Ken Livingstone

ᔥ The Telegraph

…and lose in court:

I have today received an apology in the High Court for false and defamatory statements made about me by Ken Livingstone in his recent autobiography, You Can’t Say That. Other redress has also been agreed. Presumably to save face, Ken’s side insisted that this remain confidential.

In the book, reviewed here, Ken wrote that I was “shown the door” by my previous employer, the Evening Standard, after writing “lies” about the allocation of grants by his administration and the behaviour of his race adviser, Lee Jasper. Ken also claimed that the Standard had repudiated my stories in editorials which “said there had been no corruption or cronyism at City Hall.”

Alas, it wasn’t me who was lying. As the Standard said in its own review of the book,  I wasn’t “shown the door.” I left of my own volition to join the Telegraph. No such editorials were printed. The stories won the top award in British print journalism that year and remain available on the paper’s website. Like this one, for instance, which triggered Jasper’s resignation after I revealed that he had channelled vast sums of money, for no clear purpose, to organisations run by a woman he secretly wanted to “honey glaze.” Ken has never been able to challenge a single word that I actually wrote, as opposed to the various misrepresentations of it that he has made.

I started a claim for libel and this afternoon came the inevitable end – a statement in open court by the publishers of You Can’t Say That, apologising for Ken’s lies. It’s not the first time the majesty of the law has extracted that which no mortal hand can manage. A couple of years ago,humble pie was served courtesy of the former Tower Hamlets leader, Michael Keith, who got damages for being called an “Islamophobe” by Ken.

ᔥ The Telegraph

Ken Livingstone criticised Labour leader Ed Milliband for “carrying the discredited old Blairite wing with him”.

Keen students of United Kingdom politics know that the only way Labour could win after 18 years in opposition was to have Tony Blair take them to the right. So Red Ken wants them to go back to their old unelectable ways.

ᔥThe Telegraph

Boris Johnson has seen of Red Ken for the Mayor of London. Poms obviously have exceedingly short memories too, crawling back into the cold embrace of socialism and the Labour party.

Boris Johnson rescues Tories from disastrous local election results, bucking national trend to be re-elected as Mayor of London.

He narrowly beat Ken Livingstone, the Labour candidate, after second preference votes from the five losing candidates were taken into account. The Conservative victory in London came despite David Cameron’s party receiving a mauling in local elections outside of the capital.

Both Coalition parties suffered heavy losses as they were apparently blamed by voters for a series of policy blunders, including new taxes on pensioners, pasties and charity donations.

The Tory performance was so poor that the Prime Minister faced calls from within his party to ignore Lib Dem policies and adopt a more Right-wing agenda.

Labour gained more than 800 council seats and seized control of 30 additional local authorities, including Plymouth, Birmingham and Southampton. The party also regained control of Cardiff and Glasgow councils.

Ed Miliband’s party even won council seats in Witney and Chipping Norton in the Prime Minister’s constituency.

Boris Johnson is clearly the favourite with the bookies.

Ken should have learned not to lie. The modern political environment doesn’t take kindly to liars.

ᔥ The Telegraph

Boris is running a great campaign. Ken is a lying hypocrite, but being Labour he thinks everyone loves him and wont mind he lies, or is a hypocrite.

In a fractious session hosted by radio station LBC 97.3, Mr Johnson denied suggestions he had used a company to channel his media earnings to avoid paying income tax – a claim that he has levelled at his Labour opponent.

Mr Livingstone accused the mayor of having “the same arrangements” for dealing with his media earnings as he had, insisting he had used a company called Finland Station.

But Mr Johnson called the claim “lies”, adding: “I have never used a company to minimise my tax.

“There was a TV production company which I was briefly a director of but I certainly never … I have always paid full income tax.”

Later, the row between the pair continued off-air when a furious Mr Johnson swore at his Labour opponent.

Travelling in a lift to the top of the LBCD building to be photographed, the Mayor shouted at Mr Livingstone “it’s all ——- lies, it’s all ——- lies”.

Boris calls him out as a liar, and defines the election as a race between a man who resorts to lies at every opportunity. As we have seen in Australia voters don’t like liars, especially Labour liars. Trevor Mallard might find this out soon too.

Boris Johnson has a great piece of negative campaigning (pdf) against Ken Livingstone.

This is how you do negative campaigning properly.

The left wing are hypocrites, generally and in particular when it comes to taxes. In New Zealand Matt McCarten a hard bitten unionist who rails constantly about evil bosses failed to act as he wishes other bosses to act and failed to pay his workers PAYE and Kiwisaver contributions.

Now in the UK Ken Livingstone is being questioned about some dodgy tax practices of his own:

Image via Wikipedia

Ken Livingstone has insisted he is not avoiding tax after accounts suggested he had saved at least £50,000 by paying himself through a personal company.

The Labour politician, who is hoping to replace Boris Johnson in this year’s election for Mayor of London, has previously attacked tax avoiders as “rich b——-” who should “not be allowed to vote”.

The Sunday Telegraph disclosed that Mr Livingstone earned £232,000 in 2009, the first year after his defeat to Boris Johnson at the last mayoral election. Companies House documents showed that the money, which came from Mr Livingstone’s speaking engagements, and work as a radio presenter, was paid directly into a new company that he set up.

Mr Livingstone and his wife, Emma Beal, are sole shareholders in the firm and are able to split his income evenly, even though it was earned entirely by him. She is paid from company funds as Mr Livingstone’s “assistant”.

Accountants said the arrangement appeared designed to ensure that Mr Livingstone paid corporation tax at 20 or 21 per cent, rather than income tax at up to 40 per cent.

However, speaking to BBC Radio 5 Live, Mr Livingstone said: “I’m not avoiding tax.

It looks like Ed Miliband is intent on following the lead of Phil Goff…to oblivion:

Ed Miliband has hired one of Barack Obama’s senior advisers as Labour steps up its fight to defeat Boris Johnson in May’s London mayoral elections.

Labour has been encouraged by recent opinion polling to believe that Mr Johnson, once the overwhelming favourite to be re-elected, can be beaten their candidate by Ken Livingstone.

The latest survey – by YouGov – put Mr Livingstone two points ahead of Mr Johnson in what will be the main political battle of 2012.

Polling experts now claim the race is “too close to call” – even though Mr Johnson led by eight points just two months ago.

Mr Miliband has called in Arnie Graf, 68, whose community organising skills were honed in Mr Obama’s heartlands of the South Side of Chicago, to search out Labour voters in unpromising territory for the party, particularly London’s outer suburbs.

Many of these areas are Conservative strongholds – but because of how the race works, every individual vote counts.

What’s the bet that Labour in London will have a Mallard type hypocrite who goes around talking about evil Americans helping Boris, knowing full well they have their own evil Americans helping Red Ken.

The leftwing elements of the blogosphere apart from a few select individuals like to maintain secrecy. They blog anonymously because generally they don’t want people to know who they are, or work in an area that blogging would not be tolerated. A good example of this as we all know are the anonymong bloggers at the Labour/EPMU funded off-shore lapblog The Standard. They like to maintain the pretense of being independent but almost all of their bloggers either work for Labour or the EPMU. One of them even faked his resignation from the blog because of a supposed conflict of interest but continues to blog under the guise of “Guest Post”. His little problems with his job will arise shortly.

Another blog run by Jordan Carter who claims consistently to be independent of Labour yet runs their lines consistently is Just Left. You may remember Jordan Carter, he is the guy who reckons he will never work in business because he finds trade immoral and Labour’s absentee Hunua candidate.

Well enough of the preamble, let’s get on with the lesson. This lesson is about how NOT to anonymously blog and skite about it in Social Media. Such silliness just leads to your embarrassment.

Since we are talking about Just Left let’s look at the case of anonymong “Dolan”

“Dolan” wants to be anonymous. “Dolan” wants to appear independent. However “Dolan” is a complete fool. “Dolan” wants to be anonymous for professional reasons, but still wants the perceived status of blogging.

However “Dolan”, the numpty, has set it up so when he posts it appears on his Facebook newsfeed, despite blogging under a pseudonym. We have here what is known in the trade as a “Homer Moment”

You see the problem with Social Media is that the whole premise of sharing your information is in direct contradiction with the anonymong blogger trying to hide his identity.

For example;

“Dolan” wrote this post about the Super Ciy, Paula Bennet and Rodney Hide.

At the same time due to his setup of posting his blog posts to his wall on Facebook this appeared.

Thus revealing to us all that “Dolan” is in fact Enzo Giordani, Labour’s northern region chair and EPMU organiser. This also confirms the very close links between the top levels of the Labour Party and the EPMU. In fact one could almost say that they are synonymous.

What we also know now too is the EPMU are very much in the forefront of the organisation of the opposition to the Super City.

This blog has now shown the close links between the EPMU and Labour on not only the Standard but also now Just Left. The Labour Party President and EPMU General Secretary needs to come clean twice now. First he needs to come clean wearing his hat as the Labour Party President and explain how the Labour Party funds and operates two blogs and that he approves of Labour and taxpayer funded staff blogging “anonymously”. Then he needs to wear his EMPU hat and explain how the union and Labour are in fact seperate organisations when all the evidence thus far suggests they are branches of one another, sharing resources across organisations and across blogs.

Lastly the left really needs to wake up when it comes to Social Media. They were caught with their pants down over Twitter and now they have been caught again.

This blog and other will also reveal this week another anonymong blogger who really shouldn’t be working where he is given the slanderous and defamatory remarks he has made about his “customers”. It really is about Trust.

WOBH is providing this announcement of a meet the candidate meeting with Labour Candidate Jordan Carter as a public service.

Jordan is currently waiting to meet you all at the exclusive Ford’s Bar in Central Auckland, some 35 kilomentres from the nearest boundary of your electorate.

Jordan is campaigning hard for the workers this election and for that reason he has decided to hold a meeting where it will cost you $40 in petrol just to get there and at least $7 bucks for a local beer at the exclusive Ford’s Bar.