Andrew Hosken's interesting biography of Ken Livingstone (The Ups and Downs of Ken Livingstone, Arcadia, £15.99) is balanced with lots of comments and material provided from friends and foes. It also provides a reminder of some important points that were already in the public domain.
Here are some of the bits that prompted me to scribble in the margin:
1. Once he stepped down as TfL Commissioner Bob Kiley was retained by Livingstone on £700,000 a year of Council taxpayers money as a consultant. When asked what he did for the money Kiley said in an interview: "If you ask me what I actually do to earn my consultancy, I'd have to tell you, in all honesty, not much." He complained that the lack of any work to do had contributed to his alcoholism.
2. The cost of Livingstone's visit to Cuba in November 2006. Originally Livingstone was due to head to Venezuela to see their Marxist dictator Hugo Chavez. In the end neither Castro or Chavez were available. "All in all, including Livingstone, nine people from City Hall had been sent to either Caracas or Havana, the total bill was roughly £29,000."
3. Stephen Pound, the Labour MP for Ealing North. Pound is a former bus conductor and is displeased by Livingstone dispensing with them as a consequence of getting rid of Routemaster buses and bringing in bendy successors. "You wait and see," says Pound. "We'll have conductors back and they'll be called something like 'Passenger Escort Ushers' or something, but we will have them back because you can't get away with a hundred people on a bendy bus and not have some presence at the back."
4. Former Minister for London and Labour MP for Greenwich and Woolwich, Nick Raynsford talks to Hosken about Livingstone's links with Hugo Chavez, the Marxist dictator of Venezuela. Raynsford "visited Venezuela for three weeks as a tourist in 2003 and learned of serious concerns about the Chavez regimes from British diplomats and others in Caracas."
Raynsford tells Hosken: "There was quite a lot of evidence that there were corrupt practices. But the thing that above all shocked me was the incompetence with which the country was being run. You'd see a room labelled library in an indigenous area for tribal people and there would be no books or computers. The explanation was that the funds had been essentially siphoned off by Party members who had taken their cut."
Although Raynsford told Livingstone of his concerns the warnings were brushed aside. "I told him top be very careful. He just thought I was being anti-left wing but I said it had nothing to do with politics; it had to do with corruption and Chavez's motives. I just think again that's a classic Ken error of judgment. He likes to be able to position himself as someone who is on the side of the leftists against Bush and he Establishment and he hasn't thought through the implications."
5. Quote from Livingstone from 1998 on why their shuld be term limits for Mayor of London: "Corruption tends to flourish the longer an incumbent is able to hold office."
6. How great an achievement is the Congestion Charge? "Before its introduction in 2003, there were delays of 2.3 minutes per kilometre; four years later it was not much different at 2.27."
7. Among the past utterances of Ken Livingstone was attacking the idea of holding the Olympics in London. The proposal came in 1979 from Sir Horace Cutler, Tory leader of the Greater London Council, who wanted to hold it in 1988 at the Royal Victoria Dock in the east end. Livingstone denounced it as "a gimmick" and "one of Sir Horace's megalomaniac ideas."