Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Is it unfair to attack Livingstone?

As per the post on the 18 Doughty Street post below? Perhaps his ideolgocal allies and collagues - which include members of the now defunct Trotsykite Socialist Alliance - might think so, but consider the latest press release from his people on his budget, headlined, 'Free travel safeguarded for now - 'nasty' tendency unrepentant'.

The 'sustained' attacks on 'free' transport he has been mouthing off about for some time have come to a head with this nakedly partisan press release and here it is, verbatim, in its entirety:

"Commenting on the Assembly’s budget debate today, which finally agreed the Mayor’s draft budget, Mayor Ken Livingstone said: ‘The large number of Assembly members who voted to abolish the free bus travel concession benefiting thousands of families with children should be the cause of real concern across London. ‘They have not given up on these cuts. ‘Today’s budget debate has seen free bus travel for under-18s safeguarded for now but there are some members of the London Assembly who seem to want to abolish anything that is free. Free school milk, free entry to museums, the Freedom Pass, and now free bus travel for under-18s - anything that is free gets threatened. ‘The nasty wing of politics is alive and active on the London Assembly and we should not take today’s safeguarding of free bus travel for children as the end of the attacks on this scheme.’"

So, any opposition to anything he does is 'nasty', and presumably everything he does is 'nice', yes? No prizes for guessing which opposition party he has in mind when he uses the term 'nasty'. Just as there is no such thing as a free lunch, 'free' transport is only free in the sense of being free at the point of demand - someone has to pay, in this case London's Council Tax payers.

1 comment:

unothordox behaviour said...

czolTrue socialist economics. I complained to the Advertising Standards Authority that the C-Charge didn't break even until November 06, so TFL couldn't claim that the C-Charge had paid for 350 new buses.

After seven months, the ASA decided to believe TFL's claim that the money (£300m?) to set up the C-Charge was from a 'general fund' so it didn't have to be paid off before they could claim a profit.

Like I said, socialist economics.