The theory that Ken Livingstone has deliberately increased the amount of road blockages in central London in advance of congestion charging - true or myth?

Its just Lord Rothermere sponsored propaganda.

presumably they've been suspended just so they've got less things to go wrong during the change-over.

The deliberateness of these policies is difficult to ascertain until next February, but if in Feb everything speeds up it will be grebt. So I hope so.

when these were all utilities owned by the ppl as a whole, a bureaucrat cd pick up the phone four or five times and check w.the small no. of works officers whether — given that [xx] street had to be dug up for phonelines, say — if any of the other foax needed anything doing down the same hole... this isn't possible any more, so the same street can be being dug up for reasonably valid but non-urgent reasons several times a year

http://www.socialistunity.com/?p=2968

^^waddatwat

those green-at-the-foaming-gills ineptocrats with more resentment and megalomania than brains

Green at the foaming gills?

Norris. Oh man, we didn't know how lucky we were.

(to have a decent Con candidate at the same as Ken)

Ken Livingstone: "People who side with the US against some of the worst elements of Middle Eastern politics are scum who deserve scorn, why choose the lesser of two evils"

Ken Livingstone two paragraphs later: "It was OK for me to hang with Al-Qaradawi because he's the lesser of two evils in the world of Islamism"

"Ken Livingstone: "People who side with the US against some of the worst elements of Middle Eastern politics are scum who deserve scorn, why choose the lesser of two evils""

So this is a paraphrase, right? What have you paraphrased?

Dom letting Henry use his login again?

Here in Britain, the local government experience has been squeezed right out. Everyone leaves university, works in some PR firm or as a researcher for a MP, and the first experience they have of managing anything is when they find they are a Cabinet Minister or a Prime Minister. So I watched Blair and Brown and everybody, except for Blunkett and Dobson and Chris Smith, who’d had strong local government experience - all these people learning and making the sort of mistakes that I made when I was a councillor in Lambeth my 20s, but on the national stage. Blair would honestly say to you that he spent his first term as Prime Minister learning how to do the job. That’s a luxury. Boris is now spending his first term as Mayor learning how to do the job. This is a luxury that you really can’t indulge. It is really only in Britain with this obsessive centralised state, that you’ve got to be Prime Minister, or virtually nothing else is worth doing. It has got worse under New Labour; in Mrs Thatcher’s time, being a Cabinet Minister you had a real air of responsibility, and were left to get on with it.

fair?

by henry you mean enrique, obv.

Ironically it was Thatcher who really kick-started this "obsessive centralised state" thing I think

Maybe not that ironic tho

Dom letting Henry use his login again?

I don't understand this

that's OK

I don't understand this

― Ich Ber ein Binliner (Tom D.), Thursday, 16 October 2008 12:35 (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Anyone who criticises Livingstone's pallying up to myriad homophobes, misogynists, anti-semites and religious fruitcakes is obviously an enemy of the left and should be shunned as such.

Is Henry banned or something?

I remember when this dude was worth arguing about.

Top 100 Examples Of "IT'S OVER" [Started by A. FIND MISSING LINK B. PUT IT TOGETHER C. BANG! (Marcello Carlin) in October 2008, last updated 21 minutes ago by Tracer Hand] 18 new answers

i think it's pretty tabloid to say or infer that ken is calling anyone 'scum', when he's discussing different ideological choices he sees as being presented currently or in the past. perhaps you could say he that he thinks those who present sharp ideological choices deserve scorn, that's maybe implied. anyway onto the substance of what he's saying. yes, it's crass to pretend that stalinism is only an economic ideology, as against US capitalism, but of course he's reffering to a time when the US dropped the h-bombs, and then went on to invade korea and vietnam, so there was a disgust on the left for that kind of thing too. so his proposal of 'middle courses' desired by intellectuals then and now is not entirely unreasonable or absurd.

You have argued with Dom before, right?

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maybe there's something to what ken says about working with the imperfect, relatively progressive elments of middle eastern politics and not retreating in disgust. after all
too many voters did the latter to ken and look what we got.

mostly kidding.