Nice superficiality and omission of reality. Too bad his words weren't accompanied by strumming and swooning by Joan Baez, eh? Or in earlier times, a guest appearance at one of his speeches by Arafat, or now, by Hamas?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2005/mar/04/...

http://www.adl.org/special_reports/livingstone/...

I'll be turning to other sources to find out what happened in London.

MARLOWECAN-
I see that you think that all bad things have come from the 'Left”. The serpent in the Garden of Eden was probably a card carrying socialist, right?
Though you seem to have a list of facts and factoids at your disposal, this simplistic style of analysis makes it hard to rummage through your comments to dig them out..

I don't know if I'm alone in this, but the net result is that I'm left totally uninterested in what you're trying to convey. And that's too bad.
People like I are trying hard to avoid geting stuck in divisivess or wearing political blinders. This sort of approach just turns me off, and it turns off one avenure of enlightenment in the process.

If i want to find out about London politics, I'll be turning to other sources.
Is that really the effect you were going for?

But, the occasional use of Obama’s full name will raise suspicions among bien-pensants that I am a racist or Islamaphobe. Oh well, to the pure all things are pure.

In part, this was Red Ken's failure…but also in part, it was the national collapse of the Left/Labour vote in local elections across Great Britain.

Johnson has a rep as a bit of a clown…but I suspect he is pretty smart and devious under that.

Red Ken defeated himself…with his aides resigning under corruption investigations…his TOTAL dependence upon the minority vote for political survival, and his contempt for the middle class and the white working class….

But it was mainly the arrogance. For example, his elimination of the beloved red Routemaster double-decker buses – a symbol of London for generations – in favour of the bendable buses everyone hates. When people complained, Red Ken's response was essentialy “FU…I know better.”

Davebo: “by stoking up fear of violent crime”

These fears are very real. Ironically, Red Ken did a lot to support “neighbourhood policing”…but couldn't really talk much about it, as Left activists would have risen in rage. Johnson exploited it.

But people are very worried about crime in the UK. Yob and chav culture…binge drinking and random violence and death…no right of self-defense under the law.

Out of Red Ken's control, of course, but he was a symbol for it all.

Re: Holly's post…maybe it has something to do with Red Ken's “concentration camp” guard comment?

http://www.newstatesman.com/200804300002

Boris Johnson is a dishonest, incompetent clown, whose life has been a story of contemptuous, self-serving privilege. The fact that he may on 1 May be elected Mayor of London tells us something very unsavoury about the ways in which Britain continues to be disfigured by social class.

The facts about Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson are well-known, and should be more than sufficient to stop him being a plausible candidate for any kind of elected office in a mature democracy. He is a man who has lost a number of jobs for lying: he was sacked from The Times for making up a quotation from his godfather, the Oxford historian Colin Lucas, and lost his front-bench role, under Michael Howard, for lying about his four-year extra-marital affair with his fellow toff journalist, Petronella Wyatt. (For men like Johnson, with friends in high places, serial sackings are no bar to advancement.)

As well as being a famous liar, Johnson has skirted the borders of criminality when it has suited his interests or those of his foul, larcenous and over-privileged friends. In 1990 he agreed to give the home address of journalist Stuart Collier to Darius Guppy, a narcissistic Old Etonian convicted fraudster, who wanted to have Collier beaten up in revenge for some perceived slight. On being asked how badly Collier would be beaten up, Guppy informed Johnson that it would involve “a couple of black eyes, a cracked rib … or something like that”.

It is beyond satire that the man campaigning for the mayoralty of London by stoking up fear of violent crime should once himself have been involved in the attempted commission of an instance of GBH. Despite his new found enthusiasm for the Metropolitan police, did he alert the authorities to Guppy’s intentions? No doubt he takes the view that police attention should just be “for the little people”, and not for his odious chums from Eton.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2005/mar/04/...