BBC Mayorial Bias - Pro-Livingstone/Anti-Johnson

[Teddy Bear]

Andrew Gilligan has identified 6 NEW blatant lies that Mayorial candidate Ken Livingstone told in 2 recent interviews, one for the Guardian, and the other on the BBC.
You can watch the BBC interview here, on what the BBC call 'a grilling'. You can decide yourself if it matches your definition of that, to me it sounds like the panel of BBC journalists 'enabling' Livingstone to spin the stories the way he wants them to go. They certainly didn't pick up on any of the lies Gilligan identified during this programme.

Now you might think that perhaps the interviewers did not have the facts to hand to contradict any of these Livingstone lies. However when these same journalists gave Boris Johnson a 'grilling', this time more in the truer sense of the word, one of the subjects concerned crime statistics, which certainly one of them seemed to be au fait with. It would appear from this that he allowed Livingstone to tell his porkies without raising any alarms.

(Full links to individual stories and statistics given on the article itself)

Ken Livingstone: six new lies in a single afternoon…
By Andrew Gilligan Politics Last updated: March 27th, 2012

Ken did interviews at the Guardian and BBC London on Monday. Even by his standards, he was making it up as he went along. Does he think we won’t notice? Or does he just not care?

Here are the six main new lies he told (as always I'm generously not including lies he's told before, which you can find here and here).

Claim: “In the last year, there’s been an 8% increase in murders” (BBC London)
Reality: In the last year, according to the Metropolitan Police website, there has been a 24.1 per cent fall in homicides, from 136 to 104.

Claim: “I brought in the Freedom Pass… it’s the best thing I ever did.” (BBC London)
“I have used the mayoralty in the past to deliver things that people said I could not… This is exactly the approach I took with the Freedom Pass – which is not paid for by the mayoral budget, but which I won for older Londoners so that they could travel free on the network.” (Guardian)
Reality: The GLC introduced London-wide free bus travel for pensioners in 1973, under its Labour leader Reg Goodwin and transport chair, Evelyn Denington, eight years before Livingstone became leader and 27 years before he became mayor. Some boroughs, including Lambeth, where Ken was a councillor from 1971, had earlier set up their own schemes. Ken, then a new backbencher, had no involvement with pensioners’ free travel at either Lambeth or the GLC, apart from voting for it with the rest of the Labour group.

The Tory GLC administration of Horace Cutler extended the concession to the Tube (with a 20p flat fare) in 1977. Livingstone’s GLC abolished the afternoon peak restriction and the 20p flat fare on the Tube in 1981/2. The pass was taken over by the boroughs in 1986, after the GLC’s abolition, and rebranded by them as the “Freedom Pass” in the 1990s, before the mayoralty began. Wikipedia’s claim that the Freedom Pass was created in 1984 is wrong.

Claim: “My fares pledge in the past was to freeze fares in real terms…in fact what happened was that they fell in real terms on the tube and very substantially on buses. This is shown in this official data from TfL” (Guardian; when pressed about his past broken promises on fares)

Reality: After promising to freeze fares in real terms at the May 2000 election, Livingstone raised bus fares by 43% in January 2004. Inflation was 2.6% at the time. He admits in his own memoirs (page 491): “I decided to increase the fares before the [2004] election.”

After again promising a real-terms freeze at the 2004 election, Livingstone raised fares by up to 25% in early 2005. Inflation was 3.2% at the time. He again now admits in his memoirs (page 497) that he “increase[d] the fares [after the 2004 election]…this meant breaking my promise not to raise fares faster than inflation.”

Even the “TfL official data” he cites (table 8.6 of this) shows that Tube fares increased in real terms across his eight years, as did both bus and Tube fares in his second term. Government statistics (not produced by one of the mayor’s own agencies) show much steeper rises than TfL’s figures.

Claim: “Despite all the smears by Andrew Gilligan, three separate investigations, including a committee of Tory council leaders appointed by Boris, the district auditor, and a two and a half year operation by the police, all concluded there was no evidence of corruption or cronyism under my administration.” (Guardian)

Reality: The “committee of Tory council leaders” (the Wheatcroft review) found that “money was misspent on a massive scale” at Livingstone’s London Development Agency, which was “used as the Mayor's chequebook” to “write some rather interesting pay-offs to people” and “poured money into projects that failed to deliver.”

The review strongly criticised “unusual” payments made to close female friends of Lee Jasper, Livingstone’s disgraced race adviser, who was forced to resign after channelling £100,000 of City Hall money, for no clear purpose, to two organisations run by a woman he was proposing to “honey glaze” and “cook slowly before a torrid and passionate embrace.” It is true, however, that most of the key documentary evidence was missing by the time Wheatcroft got there (presumably because it had been destroyed).

The district auditor investigation ruled that Jasper’s behaviour in channelling grants to cronies was “not appropriate,” that he concealed his personal relationships with them in a “conflict of interest” and that his conduct fell below “the standards expected” from a GLA officer. The auditor was also hampered by missing evidence, but was able to establish that the grants to Jasper’s friends had not passed through the normal procurement process and that City Hall “could not demonstrate that [it] had achieved value for money” from any of the payments.

The police did, in fact, find enough evidence to recommend criminal prosecution against at least one of the cronies, though this was not pursued due to the man’s “ill health.” No allegation of corruption was ever made. However, all three investigations confirmed the allegation I did make, of cronyism.

Claim: “We’ve identified, you can get it off my website, £60m of savings we can make” (to fund his claimed pledge to provide 1,700 extra police) (BBC London)

Reality: Providing 1,700 extra police officers will in fact cost at least £90 million – every year. And I can find no trace on the website of any explanation of how even £60 million will be found. Ken’s only costed references to funding this pledge which I can trace are a claim that he can raise £20 million by allowing the Met to charge TfL the “full price” of its safer transport teams (TfL already pays on a "full cost recovery" basis – and even if it didn’t, it would just be shuffling money from another part of the GLA budget anyway.)

The only sources of money Ken identified in his BBC interview were removing chauffeur-driven cars from senior officers (this would save £2 million) and stopping “police officers flying first class, particularly internally in Britain. This is nonsense.” Nonsense indeed – there is no first class, or even business, on British domestic flights. And even if there was, stopping a few police officers from flying it would again save small sums.

Claim: “In each year I was mayor, anti-semitic attacks [in London] declined” (Guardian; when pressed about his poor relationship with the Jewish community)

Reality: The London figures, from the Community Security Trust’s annual reports, are as follows (reports before 2003 are not readily available online):
2003: 215 2004: 311 2005: 213 2006: 300 2007: 247 2008: 236
As will be seen, the number of anti-semitic attacks in London rose substantially – by up to 45% – in two of these years.

Yesterday, Ken also stubbornly defended his remarks about rich Jews, his tax avoidance, his embrace of the Islamic extremist Yusuf al-Qaradawi and his work for Iranian state TV. Exactly as in the good old Lee Jasper days, he is taking refuge in denial, attacking the messenger (usually me) and clinging to his mistakes until they eventually consume him.

Supporters of Boris Johnson simply couldn’t ask for more.

[Teddy Bear]

The Telegraph has this story today
Boris Johnson brands Ken Livingstone a liar in furious mayoral race bust-up

There is no doubt that Livingstone is the liar, and he tried to imply that Johnson used the same kind of tactic to avoid paying tax as he did. The worst part is this element which Boris identifies about Red Ken as
...the hypocrisy of a man who for years has railed against those who use special arrangements to reduce their tax and who has then been caught - bang to rights - doing the very same thing himself."

To understand the true relevance of this statement you would have to read this article in the New Statesmen from a few weeks ago
Sorry, Ken — own up or accept the consequences
The most damming part of this article as far as Ken is concerned, besides the fact that if the New Statesman is critical of him it must be serious, is this paragraph

The big problem for Livingstone is that he has been a vocal supporter of UK Uncut, which campaigns against not just (illegal) tax evasion but also (legal) tax avoidance – by Vodafone, Topshop and other big companies. "These rich bastards just don't get it," Livingstone wrote in 2009. "No one should be allowed to vote in a British election, let alone sit in our parliament, unless they are paying their full share of tax." The former London mayor called for everyone to "pay tax at the same rate on their earnings and all other income".

The word "hypocrite" is being whispered – and not just by the usual suspects on the right. "I think it's bad for him," says a former adviser to Livingstone who worked with him at City Hall. "People expect more from Ken." If he was a Tory or, say, Tony Blair, this wouldn't matter – but it is an axiom as old as party politics that left-wing politicians are, rightly, held to higher standards. Principles matter.

So what does the BBC have to say about this recent episode? You might think it was a party political broadcast for Livingstone, with the article ending with this statement from him
"Those of us who are leading candidates in this election have a duty to the electorate to rein it in and direct it to the issues at stake for Londoners," he wrote.

"We must take account of Londoners - the people we are trying to talk to. We need to afford them the respect to have a decent discussion about how we address their concerns, their quality of life, the squeeze on their living standards, the future direction of their neighbourhoods and home city.

"I suggest to Boris Johnson therefore that he and I work together to raise the tone and spirit of this election."

Of course, no mention either of his hypocrisy. They still continue as they did in their last article simply allowing Ken to deny he was using this kind of tactic, when it was clear to everybody that he was.

Here's the current one

Boris Johnson and Ken Livingstone in on-air tax row

London mayoral rivals Boris Johnson and Ken Livingstone have clashed over their tax affairs in an on-air row.

Mr Livingstone says claims he avoided some tax by being paid via a company were "smears". His rival had used "the same arrangement" when an MP, he said.

In an LBC radio debate, Mr Johnson called him "a bare-faced liar" adding: "I always paid full income tax."

Mr Livingstone later closed a website attacking his rival, saying the contest had become "dark and negative".

The clash followed weeks of claims Mr Livingstone was paid via a company, Silveta Ltd, so he was only liable for corporation tax at 20%, rather than paying full income tax.

The issue has been raised several times at Prime Minister's Questions by Conservative MPs keen to support Mr Johnson's re-election bid on 3 May.

'Exact same position'
Mr Livingstone said his arrangement was not a "tax avoidance thing" and to suggest otherwise was a "smear", adding: "I pay my income tax on everything I get."

I have never used a company to minimise my tax obligations.”

But he said he had to pay three members of staff and "you can't do that just on some casual arrangement": "Nobody in Britain employs people and pays income tax on the money they pay them."

He said he and Mr Johnson had been in "the exact same position", as Mr Johnson had a TV production company called Finland Station when he was an MP.

"We both had media earnings, we both put them through a company. You don't avoid tax on that, you have to pay tax on the money you take out."

Mr Johnson, the incumbent mayor who unseated Labour's Mr Livingstone in 2008, interrupted, saying: "No! That's not true, that's not true... the guy's a bare-faced liar."

He said he was "briefly" a director of the company but said it was not right to say he had used it to avoid paying income tax: "I have never used a company to minimise my tax obligations."

'Heat not light'
Lib Dem candidate Brian Paddick told Mr Livingstone he had "chosen a way of avoiding paying high levels of tax" and said Mr Johnson would "personally benefit" from the government's reduction in the top rate of tax.

He said the debate had contained "a lot of heat but not much light".

I suggest to Boris Johnson therefore that he and I work together to raise the tone and spirit of this election”

Green Party candidate Jenny Jones added: "Just for the record, I have one salary and I happily pay tax on it - it's a social thing."

Following the radio debate, Mr Johnson is reported to have sworn at his Labour rival in a lift - a source close to the mayor told the BBC he had been justifiably angry because of "nasty, personal and vindictive lies".

Mr Johnson is understood to have privately explained his tax arrangements to Mr Livingstone three weeks ago and asked him to stop making the claims.

Later, in a blog entry, Mr Livingstone said he was closing his attack website and urged Mr Johnson to do the same.

"Those of us who are leading candidates in this election have a duty to the electorate to rein it in and direct it to the issues at stake for Londoners," he wrote.

"We must take account of Londoners - the people we are trying to talk to. We need to afford them the respect to have a decent discussion about how we address their concerns, their quality of life, the squeeze on their living standards, the future direction of their neighbourhoods and home city.

"I suggest to Boris Johnson therefore that he and I work together to raise the tone and spirit of this election."

Pure lying propaganda.

[Teddy Bear]

In his bid to become the next London mayor, Ken Livingstone has produced a video that apparently has a cross section of Londoners explaining why they think he should be elected. He was apparently so moved by this video that it brought tears to his eyes, that even Ed Miliband had to console him.

Now it turns out the whole thing was a stunt, and the Londoners were actors reading from a script. Livingstone had in fact already seen the video before the time on air when he had shed tears.

The BBC prefers so far not to mention this on their website. I can;t believe if it was Boris Johnson that was found out to be pulling a scam that they would be so remiss.

Here's the Daily Mail's version

Red Ken and the truth about video that reduced him to tears ('Real' Londoners were actors and he had watched video before)

He is forced to admit that Labour activists were paid expenses to star in his own party political broadcast
Mr Livingstone is already trailing Boris Johnson in the race for City Hall because of his alleged tax affairs

By Gerri Peev

Ken Livingstone was accused by his own party of crying 'crocodile tears' after it emerged that a political broadcast that made him weep used paid 'supporters’ reading from a script.

The Labour mayoral candidate wept at a screening of his advert featuring 28 unnamed Londoners spelling out why the capital needed Mr Livingstone back in charge.

He had described the saccharine production as a 'real tearjerker'. Labour leader Ed Miliband even patted his shoulder to console the former mayor as he rubbed his eyes during the screening on Wednesday.

Ken's army: The election broadcast featured Londoners who said they were behind the mayoral candidate

In reality, Mr Livingstone had seen the film the night before, raising questions about why he was apparently caught off-guard. Last night Labour admitted that the 'ordinary Londoners' had actually been reading from a script.

They were also paid expenses for their time after the advertising agency BETC hired people from the street.

It is also believed one of the 'actors’ is a paid-up member of the Labour Party. The advertisement was created by film-maker Johnny Maginn of Mustard Films.

At the beginning of the broadcast, Mr Livingstone sits behind a desk and says: 'We’ve all seen party political broadcasts before but this one’s a bit different.

'It’s a political broadcast on behalf of ordinary Londoners.’

While political parties regularly use scripts for their advertisements, Labour supporters rebuked Mr Livingstone for apparently pretending to cry.

The grassroots website Labour Uncut concluded that either Mr Livingstone's tears were fake or 'he was moved to tears listening to sweet words of flattery that he had practically written himself'.

Labour Uncut's associate editor, Atul Hatwal, added: 'Whether it's tax avoidance, relations with the Jewish community or crocodile tears, this election has virtually become a referendum on Ken Livingstone.

'There's no space in the debate for policies or issues, just the one, overweening flawed personality.'

A spokesman for Mr Livingstone said those appearing in the 'party political broadcast are ordinary Londoners who are backing Ken on May 3'.

He added: 'No actors were used in the broadcast.'

The campaign team confirmed that those who took part were recruited by the advertising agency and paid expenses.

The 66-year-old's bid to win back the London mayoralty from Tory Boris Johnson has so far been buffeted by controversy. Mr Livingstone was plunged into a race row after saying 'rich Jews' would not vote for him.

The former MP was also damaged by revelations that he paid himself through a limited company, potentially reducing the tax on his income.

Research for Taxation Magazine by experts TolleyGuidance suggested Mr Livingstone paid nearly £78,000 less tax during the three years to June 2011 by putting his income through a private firm.

[Teddy Bear]

Despite all the negativity and failings exposed concerning Livingstone and his bid for Mayor, he is still remaining in touch with being elected. Andrew Gilligan of the Telegraph, sees how the BBC has been helping Livingstone by burying the news that would show him up for the lying and disgusting turd he is.

Ken Livingstone tax avoidance: is lying pulling it back for him?
By Andrew Gilligan

It’s starting to look like Ken’s dodgy postal votes in Tower Hamlets (more on this story to follow) might come in handy after all. A new YouGov poll in today’s Standard has Boris Johnson’s lead over Livingstone down to only two points – within the margin of error.

Ken’s own first-preference score has risen by only 1 per cent since the last poll and his ratings on qualities such as “in touch” and “sticking to what he believes in” have actually dropped. His rating for “honesty” has hit 12 per cent – the lowest it’s ever been, possibly the lowest ever scored by a competitive candidate in any election.

So the movement is clearly very little to do with Ken and mostly to do with the national Government’s brilliantly successful efforts to lose as many votes as possible. For Westminster elections, according to the poll, Labour in London is now 19 points ahead of the Tories.

Yet I do also wonder whether Ken’s dishonesty has helped dull the edge of an issue, his tax avoidance, which has been causing him serious damage. YouGov found that by a 21-point margin – 39-18 – voters believe that Livingstone “has not paid as much tax as he should.” But 43 per cent don’t know. By contrast, voters do believe that Boris has paid his share, but only by a 3 per cent margin, 27-24, with 49 per cent don’t knows.
Ken’s repeated lying over his taxes – and the way the lies have been repeated unchallenged in much of the media coverage – has helped to muddy the waters on the issue. So here is a little guide for my colleagues to the main porkies.

Ken has not “published his tax return.”

Strictly speaking, of course, nobody has published their tax returns, the actual forms you send to the Revenue. But all the other candidates have published their full earnings and tax paid, allowing us to say what their effective tax rate is. Only Ken has refused to do so, despite explicitly promising on 4 April to “publish details of everything I’ve earned in the last four years.” All he has published is the earnings taken out of his personal company, not the (far larger) earnings put into it.

Ken is not “quite happy” to allow access to his books.

On March 26, Ken said on BBC London: “No journalist has contacted my accountant to ask anything about my tax arrangements. I’d be quite happy for them to do so.” Over the last four weeks numerous journalists, including from the Evening Standard and the BBC itself, have contacted Ken’s campaign (I have made almost 20 separate requests) asking him to honour this promise. He has refused all comers. Nor has his accountant signed off on even the figures he has provided, again unlike the others.

Ken has not “paid 35 per cent tax.”

This is the claim Ken has taken to making in debates (at last night’s BBC one, he tried the even more brazen line that he paid three times the average rate!) As I’ve explained before, we can’t say precisely what rate Ken has paid – because he won’t tell us what he earned. But even on the figures he’s published himself, and even after he quietly adjusted them upwards, he hasn’t paid 35 per cent since he established his personal company, Silveta Ltd.

Over the three years 2008/9 to 2010/11 he claims to have paid £83,658 in tax on claimed earnings of £252,740 – a rate of 33 per cent. And we know from Silveta's accounts that he in fact earned almost as much as that – £232,550 – in just one of those three years, 2008/9, alone. Over the three years as a whole, the accounts show, more than £750,000 has passed through Silveta. My best estimate of Livingstone’s real tax rate is in the low to mid twenties.

Ken does not face “allegations” of tax avoidance. He admits it.

This line is a particular favourite of the BBC, perhaps because so many of its own senior people use the same dodge as Ken. But in fact Ken has explicitly admitted using Silveta for a tax-avoidance practice known as “income-spreading,” where a large sum of money earned in one year is held as a cash pile in the company and taken out in smaller chunks over several years to avoid higher-rate tax.

In a taped interview with me, he said:

“We had a big influx of money in the year after I left [the mayoralty] because there were a load of people outstanding wanting me to go and advise them in various parts of the world, and then the money tailed off. So we spread it over the three years.”

In 2000, he also described the practice of holding a cash pile in a personal company as a “tax avoidance option.” As of the last accounts, Livingstone held a cash pile of £250,000 in Silveta.

He has also admitted setting the salaries of staff on his election campaign against tax – not an allowable expense.

It’s not a “row over the candidates’ tax affairs”. It’s a row over one of the candidates’ tax affairs.

Ken’s claim that Boris Johnson avoided tax was blown out of the water within 36 hours, when Boris published full figures showing that he has, if anything, overpaid. But in the desire for “balance,” some media reports have balanced a lie with the truth, or left the impression that both are up to something. It’s my favorite example from this campaign of how misleading hamster-wheel journalism can be.

[Teddy Bear]

The BBC have had so many chances to ask questions on real issues that would embarrass Livingstone, but instead endeavour to give him as easy a ride as possible.

With Boris it's the other way round, and spontaneously Boris told them in no uncertain terms what he thought of it.

Go Boris!

Boris in foul-mouthed rant at TV interviewer as he soars into a 12 point lead ahead of polls

By Tim Shipman and Daniel Martin

Boris Johnson launched a foul-mouthed rant at a TV interviewer as the race to be London’s mayor reached its crucial final days.

The Tory incumbent, who opened up a 12-point lead in a new poll, let rip on camera after a BBC journalist questioned him about his links to the Murdoch media empire.

In a sign of the pressure he is under, Mr Johnson described the line of questioning as ‘f****** b*******’.

He got a major boost last night when a Populus poll for the Times showed him opening up a sizeable lead over his Labour rival and former mayor Ken Livingstone after a week in which the contest had seemed on a knife-edge.

The poll showed Mr Johnson beating Mr Livingstone by 56 per cent to 44 per cent in the second round run-off.

But Mr Johnson lost his famous sense of humour after facing questions about attempts to secure commercial deals with News International while Scotland Yard was probing phone hacking by the company.

Mr Johnson asked the Murdochs’ firm to sponsor a cross-Thames cable car in East London while he was chairman of the Metropolitan Police Authority.

At the time, the force was investigating the firm over phone hacking.
The major battlegrounds

Mr Johnson told the BBC: ‘I don’t know of any discussions going on about that but what I can tell you is that I think it’s right to work with the private sector to get contributions that will be for the benefit of London.’

He then urged the BBC to concentrate on the money he has raised during his term of office from the private sector, rather than questions raised by BBC London political editor Tim Donovan.

He said: ‘I’m very proud that over the last four years we’ve got more than £100million in sponsorship that I’ve raised for this city: £50million for the bikes, £36million for the cable car.

‘You’ve got to get this on the air! Come on, this is the most important thing. Stuff Donovan and his f****** b*******.’

The swearing was broadcast on the BBC lunchtime news.

It is the second time Mr Johnson has been exposed for using foul language.

Last month it emerged that he repeatedly called Mr Livingstone a ‘f****** liar’ in a lift when the two clashed about their tax affairs.

Senior Tories expressed amusement at the Mayor’s outburst, although MPs admitted that it would not be tolerated in a Prime Minister.

‘Every time Boris swears he gains three points in the polls,’ a No 10 source said.

Mr Livingstone also risked causing offence to terrorist victims by comparing the number of people killed from air pollution to the 9/11 attacks.

He said: ‘In this city at least 4,000 people die prematurely every year (because of air pollution). It’s a death toll bigger than 9/11 but everybody dies individually in their bed. If they died at one point in time it would be the lead item on every news bulletin.’

The Johnson poll boost is a relief to senior Tories who fear that defeat on Thursday would compound the Government’s growing problems.

David Cameron’s aides believe Mr Johnson would blame a defeat on the ‘omnishambles’ of the Budget and the crisis over Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt’s handling of the Murdochs’ BSkyB takeover bid.

A senior Tory close to the Prime Minister said: ‘We are under no illusions that it would be very bad for us if Boris loses.