Ed Miliband

[jimslip]

You simply cannot separate your crazed Labour fanaticism from discussing a perfectly valid topic and that is whether or not Ed Milliband is an asset, or a liability to the Labour Party.

Screaming twisted bitterness and bile is not going to help your cause. In fact my question wasn't directed at you at all, since your answer would be always so dronishly predictable.

I was addressing it to the mildly interested non-partisan observer. As you know I consider the whole bunch of politicos to be a bunch of crooks, so I believe we are fucked whoever is in power.

But the Ed Milliband question is interesting all the same and you are an even bigger fool than I thought, if you don't believe that powerful forces in the Labour party are discussing this same question even as I write!

[David Johnson]

Perhaps you can have a chat with Argie about it because you clearly have no understanding of what you are talking about.

[jimslip]

I used to like Ken Livingstone as well, until I heard him on his radio show on LBC proudly boasting how he'd screwed ?Billions out of the government to fund his various projects. He lost because he was a throw back to a bygone age. People thought, "Here we go again, I pay through the nose, so Ken can set up loads of Lesbian & Gay Muslim Hopscotch Research Collectives, I pay through the nose so he can give grants to projects that mysteriously disappear with all the cash, but hey, so what it's just tax payers money and us tax payers are just Tory cunts!"

For example:

[David Johnson]

Your post supports my view, don't you think?

You had voted for Livingstone but switched to Johnson. YOu give the reason by referring to the Loony Left.

YOu can hardly call Alan Johnson, the Loony Left can you?

[max_tranmere]

I recall an episode of some of the cash disappearing after he organised funding for something. In order to try and win the seat of Brent in north London, to be their MP after the GLC was shut down, Ken Livingstone tried to woo the support of the local Irish community by arranging for a community centre to be built for them. ?5m was put aside for it, the work cost ?4m, and the other ?1m vanished. The building is now a very large Irish pub. I've been in there. That area of north London, Queens Park, has a very large Irish community - as do nearby Cricklewood and Kilburn. And it worked too, the Irish in that area voted for him, and he won the seat.

[max_tranmere]

If Alan Johnson had stood instead of Livingstone I think he would've had more chance of winning. He is a bit more to the centre than Ken Livingstone - as I said earlier Livingstone's loony leftie stuff actually scared me. Alan Johnson is a real career politician though, I remember how much he sucked up to Gordon Brown in TV interviews when the change from Blair to Brown was happening - basically so he could keep his career. It had echoes of some of the things reportedly said by some of Thatcher's senior ministers when she was on her way out in 1990 (if you read Alan Clark's dairies you get an idea of this).

Alan Johnson does have that geezer, man of the people, vibe about him though. He has lived. I always thought he would look at home playing the piano in an East End pub, with a pork-pie hat on and a rolly hanging from his bottom lip. I remember before the referemdum on whether we in London should have a Mayor (I voted 'yes'), Ken Livingstone - who ended up running as an independent back then - said there had been no planning or co-ordinating in London since the GLC was closed down by Thatcher in the 1980's. I agreed with him on that. He would talk about how three London bridges would often close at the same time because of roadworks, or several main roads in the same region at once. He said there needed to be a central planner and co-ordinator for London, he was right, and we eventually got one. I admire him for what he did with public transport, the buses in London were very bad years ago, they are now much more reliable. His attempt to make the biggest religious building in London (and Britain) a mosque though was luckily defeated - and so was he.