A Tangled Web

Beyond Our Ken



Ken Livingstone, icon of the unreformed Left, won a narrow victory in the London elections on Thursday. In the same way that voting for Sinn Fein/IRA in the Irish Republic says much about the crass stupidity of the electorate there, the election of Livingstone casts a stain on the integrity of the capital's voters.



London is now a city where the people chose to vote in an ego-maniac partly in protest at the policies of another ego-maniac. I grew up in London and can remember the wasteful and damaging politics of the erstwhile GLC. In his present non-moustachioed incarnation, Livingstone has created an expensive cash cow in the form of a 'congestion zone'; stripped the wallets of Londoners through meteoric rises in the Council Tax; neglected the needs of those in the suburbs; spent £8000 of taxpayers money on an 'anti-war party' in protest at the visit by George W Bush; pandered to every politically correct forum conceivable; clogged up the streets with too many buses without a concomitant rise in bus passengers; squandered buckets of cash on ridiculous projects; and engaged in trivial campaigns such as the one to rid Trafalgar Square of pigeons.



Ken Livingstone is a man incapable of positively representing the needs of the average Londoner. He is a divisive character unable to govern the capital in the interests of all its people. In short, rule for the many and not the few is simply beyond our Ken.