Crime is soaring in London – up 31.5 per cent over the last decade. And only this month the creaking Tube network was shut for a week by strike action.
But never fear, London’s Labour Mayor Sadiq Khan has agreed to spend £66 million on woke cultural projects over the next three years.
The projects include Gypsy, Roma and Traveller History Month and an event called ‘Black On The Square’ in Trafalgar Square. Black History Month will also form part of this expensive extravaganza, along with a series of LGBT events.
Yet this year, Khan’s City Hall, in conjunction with the Home Office, has found a mere £32 million in extra funding for the Metropolitan Police to pay for more officers on the beat to ‘tackle high-harm offenders’, who commit serious wrongdoing such as violent crimes and sex offences. Many police station front counters are also closing.
What strange priorities from Khan, who doubles as London‘s police and crime commissioner. Only last week, he awarded himself a £5,281 pay rise to £170,282, making him officially the highest paid politician in the land.
Mayor of London Sir Sadiq Khan at the launch of the Holiday Hope programme in July
Union bigwig blasts Labour ‘tinkering’
Fresh embarrassment for the two women vying for the deputy Labour leadership: Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson and Lucy Powell, sacked as Commons leader in the reshuffle.
Sharon Graham, general secretary of Unite, the union that has given millions to Labour, can’t be bothered to endorse either. ‘Britain needs change, not more of the same,’ she tweets. ‘Workers are leaving Labour in droves and tinkering will not stem the tide.’
SNP leader John Swinney was swift to condemn Keir Starmer’s plans for mandatory digital ID. This is the man who spent £7million on the draconian Scottish Covid ‘vaccine passport’ app. The Information Commissioner’s Office warned of serious privacy problems with the app which were not fixed before its launch.
As for Lucy Powell, she has been given a stern rebuke from an unlikely quarter for saying in a newspaper interview that she is ‘more alpha male’ than most men. The criticism came from her mother, a retired headteacher, who told her to never use the line again. ‘You’re much nicer than that,’ she said.
Meanwhile, Reform MP Lee Anderson is suspicious of Starmer’s new zeal for digital ID. ‘Why would the PM oppose photo ID to vote in elections in opposition and then, once in power, force digital ID on everyone? This is very sinister indeed. Never trust a politician who sounds like a Dalek.’
Housing Secretary Steve Reed addresses the Labour Party conference on Sunday
Steve Reed’s TV housing crisis
In a car-crash interview on GB News, Housing Secretary Steve Reed was stumped when asked how many homes have been built since Labour came to power.
‘I know it’s really low,’ he admitted. ‘I know it’s up 29 per cent but I don’t know the actual figure. I am not Wikipedia. I don’t have every single statistic.’ Shocking.
The figure is 115,000, a worse record than the Tories, who built more than a million homes in their last five-year term. At this rate, it’ll take Labour 13 years to build the 1.5million homes they pledged.
