I am not neccessarily convinced that the Great British public are interested in issues anymore are they? Politics is totally about personality.

These are not ‘mistakes’ – the Ken campaign is well aware that Boris and his supporters are desperate not to talk about policies – because Ken would smash Boris on that terrain

You call on your opponent to do something because the act of issuing that call is political in itself – not because you think they’ll concede to it.

I’m sure you saw this letter in the Guardian which rather undermines Livingstone’s main ‘policy’.

“During the current London mayoral campaign, a claim has been made that public transport fares could be cut significantly, and that such a cut would neither trigger a reduction in services nor a cut to TfL’s programme of investment, such as upgrading the tube and building Crossrail.

As a member of TfL’s board, I would like to underscore that there is no pool of idle surplus funds at TfL that could be used to neutralise the impact of a major fares cut. The claim that there is a £727m surplus that could be used for such a purpose has been disproved by Channel 4′s FactCheck. The cash currently lodged on TfL’s balance sheet has in fact been raised through Treasury-approved borrowing specifically to pre-fund TfL’s contractual commitments to the construction of Crossrail and other budgeted items.

To ensure its ability to finance London’s current transport services as well as catch up on decades of underinvestment the system, TfL has implemented a rigorous series of cost-saving measures during the past four years. These measures, which feature a significant headcount reduction, have left no possibility for the accumulation of a large pool of unallocated funds. Therefore no Londoner should be under the impression that fare cuts could be implemented without negative consequences for TfL’s finances and for the current and future state of public transport spending in London.
Eva K Lindholm
TfL board member”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/apr/05/finland-station-boris-ken-tfl/

Can an established hypocrite accuse others of being hypocritical without further hypocrisy?

I think Ken needs to get out of the ‘yes I am shit but so is he’ rut.

@3 – In that case, there needs to be an immediate and full audit of TFL’s books to find where the cash has vanished too. That there SHOULD be a surplus according to the figures released…well, I’m sure Boris thinks that that much cash vanishing is fine, but the fee-payer is owed better than that.

I detest Ken, but really this campaign isn’t exactly casting Boris in a good light and it’s showing why elected mayors are such a bad idea.

Isn’t this a reflection on the state of British politics – the fact is they’re both shite.

We’re constantly told how London is the greatest city on earth and yet the two leading mayorial candidates are like two idiots looking for a village.

Please. please, spare us any further comment.

@5 eh???

The cash hasn’t vanished.

The point is that the cash (any cash) can either be used to cut fares or for investment. Not both.

There is no free “surplus” money sitting in some separate account.

Google “opportunity cost” for more information!

@7 – So you’re saying that TFL’s accounts are entirely fraudulent, rather than just partially, since the cash never existed? Erm…

I detest Ken, but really this campaign isn’t exactly casting Boris in a good light and it’s showing why elected mayors are such a bad idea.

Ken is 6 points behind with Labour nationally about 10 points ahead .
Its a calamity for Labour and it could not come at a worse time, looks like they get the mid term grumble polls but not real votes. Seems to me this casts Borus in a pretty good light his personal affairs are in good order and as the Mayor hardly has any policy formaly under his control ,personality is all .
Who is a better advert for London, who will get an ear with government for London, who understands what London needs to prosper. Boris Boris and errrm Boris !

Great advert for direct democracy , because with little formal power a directly elected man has clout of course we know why the left don`t like it don`t we …

@9 – Ken is as much the candidate of the wider left as you are a supporter of Carlos Cortiglia.

Keep on defending the man who’s spending over a hundred million of borrowed cash on boondoggles, and under whose guidance the cost of the Olympics has soared.

And “direct” democracy…ah yes, the type which both Thatcher and Atlee rightly deplored. The only clouts are the ones Londoners are getting.

@3, TfL’s own report was quite explicit on the numbers.

1. Boris has underspent the capital investment budget and no one is suggesting that money is used to fund the fares cut.

2. Passenger numbers are way ahead of forecast. More passenger journeys = more income than anticipated. Operational costs stable. Final result? A surplus in the operational budget.

In any event, I thought board members were prevented from making political statements? I could be wrong there but it strikes me as strange in an election campaign for such a statement to be made in the same way that Sir Edward Lister, Boris’s chief of staff shouldn’t have written the article he did for the Evening Poison. You know, the one he wrote praising Boris and when a complaint was made Boris himself decided everything was fine!

I know who I’d rather trust.

11 – I’m not an accountant, but Channel 4 did a pretty comprehensive fact check on precisely this point a while back. Conclusion:

The verdict

Mr Livingstone is wrong to claim there’s a £729m surplus that’s sitting in the bank, and there is no ‘entirely separate’ budget for investment projects. If he cuts fares, TfL would expect to lose £1.12bn in income from fares – and that’s a hole he wouldn’t be able to plug without hitting the day-to-day funding for London’s transport or taking money from investment projects.

How Mr Livingstone would do that is up to him, but it could mean that tube and bus route upgrades are delayed, or TfL could be forced to shed some staff members.

Any mayoral candidate can raid the TfL’s coffers to cut fares. But cutting fares could mean cutting investment – which London’s transport system has been sorely starved of for decades. Investing money to bring it up to speed only began in earnest under the last Labour government.

And even now, Prof Travers said the system needs “billions and billions more money” to update it. “The underground still has bits of Bakelite signalling – stuff that would easily be more at home in a science museum,” he told us.

One way round it, would be to ask central government for more money, which Mr Livingstone did manage when Labour was in power. Prof Glaister said: “Ken in the past has had success blagging more money out of the government, but getting more from the current government looks entirely unlikely.”

http://blogs.channel4.com/factcheck/can-ken-livingstone-deliver-a-fare-deal-for-london

You are saying Ken Livingstone is as repugnant to the “wider left” as the BNP are to the Conservative Party ? Blimey when you drop the loser you really drop him don`t you, I `m not a Ken fan but even I wouldn`t go that far and my experience is that he is entirely representative of London Labour.

What about Len McLusky is he another neo leper ?

@13 Paul

You can safely ignore anything Leon says; he’s a well known liar and troll who covers up his intellectual inadquacies by branding anyone who disagreees with him an anti-semite, BNP supporter and member of some team dedicated to following him around this and other sites.

With lucj the moderators of this site will wake up at some point and ban him… until then we probably have to put up with him!

@13 – Labour drove out the wider left years ago. There’s a reason they lost so many million votes in the New Labour years, you know! I’m sure London Labour love Ken, but I have very little common ground with them.

This isn’t a case of “drop”, he hasn’t been “ours” for a long time.

As to the Unions, you might have noticed that their relationship with Labour is real rocky lately.

@14 – And you invade ANOTHER thread with your hatred and spam, trying to destroy a conversation in progress.

As to the Unions, you might have noticed that their relationship with Labour is real rocky lately.

Yeah Keith Harris and Orville often squabble too

Londoners will have difficult choice between Boris and Ken, but it’s going to be even more difficult for Labour to choose; they don’t trust Boris and they trust Ken even less.
See; http://kenlivingstoneformayor.blogspot.com