[cite]Posted By: cunningstunt87[/cite]
I was having this debate (on the Mayor of London) the other day with a mate. Apart from improving Public Transport, what else has Livingston done? Time to go Ken.
That's because, until recently, public transport has been the thing Ken's had most power over. The mayor's powers are, in fact, pretty limited, so as not to piss off the local councils (and there's a bit of a power struggle going on between the two).
I saw Ken at a Q&A on climate change and he was very funny, peppering his stuff with quips and insults, and joking that he'd been in a wine bar all evening... I thought at the time that the only other politician who could get away with that kind of thing was Boris Johnson. It'd be an entertaining battle, if nothing else.
[quote][cite]Posted By: Rothko[/cite][quote][cite]Posted By: Morts-Genius[/cite]Although Ken makes the decisions that affect most of us in London, it really f*!ks me off that in Bexley Borough, we cant vote on it. Is it just the lefty inner London Borough twats that are able to vote him in?[/quote]
Nope the Daily Mail masses in Bexley can vote in the GLA elections.[/quote]
[cite]Posted By: Ormiston Addick[/cite]Absolute crap. Try looking up Livingstone's comments after the 7/7 bombings to see him condemn fundamentalism in Islam. Just because he won't join The Sun and The Daily Mail in tarring every Muslim as a terrorist does not make him an appeaser.
Secondly, what do YOU know about Hugo Chavez apart from what you have read in The Sun? Chavez is NOTHING like Mugabe and the Yanks and the rich Venezuelans hate him because he is trying to turn around 200 years of the top 5% rich Venezuelans shitting all over the 95% desperately poor people there. He has been DEMOCRATICALLY elected by people despite a very hostile media (owned by the mega rich families like the Cisneros) so is nothing like Mugabe. He is basically trying to divert the countrys oil wealth to ALLits people.
Please get your facts even half right before launching into this sort of nonsense.
Firstly I'm not a Sun reader, but a Times reader. I take a huge amount of interest in politics and society in general, so to refuse to listen to my point of view based upon and assumption of total conjecture is a display of your own ignorance, not mine.
It has been well documented amongst the liberal Muslim majority that Local and Central Govt. have been too slow in condoning the actions of these Islamist Mosques and Imams, for fear of upsetting Muslims' with a perceived heavy handedness and therefore pushing more young British Muslims into the hands of the brainwashers. Something that became apparent to them post 7/7. So whether or not he has come out and attacked these people verbally, is moot if he isn't going to actually do something about the root of the problem. Like so many other politicians, he simply plays it lip service.
Secondly, my father does business in Venezuela and has spoken to both rich and poor about their unhappiness with Chavez. The rich, granted because he took their land, the poor because he has given them land, but rather like Mugabe did, when he turned the bread basket of Africa into a country where 3m are now classed as "in starvation", he hasn't given them to tools, training, machinery or support to do anything with that land.
If Venezuela was so happy with Chavez, why were there demonstrations with hundreds of thousands marching?
To quote you; "Please get your facts even half right before launching into this sort of nonsense"
If Venezuela was so happy with Chavez, why were there demonstrations with hundreds of thousands marching?
...............
And if they were so "unhappy" with him why do they keep voting him back into office, and why after the coup attempt a few years ago did the army restore him to power? Why did he defeat the attempt to have him recalled, that is contest a free and fair election? The American tele-evalengelist Pat Robertson also called for his assassination, the Bush administration have tried to have him overthrown, all this unpopularity, and guess what it all comes from, not so much from the rich, but the fascist corporate rich who despise him for not letting him make them richer at the expense of the other 90% of the population.
As you "claim" to know about South America you'll know that the history of every nation in the continent has been littered with numerous military coups, along with dictatorships followed by people disappearing, never to be seen again, followed by a further attempt at democracy but as soon as the people elect someone the rich and powerful disagree with in go the tanks.
Try and view Chavez in that light, his enemies are many and won't wait for the next election if they can send in a few tanks and seize the palace and the broadcasting stations, indeed they have tried it. Chavez may be no angel and it doesn't comfort me that he closed an anti-government broadcating station a short while ago, but he's the first leader in that nation to actually use the massive oil revenues that belong to the nation for public health projects, to build new houses, to educate the masses and guess what, the people love him for it, the rich of course despise him not for taking "their land" but for daring to take "their" source of wealth and not allow them to spend it in the way they saw fit, which was on their own parasitical class.
Personally I'd much rather have Chazev than Pinochet any day, and if comes down to it I'd also much rather have Ken Livingstone than some Tory public school educated toff who lives in Islington, has had and continues to have affairs while toeing the Tory line about morality. BTW, that same Tory toff was once recorded threatening to have a journalist beaten up for daring to investigate one of his buddies who was jailed for fraud (if you remember the Darius Guppy case), curiously that journalist did get beaten up, coincidence?
"The rich, granted because he took their land, the poor because he has given them land, but rather like Mugabe did, when he turned the bread basket of Africa into a country where 3m are now classed as "in starvation", he hasn't given them to tools, training, machinery or support to do anything with that land."
Lol, nice attempt to link Chavez with Mugabe, the similarities are nowhere near the same. Mugabe is a genuine nut who wrecked a country. Chavez is taking a wrecked country and trying to make something out of it.
[cite]Posted By: Rothko[/cite]Next year is the next mayoral elections
Alright for you Londoners, I work in London, contribute money to the economy and the Mayor's decisions can have a big effect on my life - Yet I don't get to vote?
I hope to god that someone credible goes up against Ken , the man is a joke.
The congestion charge does not work , I drive in london pretty much every day and have to constantly explain myself to my boss in the west country that it's the norm for it to take around 1 hour to go the couple of miles from bank to regent street.
Worse still is the extra half hour it can sometimes take to find a parking space and then it will cost a minimum of £4 to park there.
Most of the people who would drive into town before the charge were the sort of people with lots of money as they were the only ones that could afford the parking charges so charging them £5 then putting it up to £8 matters not to these people.
No service vehicles should be charged the congestion charge as they have no choice in but to drive as they have deliverys to make or tools to carry so they can't get on the train or bus but old Ken doesn't care about that .
thing that makes me laugh is I've been going through the tunnel since 1990 on and off and it aint any worse now than it's ever been or at least it wan't till that pratt shut the contraflow .
Living in Charlton all I do is go down bugsby way and turn left just after the holiday inn still only takes me just over half hour to get from mine to the other side of the pipe.
Much like central london it won't solve the congestion problem it will just movee it elsewhere and make Ken more money to waste on the likes of Bob Kileys bar bill.
My wife works for TfL in traffic enforcement (nobody hold that against me, please!) and she didn't have a clue what they were. Mind you, she's bus lanes rather than congestion charging.
I spent an evening with Ken about three years ago. A more charming, erudite and witty man than you could wish to meet. He could argue his point until the cows came home and boy did he like a drink.
Keep your eyes open for these little grey cameras all in a line. I am sure I've seen some down Blackheath Hill as well as the Sun in The. I will post more sightings, as and when. I bet there's loads of them, if we put our vigilance together? This one will sneak up on us without consultation!
I Will be doing deliverys in the area tomorrow and will check it out, i'll make a point of coming from shooters hill over the sun in the sands and will carry on down to deptford,will post tomorrow.
I don't live in London any more so can't talk about whether the congestion charge has worked or not, I just don't know. However, all I would say about Livingstone is that at least he has had the balls to actually try to do something about the ridiculous traffic on the roads rather than forming endless committees and sub-committees and doing nothing about it whatsoever like everyone else (including Blair and probably Brown) would have done. Seriously, does anyone think that if the Tories or anyone else gets in power that they will abolish the congestion charge when it is generating so much cash? Not only that, but its also worth noting that the CC concept is now being taken up in many other parts of the world that experience similar problems to those in London. People on this thread have every right to oppose Livingstone or not like him personally, that's no problem. What I really don't like is people saying they would like to "pull the trigger" on him or making crazy comparisons between him and vile, despotic leaders elsewhere.
The camera posts you are mentioning exist inside the congestion charge zone as well as on the edge/outside, they I suspect are for there for reasons of security as well as monitoring traffic flow.
Comments
In all seriousness, he's actually quite a decent bloke - I dated his daughter some years back.
I can't stand the guy. On a par with Russell Brand and Ian Huntley for me (Not quite Simon Jordan though)
I think you need to have a smoke and calm down a bit Cunning.
Apologies for any offence caused
That's because, until recently, public transport has been the thing Ken's had most power over. The mayor's powers are, in fact, pretty limited, so as not to piss off the local councils (and there's a bit of a power struggle going on between the two).
I saw Ken at a Q&A on climate change and he was very funny, peppering his stuff with quips and insults, and joking that he'd been in a wine bar all evening... I thought at the time that the only other politician who could get away with that kind of thing was Boris Johnson. It'd be an entertaining battle, if nothing else.
Nope the Daily Mail masses in Bexley can vote in the GLA elections.[/quote]
So, when will this opportunity be?
Firstly I'm not a Sun reader, but a Times reader. I take a huge amount of interest in politics and society in general, so to refuse to listen to my point of view based upon and assumption of total conjecture is a display of your own ignorance, not mine.
It has been well documented amongst the liberal Muslim majority that Local and Central Govt. have been too slow in condoning the actions of these Islamist Mosques and Imams, for fear of upsetting Muslims' with a perceived heavy handedness and therefore pushing more young British Muslims into the hands of the brainwashers. Something that became apparent to them post 7/7. So whether or not he has come out and attacked these people verbally, is moot if he isn't going to actually do something about the root of the problem. Like so many other politicians, he simply plays it lip service.
Secondly, my father does business in Venezuela and has spoken to both rich and poor about their unhappiness with Chavez. The rich, granted because he took their land, the poor because he has given them land, but rather like Mugabe did, when he turned the bread basket of Africa into a country where 3m are now classed as "in starvation", he hasn't given them to tools, training, machinery or support to do anything with that land.
If Venezuela was so happy with Chavez, why were there demonstrations with hundreds of thousands marching?
To quote you; "Please get your facts even half right before launching into this sort of nonsense"
...............
And if they were so "unhappy" with him why do they keep voting him back into office, and why after the coup attempt a few years ago did the army restore him to power? Why did he defeat the attempt to have him recalled, that is contest a free and fair election? The American tele-evalengelist Pat Robertson also called for his assassination, the Bush administration have tried to have him overthrown, all this unpopularity, and guess what it all comes from, not so much from the rich, but the fascist corporate rich who despise him for not letting him make them richer at the expense of the other 90% of the population.
As you "claim" to know about South America you'll know that the history of every nation in the continent has been littered with numerous military coups, along with dictatorships followed by people disappearing, never to be seen again, followed by a further attempt at democracy but as soon as the people elect someone the rich and powerful disagree with in go the tanks.
Try and view Chavez in that light, his enemies are many and won't wait for the next election if they can send in a few tanks and seize the palace and the broadcasting stations, indeed they have tried it. Chavez may be no angel and it doesn't comfort me that he closed an anti-government broadcating station a short while ago, but he's the first leader in that nation to actually use the massive oil revenues that belong to the nation for public health projects, to build new houses, to educate the masses and guess what, the people love him for it, the rich of course despise him not for taking "their land" but for daring to take "their" source of wealth and not allow them to spend it in the way they saw fit, which was on their own parasitical class.
Personally I'd much rather have Chazev than Pinochet any day, and if comes down to it I'd also much rather have Ken Livingstone than some Tory public school educated toff who lives in Islington, has had and continues to have affairs while toeing the Tory line about morality. BTW, that same Tory toff was once recorded threatening to have a journalist beaten up for daring to investigate one of his buddies who was jailed for fraud (if you remember the Darius Guppy case), curiously that journalist did get beaten up, coincidence?
"The rich, granted because he took their land, the poor because he has given them land, but rather like Mugabe did, when he turned the bread basket of Africa into a country where 3m are now classed as "in starvation", he hasn't given them to tools, training, machinery or support to do anything with that land."
Lol, nice attempt to link Chavez with Mugabe, the similarities are nowhere near the same. Mugabe is a genuine nut who wrecked a country. Chavez is taking a wrecked country and trying to make something out of it.
Alright for you Londoners, I work in London, contribute money to the economy and the Mayor's decisions can have a big effect on my life - Yet I don't get to vote?
The congestion charge does not work , I drive in london pretty much every day and have to constantly explain myself to my boss in the west country that it's the norm for it to take around 1 hour to go the couple of miles from bank to regent street.
Worse still is the extra half hour it can sometimes take to find a parking space and then it will cost a minimum of £4 to park there.
Most of the people who would drive into town before the charge were the sort of people with lots of money as they were the only ones that could afford the parking charges so charging them £5 then putting it up to £8 matters not to these people.
No service vehicles should be charged the congestion charge as they have no choice in but to drive as they have deliverys to make or tools to carry so they can't get on the train or bus but old Ken doesn't care about that .
Oh and don't even get me started on bendy buses.
Noticed the cameras cropping up?
where abouts are the cameras Morts?
Living in Charlton all I do is go down bugsby way and turn left just after the holiday inn still only takes me just over half hour to get from mine to the other side of the pipe.
Much like central london it won't solve the congestion problem it will just movee it elsewhere and make Ken more money to waste on the likes of Bob Kileys bar bill.
cheers F-blocker, I`ve got a mate who deals with cameras, I`ll see if he can find out more info.
I am sure I've seen some down Blackheath Hill as well as the Sun in The.
I will post more sightings, as and when.
I bet there's loads of them, if we put our vigilance together?
This one will sneak up on us without consultation!
I'd suggest looking out for cameras on all the entries/exits to the zone.
Seriously, does anyone think that if the Tories or anyone else gets in power that they will abolish the congestion charge when it is generating so much cash? Not only that, but its also worth noting that the CC concept is now being taken up in many other parts of the world that experience similar problems to those in London.
People on this thread have every right to oppose Livingstone or not like him personally, that's no problem. What I really don't like is people saying they would like to "pull the trigger" on him or making crazy comparisons between him and vile, despotic leaders elsewhere.