympathy.
On the congestion charge, he rejects Livingstone's £25 gas-guzzler levy because, "I'm against the measures surrounding it. Ken is exempting Band A and B [low emissions] cars from the charge. How will that encourage fewer people to drive their cars into London? How will that encourage people to use public transport rather than their own car? The package of measures will increase congestion and therefore increase pollution."
Paddick would scrap the western extension of the congestion zone, "because two thirds of the people there say they don't want it, and I believe the mayor should be listening to the people and doing as they want, not as he pleases". Instead of fining drivers for non-payment, "People would be billed in arrears for travelling through the zone, so you get a bill after it's reached £40 or so. You don't get a fine for £100, because you've forgotten to pay."
Would he make any vehicles exempt? "Well, I think we have to differentiate between essen
tial journeys and non-essential ones. Someone in their Bentley Convertible, who likes driving into central London because it's more comfortable than taking the train, they should pay a significant charge, but a lorry delivering supplies to a hospital – well, it's ridiculous that it should pay the same amount."
Things take a surreal turn as we discuss his vision of London as a zone driven entirely by public transport. Paddick wants to eliminate bendy buses, and the fare-dodging that accompanies them. And he'd replace them with...? "Trams," he says, with conviction, as if it were an option on every candidate's lips. "They're environmentally friendly, they carry twice as many people as bendy buses and they're predictable – people know where they're going to go, because the tracks are in the road. And as passengers find public transport becoming more reliable, they'll make a logical choice to use it. If we're going to tackle climate change, we must encourage people to do the right thing rather than impose draconian fines."
But Brian (I cry) – TRAMS? In central London? Wouldn't it cost a fortune just to lay the tracks? "I've spoken to the chief executive of Tramtrack Croydon," says Paddick calmly. "He's done the sums and, on a busy commuter route, over 10 years trams would be less expensive than bendy buses."
It is as if the mayoral candidate had said, "I met this bloke in a pub the other day, and he swears blind it would work."
Later, he confides his plan for powering the Tube by renewable energy. How would that work? "We've proposed building a wind farm in the Thames estuary, which could power London Underground." A wind farm to power the Tube? Blimey. That would take a hell of a breeze....
As we part, I ask about his 50th birthday on 24 April, a week before the election. Will he be dancing at the Substation South club in Brixton, where he's been seen many times? "I'm going to celebrate it by doing Question Time with Ken and Boris," he says, unsmiling. You worry about what Paddick will do after 2 April, with the rest of his life to kill.
****
On a dull Friday afternoon, I'm outside County Hall, waiting to meet Boris Johnson. County Hall is a cheeky choice of venue, since it's where, in the 1980s, Ken Livingstone used to run the Greater London Council, that, eventually, was to become the Greater London Authority. But you expect cheek from Boris.
Now so famous that he needs no surname, he has become a kind of licensed political jester. His journalism in The Spectator and Daily Telegraph was orotund, euphuistic and confident, but it was his delivery in public that made the nation regard him with wonder. It was his voice, that whuffling, blustering, I-don't-know-what-I'm-saying-but-I'll-go-on-saying-it-anyway baritone rumble. It was his shy smile. It was his curious straw-like blond hair. It was his occasional disgorging of perfectly judged, Augustan remarks ("My friends, as I have discovered myself, there are no disasters, only opportunities. And, indeed, opportunities for fresh disasters.")
By some sleight of hand, Johnson has contrived to have half the nation saying he is a right-wing pillock, and the other half reassuring the first half that he is a scheming, super-intelligent genius, playing a long game.
He was born Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson in New York in June 1964. According to family tradition, his ancestor, Ali Kemal, a Turkish journalist, served in the government of Ahmed Tevfik Pasha, the Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire. Boris's Turkish great-grandparents came to England in 1909 and lived in Wimbledon. During the First World War they were given British citizenship and took the name Johnson, the grandmother's maiden name. Boris was educated in Brussels (his father, Stanley, was an MEP) then Eton. He read classics at Balliol, Oxford, was president of the Union and became a member of the notorious Bullingdon Club with David Cameron. As we have recently learnt, he experimented with cocaine at 19, but suspected it might have been icing sugar.
After Oxford, he became perhaps the world's least convincing management consultant, before discovering journalism. He was sacked from The Times for making up a quote and joined The Daily Telegraph as leader and feature writer. From there he graduated to editing The Spectator in 1999 and stayed in the agreeable environs of Bloomsbury, after he became MP for Henley-on-Thames in June 2001. But he had to give up the editorial chair in 2005 when he joined the Shadow Cabinet as spokesman on higher education.
Meanwhile, he won a place in the nation's consciousness by appearing on TV's Have I Got News For You seven times. Invited as a soft Tory target for the wit of Ian Hislop and Paul Merton, Johnson outflanked them by refusing to take the programme seriously. The highlight of his appearances was when his mobile phone rang. Boris answered it on-air, and produced the line, "I – I – I can't really talk now. I'm on television." Merton and Hislop looked on in amazement. Could this guy be serious?
Mayoral voters must ask themselves the same thing. Does Boris deserve to run London plc? Does he have policies in which Londoners can believe? Would he be any good in a crisis?
Henley's MP is shorter than I expected but also bulkier. He has extremely long blond eyelashes, and really does preface remarks with a fusillade of I-I-Is.
We talk about the crisis at Heathrow and he goes straight into Tough Candidate mode. "Heathrow is a disgrace – and where is our present mayor? It's appalling that people's first experience of London should be this. The mayor should be speaking up about it – as I will."
Aviation isn't within the purview of the mayor, but Boris believes anything that affects Londoners needs attention. There's no reason at all why BAA should have a monopoly on London's airports. We should split it up."
There, in just a few minutes, is the problem with Johnson. You listen to his loud, stagily emphatic voice denouncing this or that iniquity, and cannot help wondering if he cares a row of buttons about the BAA monopoly – or, indeed, knew before last week that it existed. It's not that he appears not to care about issues; just that you suspect that his lines have been learnt.
Does he like campaigning without having to parrot party policy? "It's been fantastic fun so far, a massive amount of detail but endlessly rewarding and interesting and fantastically intricate. Every twiddle you make, about road space or housing, everything you decide to re-ration in one way potentially disadvantages someone else. But one thing I've been convinced of is that it was right to have a mayor."
Like Paddick, he locates the core of mayoral concern as crime. "The number one thing going wrong is that the present incumbent isn't leading the fightback against disorder, right across the spectrum, through violence, mugging, assaults, to teenage gang killings. Why do people pile into their cars and ferry their kids to school? Because the streets are dangerous. We've all got kids who've been pursued down the street, or worried about having their Oyster card and their mobiles snatched. The MP who represents me – Emily Thornbury, she's Labour, Islington South and Finsbury, said there's barely a teenager in her constituency who hasn't been mugged.
"We're becoming paranoid. I send my kids on the Tube and people say, 'Ooh, you shouldn't do that.'" Boris waits to see if his own apparent unconcern for his children's safety has been noted. He is given to contradiction. At one point he says, "We're more scared than we need to be, but maybe scared with reason." But he believes, a little idealistically, that crime-free neighbourhoods will flourish. "Areas that are cruddy and run down suddenly become safer, because people invest in them. Parks that are vulnerable to gangs, suddenly become places that are safe and become cherished, and protected. All kinds of benefits flow if you get crime right."
He's keen on putting knife-scanning equipment into schools and CCTV cameras on buses "to stop kids using them as glorified getaway cars." Like Livingstone, he believes in encouraging youth clubs and the like to balance the rootlessness of teenagers' lives in depressed communities.
"There's a boxing academy on the Holloway Road, full of kids happily engaged in belting the life out of each other." Presumably making themselves more effective muggers? "No," says Johnson firmly. "They learn discipline, emotional maturity, they learn defeat and failure and how to deal with them in an adult way. It's amazing. It really changes their lives, every week.
"It would be a great thing if I was able to encourage the voluntary sector and mobilise the huge sums of money that are still being made in London. That's why I'm going to set up a Mayor's Fund for London, for people who are making huge sums to contribute to clubs and drama groups."
One question asked by Johnson's enemies, especially Livingstone, is how the Flaxen Charmer will handle the harsh world of serious committees, billion-dollar projects, transport expertise. Will a man whose main area of learning is classical Greece and Rome be able to make meaningful choices and decisions about huge metropolitan matters? Boris winces when I ask if he's really equipped to chair the Metropolitan Police Authority. "I get on very well with policemen," he offers. "There'll be people working with me who'll give me advice about what we need to do, but my priorities are very clear."
How about Crossrail? Johnson responds to Livingstone's condescending remarks about him with magnificent fury. "Livingstone says the project is so dangerous, it's like a great bomb that only he can defuse. He's already presided over incredible financial disasters. Look at the London Development Agency, where there has been an unbelievable haemorrhaging of money. If he's such a brilliant minder of the pennies, can the mayor supply the full audit trail for the missing millions which have either been lost or trousered by his cronies? If this man is such a master of detail, I should like to know what's happened to that.
"And if he has such a brilliant grip on budgets, what about the Olympics budget which has tripled on his watch without a single brick of the stadium being built? His argument is that only he can run Crossrail. I'd say he is the last person who should be put in charge of a serious project like Crossrail. What we need is an independent arbiter to guarantee taxpayer value and guarantee that TfL is not continually ripped off by the contractors. The real terror in what Livingstone has devised is that, if there are cost overruns, the London taxpayer will be responsible."
This is the new Boris, master of financial detail, sultan of fighting rhetoric, scourge of lefties. His friends in the right-wing press have been busily writing about "the new Boris" – how he's changed from a clown to an homme sérieux. Happily, there are touches of the old Boris, as when he describes Livingstone as a "this great geyser of hypocrisy" who "squats like the dragon, the great Smaug, on taxpayers' loot".
Johnson believes in using the carrot rather than the stick in persuading people to recycle more. If we went round to his home in Islington, would we find it a recycling paradise? "I now hesitate," he says sleekly, "for a long time after I've licked the yoghurt lid, to work out which container to put it into." He drives an old Toyota people carrier, not a Prius, "because they're very expensive." Though 19 years younger than Livingstone, here's something nicely old-fashioned about his concern for building "affordable" new houses that are "beautiful" and have gardens. Also for his devotion to the old Routemaster buses, with conductors and bells that go "ting ting". He will fund their return, he says, by eliminating bureaucracy. "There's £110m being spent on consultants for TfL. Given the choice between £110m on consultants and on conductors, I think people would rather have fewer consultants."
But Boris, I say – buses are so not you. Why you want to condemn yourself to having to make decisions about engineering works and traffic lights? Why do you want to become mayor at all?
His reply is on-message, about "trying to make a difference to the quality of the urban environment" but you sense, behind the bluster, a kind and fundamentally decent man becoming comprehensively out of his depth in hard-nose, hard-hat local politics.
****
The mayoral race has polarised since it began in earnest. Brian Paddick, on paper the perfect compromise candidate, stands little chance. The battle for London has become a two-horse race between a twice-elected mayor whose bullying of motorists and choices of advisers have made him few friends; and a charismatic public entertainer with no track record in running anything larger than a magazine, whose persona of hapless, bumbling-along ignorance has made him far too many. Unless the election is conducted as a personality contest, the choice before Londoners is an almost impossible one.
Ken's Policies
Transport
A new £25 charge for the worst-polluting vehicles, along with the continuation of Tube modernisation; free 24-hour travel for pensioners and the extension of discounted travel for students and people with disabilities; an extra £600m investment in buses each year; implementation of the £16bn Crossrail investment for a new east-west underground line; and a £500m cycling and walking scheme.
Crime
Over the next year, 1,000 extra police officers on the beat; a higher priority given to combating antisocial behaviour; an investment of £79m over two years in youth centres and services.
Housing
A minimum of 50,000 new "affordable" homes in the next three years, constituting a £1bn investment.
Environment
All public buildings to be made more energy efficient; extended low-emission zone; no new Heathrow runway.
Brian's policies
Transport
Scrap £25 charge for most polluting cars and the Low Emission Zone. Revenue from the Congestion Charge (£3.5bn a year) to be spent on public transport, including new tram and rail links. Allow pre-pay Oyster cards to be used for unlimited bus journeys within an hour. Free 24-hour travel extended to pensioners and all students. An additional £50m to be spent on cycle lanes. Introduce a bicycle rental system similar to the Velib scheme in Paris.
Crime
"Real action" to tackle gun and knife crime, including tougher sentences. Cut crime by 20 per cent in the next four years.
Housing
Divert money currently paid to private landlords for temporary family housing to bring unoccupied homes into use through compulsory purchase. Build on publicly owned brownfield sites.
Environment
According to his website, not yet known.
Boris's policies
Transport
Bendy buses to be phased out; a competition to find a 21st-century Routemaster with conductors and full disabled access, running on clean fuel. Prevent Tube disruption by negotiating a no-strike deal. Reform the Congestion Charge. Better cycle routes; £2m invested in safe bicycle parking. Free 24-hour travel for OAPs.
Crime
Funding for 440 extra community police officers to patrol buses. Community and youth projects to give young people "a realisation of their value". Hand-held scanners and knife archways at transport hubs; crime maps.
Housing
Partnership with local councils to increase affordable homes. More family-sized homes with gardens. Protect London's historic buildings.
Environment
Supports the Low Emission Zone. Zero tolerance of littering and graffiti. No new runway at Heathrow.
****
Not keen on Ken, Boris or Brian? There are seven other candidates...
* Sian Berry (Green) plans bus and off-peak Tube fare cuts, a bicycle rental scheme and free home insulation.
* Richard Barnbrook (BNP) plans to "remove" the million immigrants in London to combat crime and improve housing and transport.
* Gerard Batten (UKIP) refuses to "pander" to multiculturalism and "special interest" groups, and will end the congestion and emission charges.
* Alan Craig (Christian Choice) believes that mending broken homes is the key to solving issues of crime, underachievement and drug abuse.
* Winston McKenzie (Independent) will be "merciless" on gun and knife crime and set up youth projects.
* Lindsey German (Left List) thinks council housing is the answer to the homes shortage. She will restore bus conductors and Tube guards.
* Matt O'connor (English Democrats) will take a zero-tolerance approach to gang culture and violent crime. He wants to "rebuild our fractured families".
Interesting? Click here to explore further
"
AADHIKARonline continuing to report against the corruption of London public life by Ken Livingstone [the 'current mayor' 'in the name of and at tee expense of the people of London] unquoting from the web site of the London INDEPENDENT newspaper, at 0920 Hrs GMT on monday 7 April 2008
0930 Hrs GMT
London
Monday 7 April 2008
In this interview with the London INDEPENDENT [see full piece we quote in this piece] CROSSRAIl hole plot-backer Livingston is confessing to confusion.
And to much more...
l.... We shall be examining the entire piece in the Independent, during the day today Monday 7 April 2008
AADHIKARonline continuing to report against the corruption of London public life by Ken Livingstone [the 'current mayor' 'in the name of and at tee expense of the people of London] quoting from the web site of the London INDEPENDENT newspaper, at 0920 Hrs GMT on monday 7 April 2008
"
The men who would be Mayor: Power and the people
It's all about big personalities and even bigger budgets – with bendy buses, bikes and bitter vendettas thrown in for good measure. With just 24 days to go until Londoners cast their votes, John Walsh gets under the skin of the three contenders for the capital
AP
Ken Livingstone: ' I'd rather have the nanny state than the collapse of civilisation because of climate change. Anyway, the English have always liked being disciplined by nannies'
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Monday, 7 April 2008
We're in Eldon Junior School in Edmonton, in the wastes of north London. In the headmistress's office, Ken Livingstone is listening to the voters of the future. Beneath gnomes and gonks, six children and three teachers sit with the mayor around a table covered with apples, shortbread biscuits and energy graphs. One child explains their husbandry of four birdhouses. Another tells him how they dig in the school garden. The teachers reassure the mayor about the school's "eco-trips" and energy-saving initiatives. Not that they need to – Eldon junior has received awards for its environmental initiatives.
The mayor, "a sixty-year-old smiling public man" (as WB Yeats described himself in his poem "Among School Children") in a charcoal grey suit and undone tie, is relaxed. "You ever been to Spain?" he asks them. "How was it? Hot?" The children nod eagerly. "Well, by the time your children leave school," he tells them, "London will be as hot as that. So we'll have to plant new trees to make shade, or people will die."
The children stoically digest this gloomy prognosis. A sweet girl in a wide Alice band switches the conversation to composting. "I always make my own compost," says Livingstone, "I don't buy it at the garden centre." He tells them about energy-efficient lightbulbs and how he plans to give one free to every London household. He tells them about his "retrofitting" scheme, and how he's going to reform every public building in the metropolis – every bus station, fire station, school and public library – to make them more energy-efficient. "We won't spend money on the new lighting," he says. "We'll just give the energy companies 80 per cent of the reduction in the building's energy bill."
The children look blank. Fearing he may have gone over their heads, the mayor tells the children to go home and tell their parents that henceforth there will be no need to flush the toilet when they've had a wee.
"Here at the school," says a teacher, "it's a fine balance between how often you flush and how bad the odour gets."
"Well, I wouldn't leave it over the weekend," says the mayor with a smile. Later, Livingstone talks about the Olympics and the flower bouquets to be given to each winner. Ken has a plan to "make bouquets of flowers out of household waste. I've seen some and they look really nice." Five minutes later, he's back on sewage recycling and how "the water you drink has been drunk by lots of other people right back to the dinosaurs". The children look bemused, as well they might when confronted by this kindly man who talks with such animation about people dying, weeing and waste. On the wall, one of the inspirational classroom signs bears the legend: Be a Litter Hitter. To my presbyopic eyes, it seems to read: "Be a Little Hitler."
****
Livingstone, 63 in June, has been regarded by many as a little Hitler for much of his eight years in power. For others he has been a go-getting, forward-thinking man of the people.
His achievements have been considerable since, in 2000, he became the first executive mayor of a city whose previous mayors had been conspicuous only for glass coaches and pet cats. He brought the world the congestion charging zone, to reduce congestion and raise funds for investment, in February 2003. It was copied worldwide. He virtually created "gay marriages", setting up Britain's first register for gay couples in 2001, which led to the Civil Partnership Act three years later. He played a key role in securing London as the site of the 2012 Olympics. He benefitted thousands of travellers by introducing the one-day and one-week travelcards, allowing unlimited access to buses, trains or Tubes and the Oyster smartcard system, which obviates the need to queue for bus and Tube tickets.
A zealous anti-racist, he apologised in 2007 for the role London played in the international slave trade of previous centuries, and called for an annual slavery memorial day. And when London was shaken by suicide bombers on 7 July 2005, he sent citizens of the metropolis an emotional rallying-cry of a speech, at one point addressing the bombers: "Nothing you do, however many of us you kill, will stop that flight to our city where freedom is strong and where people can live in harmony with one another. Whatever you do, however many you kill, you will fail."
For all these achievements, he has managed to infuriate as many Londoners as he has impressed. Though some motorists felt the congestion charge scheme was a boon to the daytime traveller who didn't mind paying the £5 (later £8), others hated it. Motorists who drove in town before 6pm and forgot to pay found themselves faced with a £40 (later £50) fine through the post, which quickly doubled if they still neglected to pay. The application of such a financial armlock dented his popularity.
His extension of the zone to west London rang alarm bells that more and more sectors of the metropolis would extract a penalty from drivers. His introduction of beneficial ticketing for frequent users of public transport coincided with his raising fares for one-off users: going one or two zone-one Tube stops costs an astounding £4. Bus travellers without an Oyster or Travelcard had to grapple with a £2 ticket machine, usually just as the bus was approaching.
And he came under fire last December, when the Evening Standard investigated his adviser on race, Lee Jasper, and discovered apparent financial irregularies: the London Development Agency had poured money into organisations (such as Brixton Base) connected to black Londoners. Allegations of fraud and "cronyism" flew, and £1.6m, for funding six "projects", remained unaccounted for. Jasper resigned, Scotland Yard investigated but found no case to answer. The mayor dismissed the inquiry as a racist witch-hunt and promised to reinstate Jasper in the new administration.
But a taint of corruption remains, along with the suspicion that Livingstone is a little unfortunate with his lieutenants: his Tube adviser, Bob Kiley, hired for a salary in millions, told the Evening Standard he [Kiley] was a drunk who did very little work all day. Jasper's priapic emails to Karen Chouhan, the married director of a group that benefited from his patronage, were leaked to amused Londoners.
And Livingstone's cosying up to Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi of the Muslim Brotherhood, who recommends that homosexuals be stoned to death, led to resignations from members of his staff. Nick Cohen, in The Observer, called Livingstone "the greatest hypocrite in modern politics: a 'left winger' who ducks the challenge when faced with misogyny, homophobia, theocracy and the slaughter of innocents".
He is a man of combative instincts who gets into scrapes. His combative streak emerges as we walk to an interview room. "We don't have to do the interview here," he says, "we could do it on the train back to London."
"I can't," I say. "I've got my car here." He cocks a horrified eyebrow. "A car?" "It's an Alfa Romeo. I don't know if it's one of the ones in Band G, which are going to be charged £25 a day..."
"Don't worry," grates the mayor. "You soon will."
I ask him about the old mayoral priorities when he took over in 2000, and how they've changed. He says they haven't.
"When we were drafting the manifesto in 2000, I remember saying, 'I don't think any government's going to take any serious action on climate change until tens of millions are dead.' Now environmental groups estimate that about 100,000 people every year die from climate change. The world has started waking up, so I'm less pessimistic." He talks proudly about his "retrofitting" scheme in public buildings, an idea cooked up at a convention of city mayors from Delhi, Mumbai, Shanghai, Chicago, New York, Sao Paolo and Cairo, who used their vast collective purchasing muscle to strike a deal with Honeywell, the engineering conglomerate, in return for its receiving a hefty share of the energy saving.
I point out that he'd tried a similar home insulation scheme with British Gas – and it hadn't been a big success. He sighs.
"The trouble is getting people to do it. We made this offer, that you could, in effect, get £1,200-worth of cavity wall and loft insulation at half that price, and you'd recover the cost within about 15 months. Just a few thousand people come forward. We thought, do we make it free for everyone, because the saving in emission terms is worth doing? But even if we do, unless you tell them it has to be done or say you'll get money off your council tax bill if you do it, people need pressure to do something."
This is a classic Livingstone line, telling people what's good for them and demanding they do it. "Barnet Council, which is usually an abomination, threatened to charge a fine of £1,000 to people who didn't use their recycling bin. And recycling figures went up from 30 to 60 per cent overnight! And I think they fined three people!" Coercion, it seems, works if it's in a good cause.
Since we are in Edmonton, where four teenagers have been killed this year (11 in the whole of London by the end of March) I ask what the mayor can tell the borough about violence, and gangs. "I grew up in the city," he says – he was born in Lambeth in June 1945, the son of a merchant navy captain and a dancer – "there were always gangs. The difference is, it's becoming increasingly easy for kids to get hold of guns and knives. Operation Trident arrested most of the black-on-black gun crime, and we got nearly 200 people who were also mainly involved in drugs. But we found another element – a disaffected group of kids. We know that 80 per cent of people who come into the criminal justice system are excluded from school. Youth clubs used to operate in the evenings and at weekends, and sports clubs where they burnt off their energy. But they also found among the boys an adult male whom they didn't argue with, and he would have a mentoring role, but it's gone now. So for the kids there was little to do except hang out in the streets. They were caught up in gangs because there was nothing else. But now Ed Balls has given us £59m, and we've added £20m from the LDA, to double the level of clubs. So we're paying for more youth clubs, expanding existing ones, across all the 32 boroughs. It will have a huge impact on the kids."
A thoughtful, surprisingly passionate man when talking about crime and families, Livingstone will drone for hours about buses ("We've got the most environmentally sustainable bus fleet on the planet," he says, at one high point) and carbon emissions and his beloved congestion charge. He sees the environment as the core issue of the mayoral elections and, apart from his retrofitting programme, his big new idea is to charge motorists with "band G" cars – those emitting more than 225g per kilometre of CO2 – £25 a day for driving in central London. It sounds, to hostile ears, as if he simply wants to penalise the rich or the greedy, or anyone who owns a Jeep Cherokee and has the nerve to drive it in London. How does he answer the criticism that he is a merciless, tyrannical bully towards people not wholly committed to public transport?
"I'm not saying you can't have a car," he said with equanimity. "But what's the point of having an engine that can get up to 150mph in 10 seconds, when everywhere in London we have 20 and 30mph zones? You're allowed to drive at more than 30 mph in only 1 per cent of London streets. But if you trade down from band G to band F, you reduce your annual running costs by 60 per cent." He smiled in a kindly way. What fools people are. If only they took the sensible option. "Petrol used to be cheap. Now petrol's never going to be cheap again. It makes sense to be on top of these issues; you can save yourself a fortune."
Apart from the flood of statistics, it's that matey, smiley dirigiste strain in Livingstone's thinking that drives you nuts. Does he not recognise how enraging it is for people to be told they have to save themselves a fortune? That something is more sensible, therefore they must do it? Isn't he the living embodiment of the nanny state? Livingstone grins again. "I'd rather have the nanny state than the collapse of human civilisation in the middle of this century, because climate change carries on and violent weather makes life intolerable. And anyway, the English have always liked being disciplined by nannies."
The other major issue that exercises the mayoral incumbent is Crossrail, the eight-year mega-project, jointly owned by Transport for London (TfL) and the Department for Transport, for new east-west railway connections under London, running from Maidenhead and Heathrow to Essex and Kent. Gordon Brown gave approval last November, and it is the largest transport project in Europe, with a budget of £16bn. This is not an issue to be taken lightly, but Livingstone is using Crossrail as a test of character.
On 20 March, he uttered a Cassandra-like warning: "If Crossrail is got right, it will add 10 per cent to London's public transport capacity. If it is got wrong, it can devastate London's finances to the extent that it has huge knock-on effects for fares, business rates and for the ability to afford police and other services. I am not being alarmist when I say that if Crossrail were to go wrong you are looking at 30 per cent increases in fares and doubling of supplementary business rates." Behind this (alarmist) broadside lies a simple warning: "Let a certain B Johnson get his hands on Crossrail and we're all doomed." Is that the case?
"In the wrong hands, it could go so badly wrong. If the cost overruns by 25 per cent, it could precipitate a mini-recession."
Surely if it is so scary, it should be reviewed – especially after the disaster of Metronet, the Tube clean-up project that concluded with an overspend of £2bn.
"No, it's done. The legislation is about to go through Parliament and the deal's clear, the Government is giving £5.5bn towards the £16bn, business is giving a third and the farepayer carries the other third, but the Government is devolving it to the mayor. So when the next mayor starts on 4 May, first thing that lands on his desk is to make sure Crossrail works. The most difficult choice Boris Johnson ever had to make at The Spectator was where to go for lunch. He's never managed any capital projects."
Livingstone is seldom far away from a dig at his Conservative opponent, who proved such an unexpected challenge. "Where else except Britain," he demands in his famous Lambeth whine, "do people get to run something as big as London without any administrative experience? Go to Germany, people have to work their way up through city councils and beyond. Tony Blair spent his first term as PM learning how to do the job. That's a luxury you don't have in this city."
I remark that it must be tough for a man with a large metropolitan vision to spend his time dealing with clanking engineering projects and the public's complaints about tiny issues. He turns in his schoolmistress's chair, and looks straight at me for the first time. "But that's how I've spent my life in politics. I remember the first time I was in Cuba, I went to see the local MP in a suburb of Havana. He was giving his monthly report, as they all have to. The MP got up and spoke about American imperialism and the struggle in Angola. Then the people spoke – and all the questions were about potholes in the road, and leaking roofs. No one cared about American imperialism. You have a vision of where you want the city to be in 20 years' time. But unless you run with what people's concerns are, they're not going to listen to you. So you have to find a way of saying, 'This is our vision – now, how do we get the people's concerns into that forward progression?'"
****
My own forward progression takes me to Golders Green Police Station, where Brian Paddick, the nation's former top gay cop, now the Liberal Democrats' mayoral candidate, is scheduled to meet locals. Inside the station, a young copper has no idea where Paddick is. I tell him it is an electioneering opportunity, rather than an actual police matter. "Oh right," he says. "We had that other one last week – you know, whatsisname, Tory Boy."
Outside, I try ringing Paddick's minders, then realise that, among a small knot of people outside a DVD store, a familiar figure is standing. Tall, handsome, ramrod of posture, slightly thinning grey hair cut just so, Paddick at 49 is a fine advertisement for a life spent fighting crime across the metropolis. He looks terribly healthy and chiselled and straight from the gym. There is nothing the least bit camp about him, scarcely a flicker on one's mental gaydar, as we shake hands. In his Gucci suit, tapering to the ankles, he could pass for a (straight) male model of an unusually firm disposition.
Paddick spent a neat 30 years in the force. Born in Balham, he grew up in Tooting Bec, whence he hauled himself to a degree in PPE at Queen's College, Oxford. An MBA at Warwick Business School was paid for by a police scholarship and, with a Cambridge diploma in policing and applied criminology, he joined the Met in 1976. From constable to riot squad, he was a sergeant by the time of the Brixton riots in 1981, an inspector two years later, then chief inspector in Brixton. He joined the CID at Notting Hill, and hit the dizzy heights of chief superintendent of Scotland Yard's personnel department. In 2000, he was made police commander for Ken Livingstone's old manor, Lambeth, and hit the headlines for telling officers under him not to charge people found with marijuana or cannabis; to give them a warning and confiscate the drug but not press charges. Otherwise, he argued, officers would spend all their time on paperwork for minor misdeeds, which could be spent looking for heroin and cocaine suppliers.
In 2005, he was in charge of Territorial Policing across all 32 boroughs of London when the suicide bombs went off – and when a jumpy firearms unit shot Jean Charles de Menezes on the Tube at Stockwell. After the shooting, Paddick seriously fell out with his Met bosses. He told a tribunal that one of Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair's aides knew, or believed, that the wrong man was being targeted six hours before the shooting. This was denied by Scotland Yard. Someone was telling lies, or covering up and it wasn't supposed to be the Met's sainted commissioner. So Paddick was kicked upstairs and given a non-job. His career with the police was over.
He resigned in May last year and threw his hat in the mayoral ring in November, as the Lib Dems' golden candidate. To those who wondered about his political bona fides, he said, "I have been someone with liberal leanings for a very long time, and so my natural home is the Liberal Democrats." (He'd been a party member for 18 months, but used to be one 10 years ago.)
Paddick is unimpressed by the present mayor's contention that crime has fallen by 17 per cent in the past four years. "The British Crime Survey is the most reliable survey of crimes committed over time," he says. "That survey shows that, over the past four years, crime hasn't gone down at all. People have less and less faith in the police, and fewer and fewer report a crime. That's why reported crime has gone down 17 per cent. The reporting, not the crime, has decreased."
Paddick comes close, at times, to calling Livingstone a liar. "The mayor is very good at details. Last night, he said that, under him, traffic-light phasing had increased by only two or three seconds on any set of lights. And I was immediately able to show that he wasn't telling the truth. He appears to know the details, but he makes up most of it."
He's also scornful of Livingstone's proud boast that he will put "a thousand more police" on London streets. "But the Government says it won't support a thousand extra officers for London, it will support 800, and this will not be funded by the mayor's office but by the Home Office. At the end of the day, central government is funding these posts and would have done so, no matter who the mayor is." So there.
He is as clear-sighted as you'd expect about the spate of youth killings. "There's a two-part solution. First, get the knives and guns off the streets. We need targeted police stop-and-searches to take weapons away from young people. Only 14 in every 100 searches are for knives and guns. Most are for trivial offences such as possession of small amounts of cannabis. Because if an officer seizes some cannabis and warns someone on the street, that counts as an offence brought to justice. An 18-month successful murder investigation also counts only one point on the government score sheet. It's no surprise that a police chief tells his officers, 'Get as many people for cannabis as you can,' rather than searching for guns and knives.
"Second, local people are losing their trust in the police and we must address that. There's no point in having a knife or gun if nobody sees it. Hundreds of law-abiding citizens know who has the knife, who has the gun, and we need to build that trust back with local police, then people can accurately target stop-and-search on those people who have the weapons."
Paddick is an earnest fellow with a finely developed sense of right and wrong. Moral probity shines from him. One recalls the scandalous weekend in 2003, when The Mail on Sunday ran a story, given them by a vengeful ex-inamorato called James, that Paddick was a habitual cannabis fiend and a practising anarchist. He sued the paper for libel and won damages.
Although he's never been a politician, he has picked up some of the rhetoric. He tells you that his job is to walk round London listening to what Londoners are saying, and gleaning their priorities and most pressing needs. It's a hackneyed old trope among politicians who have yet to refine their policy ideas, but it offers a fatally folksy image of the immaculately dressed Paddick standing on street corners from Acton to Shoreditch, cocking an ear to the complaints of the unwashed, and nodding sagely in sympathy.
On the congestion charge, he rejects Livingstone's £25 gas-guzzler levy because, "I'm against the measures surrounding it. Ken is exempting Band A and B [low emissions] cars from the charge. How will that encourage fewer people to drive their cars into London? How will that encourage people to use public transport rather than their own car? The package of measures will increase congestion and therefore increase pollution."
Paddick would scrap the western extension of the congestion zone, "because two thirds of the people there say they don't want it, and I believe the mayor should be listening to the people and doing as they want, not as he pleases". Instead of fining drivers for non-payment, "People would be billed in arrears for travelling through the zone, so you get a bill after it's reached £40 or so. You don't get a fine for £100, because you've forgotten to pay."
Would he make any vehicles exempt? "Well, I think we have to differentiate between essen
tial journeys and non-essential ones. Someone in their Bentley Convertible, who likes driving into central London because it's more comfortable than taking the train, they should pay a significant charge, but a lorry delivering supplies to a hospital – well, it's ridiculous that it should pay the same amount."
Things take a surreal turn as we discuss his vision of London as a zone driven entirely by public transport. Paddick wants to eliminate bendy buses, and the fare-dodging that accompanies them. And he'd replace them with...? "Trams," he says, with conviction, as if it were an option on every candidate's lips. "They're environmentally friendly, they carry twice as many people as bendy buses and they're predictable – people know where they're going to go, because the tracks are in the road. And as passengers find public transport becoming more reliable, they'll make a logical choice to use it. If we're going to tackle climate change, we must encourage people to do the right thing rather than impose draconian fines."
But Brian (I cry) – TRAMS? In central London? Wouldn't it cost a fortune just to lay the tracks? "I've spoken to the chief executive of Tramtrack Croydon," says Paddick calmly. "He's done the sums and, on a busy commuter route, over 10 years trams would be less expensive than bendy buses."
It is as if the mayoral candidate had said, "I met this bloke in a pub the other day, and he swears blind it would work."
Later, he confides his plan for powering the Tube by renewable energy. How would that work? "We've proposed building a wind farm in the Thames estuary, which could power London Underground." A wind farm to power the Tube? Blimey. That would take a hell of a breeze....
As we part, I ask about his 50th birthday on 24 April, a week before the election. Will he be dancing at the Substation South club in Brixton, where he's been seen many times? "I'm going to celebrate it by doing Question Time with Ken and Boris," he says, unsmiling. You worry about what Paddick will do after 2 April, with the rest of his life to kill.
****
On a dull Friday afternoon, I'm outside County Hall, waiting to meet Boris Johnson. County Hall is a cheeky choice of venue, since it's where, in the 1980s, Ken Livingstone used to run the Greater London Council, that, eventually, was to become the Greater London Authority. But you expect cheek from Boris.
Now so famous that he needs no surname, he has become a kind of licensed political jester. His journalism in The Spectator and Daily Telegraph was orotund, euphuistic and confident, but it was his delivery in public that made the nation regard him with wonder. It was his voice, that whuffling, blustering, I-don't-know-what-I'm-saying-but-I'll-go-on-saying-it-anyway baritone rumble. It was his shy smile. It was his curious straw-like blond hair. It was his occasional disgorging of perfectly judged, Augustan remarks ("My friends, as I have discovered myself, there are no disasters, only opportunities. And, indeed, opportunities for fresh disasters.")
By some sleight of hand, Johnson has contrived to have half the nation saying he is a right-wing pillock, and the other half reassuring the first half that he is a scheming, super-intelligent genius, playing a long game.
He was born Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson in New York in June 1964. According to family tradition, his ancestor, Ali Kemal, a Turkish journalist, served in the government of Ahmed Tevfik Pasha, the Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire. Boris's Turkish great-grandparents came to England in 1909 and lived in Wimbledon. During the First World War they were given British citizenship and took the name Johnson, the grandmother's maiden name. Boris was educated in Brussels (his father, Stanley, was an MEP) then Eton. He read classics at Balliol, Oxford, was president of the Union and became a member of the notorious Bullingdon Club with David Cameron. As we have recently learnt, he experimented with cocaine at 19, but suspected it might have been icing sugar.
After Oxford, he became perhaps the world's least convincing management consultant, before discovering journalism. He was sacked from The Times for making up a quote and joined The Daily Telegraph as leader and feature writer. From there he graduated to editing The Spectator in 1999 and stayed in the agreeable environs of Bloomsbury, after he became MP for Henley-on-Thames in June 2001. But he had to give up the editorial chair in 2005 when he joined the Shadow Cabinet as spokesman on higher education.
Meanwhile, he won a place in the nation's consciousness by appearing on TV's Have I Got News For You seven times. Invited as a soft Tory target for the wit of Ian Hislop and Paul Merton, Johnson outflanked them by refusing to take the programme seriously. The highlight of his appearances was when his mobile phone rang. Boris answered it on-air, and produced the line, "I – I – I can't really talk now. I'm on television." Merton and Hislop looked on in amazement. Could this guy be serious?
Mayoral voters must ask themselves the same thing. Does Boris deserve to run London plc? Does he have policies in which Londoners can believe? Would he be any good in a crisis?
Henley's MP is shorter than I expected but also bulkier. He has extremely long blond eyelashes, and really does preface remarks with a fusillade of I-I-Is.
We talk about the crisis at Heathrow and he goes straight into Tough Candidate mode. "Heathrow is a disgrace – and where is our present mayor? It's appalling that people's first experience of London should be this. The mayor should be speaking up about it – as I will."
Aviation isn't within the purview of the mayor, but Boris believes anything that affects Londoners needs attention. There's no reason at all why BAA should have a monopoly on London's airports. We should split it up."
There, in just a few minutes, is the problem with Johnson. You listen to his loud, stagily emphatic voice denouncing this or that iniquity, and cannot help wondering if he cares a row of buttons about the BAA monopoly – or, indeed, knew before last week that it existed. It's not that he appears not to care about issues; just that you suspect that his lines have been learnt.
Does he like campaigning without having to parrot party policy? "It's been fantastic fun so far, a massive amount of detail but endlessly rewarding and interesting and fantastically intricate. Every twiddle you make, about road space or housing, everything you decide to re-ration in one way potentially disadvantages someone else. But one thing I've been convinced of is that it was right to have a mayor."
Like Paddick, he locates the core of mayoral concern as crime. "The number one thing going wrong is that the present incumbent isn't leading the fightback against disorder, right across the spectrum, through violence, mugging, assaults, to teenage gang killings. Why do people pile into their cars and ferry their kids to school? Because the streets are dangerous. We've all got kids who've been pursued down the street, or worried about having their Oyster card and their mobiles snatched. The MP who represents me – Emily Thornbury, she's Labour, Islington South and Finsbury, said there's barely a teenager in her constituency who hasn't been mugged.
"We're becoming paranoid. I send my kids on the Tube and people say, 'Ooh, you shouldn't do that.'" Boris waits to see if his own apparent unconcern for his children's safety has been noted. He is given to contradiction. At one point he says, "We're more scared than we need to be, but maybe scared with reason." But he believes, a little idealistically, that crime-free neighbourhoods will flourish. "Areas that are cruddy and run down suddenly become safer, because people invest in them. Parks that are vulnerable to gangs, suddenly become places that are safe and become cherished, and protected. All kinds of benefits flow if you get crime right."
He's keen on putting knife-scanning equipment into schools and CCTV cameras on buses "to stop kids using them as glorified getaway cars." Like Livingstone, he believes in encouraging youth clubs and the like to balance the rootlessness of teenagers' lives in depressed communities.
"There's a boxing academy on the Holloway Road, full of kids happily engaged in belting the life out of each other." Presumably making themselves more effective muggers? "No," says Johnson firmly. "They learn discipline, emotional maturity, they learn defeat and failure and how to deal with them in an adult way. It's amazing. It really changes their lives, every week.
"It would be a great thing if I was able to encourage the voluntary sector and mobilise the huge sums of money that are still being made in London. That's why I'm going to set up a Mayor's Fund for London, for people who are making huge sums to contribute to clubs and drama groups."
One question asked by Johnson's enemies, especially Livingstone, is how the Flaxen Charmer will handle the harsh world of serious committees, billion-dollar projects, transport expertise. Will a man whose main area of learning is classical Greece and Rome be able to make meaningful choices and decisions about huge metropolitan matters? Boris winces when I ask if he's really equipped to chair the Metropolitan Police Authority. "I get on very well with policemen," he offers. "There'll be people working with me who'll give me advice about what we need to do, but my priorities are very clear."
How about Crossrail? Johnson responds to Livingstone's condescending remarks about him with magnificent fury. "Livingstone says the project is so dangerous, it's like a great bomb that only he can defuse. He's already presided over incredible financial disasters. Look at the London Development Agency, where there has been an unbelievable haemorrhaging of money. If he's such a brilliant minder of the pennies, can the mayor supply the full audit trail for the missing millions which have either been lost or trousered by his cronies? If this man is such a master of detail, I should like to know what's happened to that.
"And if he has such a brilliant grip on budgets, what about the Olympics budget which has tripled on his watch without a single brick of the stadium being built? His argument is that only he can run Crossrail. I'd say he is the last person who should be put in charge of a serious project like Crossrail. What we need is an independent arbiter to guarantee taxpayer value and guarantee that TfL is not continually ripped off by the contractors. The real terror in what Livingstone has devised is that, if there are cost overruns, the London taxpayer will be responsible."
This is the new Boris, master of financial detail, sultan of fighting rhetoric, scourge of lefties. His friends in the right-wing press have been busily writing about "the new Boris" – how he's changed from a clown to an homme sérieux. Happily, there are touches of the old Boris, as when he describes Livingstone as a "this great geyser of hypocrisy" who "squats like the dragon, the great Smaug, on taxpayers' loot".
Johnson believes in using the carrot rather than the stick in persuading people to recycle more. If we went round to his home in Islington, would we find it a recycling paradise? "I now hesitate," he says sleekly, "for a long time after I've licked the yoghurt lid, to work out which container to put it into." He drives an old Toyota people carrier, not a Prius, "because they're very expensive." Though 19 years younger than Livingstone, here's something nicely old-fashioned about his concern for building "affordable" new houses that are "beautiful" and have gardens. Also for his devotion to the old Routemaster buses, with conductors and bells that go "ting ting". He will fund their return, he says, by eliminating bureaucracy. "There's £110m being spent on consultants for TfL. Given the choice between £110m on consultants and on conductors, I think people would rather have fewer consultants."
But Boris, I say – buses are so not you. Why you want to condemn yourself to having to make decisions about engineering works and traffic lights? Why do you want to become mayor at all?
His reply is on-message, about "trying to make a difference to the quality of the urban environment" but you sense, behind the bluster, a kind and fundamentally decent man becoming comprehensively out of his depth in hard-nose, hard-hat local politics.
****
The mayoral race has polarised since it began in earnest. Brian Paddick, on paper the perfect compromise candidate, stands little chance. The battle for London has become a two-horse race between a twice-elected mayor whose bullying of motorists and choices of advisers have made him few friends; and a charismatic public entertainer with no track record in running anything larger than a magazine, whose persona of hapless, bumbling-along ignorance has made him far too many. Unless the election is conducted as a personality contest, the choice before Londoners is an almost impossible one.
Ken's Policies
Transport
A new £25 charge for the worst-polluting vehicles, along with the continuation of Tube modernisation; free 24-hour travel for pensioners and the extension of discounted travel for students and people with disabilities; an extra £600m investment in buses each year; implementation of the £16bn Crossrail investment for a new east-west underground line; and a £500m cycling and walking scheme.
Crime
Over the next year, 1,000 extra police officers on the beat; a higher priority given to combating antisocial behaviour; an investment of £79m over two years in youth centres and services.
Housing
A minimum of 50,000 new "affordable" homes in the next three years, constituting a £1bn investment.
Environment
All public buildings to be made more energy efficient; extended low-emission zone; no new Heathrow runway.
Brian's policies
Transport
Scrap £25 charge for most polluting cars and the Low Emission Zone. Revenue from the Congestion Charge (£3.5bn a year) to be spent on public transport, including new tram and rail links. Allow pre-pay Oyster cards to be used for unlimited bus journeys within an hour. Free 24-hour travel extended to pensioners and all students. An additional £50m to be spent on cycle lanes. Introduce a bicycle rental system similar to the Velib scheme in Paris.
Crime
"Real action" to tackle gun and knife crime, including tougher sentences. Cut crime by 20 per cent in the next four years.
Housing
Divert money currently paid to private landlords for temporary family housing to bring unoccupied homes into use through compulsory purchase. Build on publicly owned brownfield sites.
Environment
According to his website, not yet known.
Boris's policies
Transport
Bendy buses to be phased out; a competition to find a 21st-century Routemaster with conductors and full disabled access, running on clean fuel. Prevent Tube disruption by negotiating a no-strike deal. Reform the Congestion Charge. Better cycle routes; £2m invested in safe bicycle parking. Free 24-hour travel for OAPs.
Crime
Funding for 440 extra community police officers to patrol buses. Community and youth projects to give young people "a realisation of their value". Hand-held scanners and knife archways at transport hubs; crime maps.
Housing
Partnership with local councils to increase affordable homes. More family-sized homes with gardens. Protect London's historic buildings.
Environment
Supports the Low Emission Zone. Zero tolerance of littering and graffiti. No new runway at Heathrow.
****
Not keen on Ken, Boris or Brian? There are seven other candidates...
* Sian Berry (Green) plans bus and off-peak Tube fare cuts, a bicycle rental scheme and free home insulation.
* Richard Barnbrook (BNP) plans to "remove" the million immigrants in London to combat crime and improve housing and transport.
* Gerard Batten (UKIP) refuses to "pander" to multiculturalism and "special interest" groups, and will end the congestion and emission charges.
* Alan Craig (Christian Choice) believes that mending broken homes is the key to solving issues of crime, underachievement and drug abuse.
* Winston McKenzie (Independent) will be "merciless" on gun and knife crime and set up youth projects.
* Lindsey German (Left List) thinks council housing is the answer to the homes shortage. She will restore bus conductors and Tube guards.
* Matt O'connor (English Democrats) will take a zero-tolerance approach to gang culture and violent crime. He wants to "rebuild our fractured families".
Interesting? Click here to explore further
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AADHIKARonline continuing to report against the corruption of London public life by Ken Livingstone [the 'current mayor' 'in the name of and at tee expense of the people of London] unquoting from the web site of the London INDEPENDENT newspaper, at 0920 Hrs GMT on monday 7 April 2008
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