Ken Livingstone has said Londoners face a choice at next month’s elections between continued investment in bus services under him and “total chaos” under Conservative rival Boris Johnson.
In the latest of a series of attempts to connect Johnson with past Conservative governments Mr Livingstone’s campaign said their candidate had delivered improvements to bus services in the capital after “a 14 year decline thanks to neglect and hostility by Margaret Thatcher’s government.”
Speaking earlier today Mr Livingstone said his rival’s bus policies had “descended from farce to total chaos” after Mr Johnson’s costings for a new bus to replace the Routemaster and the reintroduction of conductors had been questioned by a number of analysts, media outlets and independent experts.
Livingstone commented “after his performance on Newsnight every well informed Londoner knows that Johnson hasn’t a clue how much his bus policy will cost. It’s time to end this farce and for Boris Johnson to come clean – he has no idea what he would do with London’s bus services or how much it would cost.”
Ryan says
You mean to say then when the transport system is better, the congestion charge is reformed to stop being a tax grab and Londoners can walk on the streets at night that there will be chaos?
Get lost Ken
Andy says
thanks to all the money spent on the underground and the high salaries paid to Ken’s chums at tfl it is now so expensive to travel around the Capital by public transport I’m buying a scooter!
Roger Wilsher says
Ken Livingstone is a refreshingly honest politician.
Asking us to judge him on his record after eight years in power, he says: “With me, everyone knows what they’re getting. It’s on the tin.”
And what a particularly gnarles, old, rusty tin it is too!
It says that after all those years – and with all that budget he has had to spend – he has still managed to:
• Fail to prevent a rise in domestic violence as he pledged to do
• Fail to tackle crime and anti-social behaviour on public transport. It’s actually gone up
• Fail to protect green parks and open spaces. Gardens the size of 22 Hyde Parks have disappeared
• Fail to meet his own recycling targets. London now has the worst household recycling rate in the country
• Fail to meet his election promise over housing targets – indeed, he is on track to miss his target by an astonishing 50%
• Fail to deliver on a 2004 Manifesto promise to bring late night Tube trains on Fridays & Saturdays
• Fail to deliver on another 2004 Manifesto pledge to increase the number of female bus drivers, whose number has actually fallen
• Fail to keep his promise to keep congestion charging to £5 per day, which he made in 2003 (eight months before the last Mayoral election).
• Fail to deliver on school travel plans. Despite promising that by next year every school in the capital would have one, only 53% of schools actually participate
If this isn’t enough to show that Chaos does not come in the spectre of Boris, but is already here in the reality of Ken then mull on these facts:
Since his re-election in 2004, Ken has:
• Raised single bus journey costs by 20% and single Tube fares by 50% – a 100% increase in fare charges since May 2004 on the tubes and buses.
• Failed a commitment on the environment to expand the London schools environment programme to secondary schools
• Failed to stand up against controversial figures preaching hate, for example, inviting Muslim cleric Yusuf Al-Qaradawi to London, despite the man supporting the death penalty for homosexuals
• Failed to promote a tolerant and cosmopolitan London by making anti-Semitic remarks towards both the Ruben brothers and to an Evening Standard journalist
• Failed to deliver on a key election pledge of introducing a ‘Culture Card’ in the capital, which was promised during the last two election campaigns but has not materialised.
• Failed to protect taxpayers’ money – spending, for example, nearly £50m on plans which have been shelved for the West London Crossing and Cross River Trams
The definition of “chaos” is “a state of extreme confusion and disorder; a formless and disordered state”.
On contemplating the above catalogue of failure and ineptitude some may think that Ken is the Grand Master of Chaos. They would be right!
Watervole says
Ken has a nerve. Under his administration in 2004-5, the buses required a subsidy of £550 million. Frankly, the cost of the buses is a detail – the problems Ken will leave behind are far more worrying. Maybe his mate Hugo Chavez will give him a job.