A good comparison is with an American president. The president is free to appoint people to his executive team (e.g. Miss Rice), but cannot divert taxpayers’ money to projects run by their friends. Boris has a staffing allowance, and is free to use that to appoint who he thinks will be the best people for the job. As long as he does not use the general budget to fund his friends, I don’t see anything wrong with that.

If Londoners’ money was used to fund Policy exchange studies (more than other think tanks), then I would have a problem with that; I would call it corruption.

There is a difference between employing friends for your mayoral team and funneling taxpayers’ money to projects run by friends.

Bit of a slippery slope you got there mate.

I urged people to vote for Ken because he was better than Boris, not because I approve of cronyism more than you do.

So if people complained about Ken’s cronyism (incl me by the way!) then its surely right to complain about Boris’s cronyism?

There is a difference between employing friends for your mayoral team and funneling taxpayers’ money to projects run by friends

Well, no not really. The problem only occurs when what you’re funding is illegal or goes against your policy objectives/goals. Has it been proven this was the case with Ken?

And it doesn’t worry you that a supposedly independent think-tank, who’s reputation is in tatters, is so close to a Mayor? Suppose Policy Exchange gets some work from the Mayor’s office. What would you call that then?

I would strongly expect that the London Evening Standard’s legal team took a very, very close look at every word that Gilligan and the rest of their hacks wrote about Livingstone. Certainly I don’t expect that there will be litigation.

Just because it is legal however does not mean that the LES’ coverage as a whole and Gilligan’s in particular did not leave a bad taste in the mouth or was ‘a good thing.’

Anyway, the cronyism was related to giving tax payers money to friends and lovers. I don’t remember you complaining that Ken had 80 of his closest friends working for him. In fact you were urging everyone to vote for him, so you surely can’t have a genuine problem with this.

“The Tories, who would hate the idea of more brown people voting in London”

Hahaha. Yes, I’m sure. Shame then, that Bromley & Bexley voted in a Brown Tory candidate.

Oh and look at Labours’ new BNP style tactics

There was absolutely no fear in Ken’s campaigners that people in the suburbs (yes, many hideously white) would vote against Ken. Because it wasn’t as if Ken was concentrating on solely getting the vote of ethnic minorities in the inner city, and neglecting the suburbs, or anything!

And if I remember correctly, Boris Johnson never made an amnesty part of his policy list – he just said he supported it, like Ken and Brian.

http://lettersfromatory.wordpress.com

Rumbold – Boris (or to be more accurate, his campaign team) ran a campaign that was, in large part negative. That utterly ridiculous term ‘cronyism’ was a part of that negative campaigning. If he wants to use such a media friendly yet vacuous attack he can have no complaints when it jumps up and bites him. I suspect that Johnson knows that.

Well, no! I don’t suppose Ken L did either though.

…

You’ll have to make your new lab spin a deal less transparent than that sunny boy…