Sadiq Khan’s deputy mayor spent over £1,000 on flights and accommodation in order to attend a pride march in Budapest. All on the taxpayer’s dime…
Various politicians showed up including Tom Copley, Deputy Mayor of London for Housing. They swanned around on a podium afterwards. In an FoI release the GLA says:
“An official invitation was received from Gergely Karácsony, Mayor of Budapest to attend the 30th Budapest Pride March. The Deputy Mayor represented the Mayor of London at the Mayor of Budapest Pride event on 28 June to show solidarity with Hungary’s LGBTQ+ movement and to promote London’s credentials as a truly global, diverse, and inclusive city… London and Budapest are better places because of the contribution of our LGBTQI+ communities and in London we are determined to show the world that this city is a beacon for LGBTQI+ rights.”
A transparent anti-Orban government exercise with nothing to do with housing. Why do Londoners have to pay…
Total bill: £943.03 for flights and £226.14 for accommodation. Over £400 each way? Must have got extra legroom…
Graffiti-ridden TfL tubes have forced campaigners such as Looking For Growth and Tom Harwood to clean up it up themselves. Despite the TfL cleaning contracts costing the taxpayer £155 million every year…
This was brought up at the London Assembly meeting today. To which Sadiq Khan’s TfL Commissioner Andy Lord responded by implying that activists are spraying the graffiti in order to film themselves cleaning it up. Classy…
🚨 Is Sadiq Khan’s TfL Chief seriously suggesting that people like @tomhfh and @lfg_uk are spraying graffiti just so they can clean it off themselves?
Why on earth would they have to do that? pic.twitter.com/CqNx72nIw6
— TfL Watch (@TfLWatch) July 3, 2025
Khan’s Andy Lord raked in a whopping £639,164 in total remuneration last year. Guido alumnus and graffiti cleaner Tom Harwood told Guido:
“I understand Andy Lord is a busy man, who with his £639,164 taxpayer funded salary might not take the tube quite as regularly as I do. Perhaps one day Andy could take off his tin foil hat and instead accompany me to visit the Bakerloo line, to see the state of the services he oversees.”
Dirty business…
UPDATE: Dr Lawrence Newport of the Looking For Growth group told Guido:
“The fact TfL leadership think we would need to put graffiti on the tube shows how utterly disconnected from reality they are. They have failed to do their jobs so they are slandering LFG volunteers. They must apologise and they must do their jobs and actually clean the tube.”
After Bob Vylan’s Glastonbury scandal over the weekend, Guido took a look at the political connections of the grime act. Surprise surprise, one particular Labour politician is at the centre…
Many co-conspirators noticed that Sadiq Khan follows Bob Vylan on X. Their relationship goes back a long way…
The grime act first encountered Sadiq Khan in person back in 2022 at the Bandlab NME Awards at the O2 Academy, Brixton. Nice night out for the London mayor…
At that event Vylan took a jovial swipe at Khan over tube strikes – the awards took place during yet another period of TfL industrial action: “sort them trains out. You have to keep this city moving bro, because people need to get to work. Come on, we’ve gotta do better.”
Bob Vylan swiftly walked back their criticism of Khan in a magazine interview just days later: “Today Bobby says he has no interest in tearing Sadiq down. ‘Is there work he should be doing? Yes. Is he the biggest crook in government? Not even close. Do I think he genuinely cares about this city? Absolutely. I’ve been chatting shit with my friends my whole life and nobody cared what I had to say. Now, it might end up in a rag that I despise. Luckily Sadiq seemed cool about it and it’s probably not the worst fucking thing someone has said about him.'”
Whether Sadiq (who “seemed cool about it“) met directly with the band after the event is unclear, but just last year the artists mentioned the London Mayor by name in the lyrics of their new song Humble as The Sun:
Ghetts told me I’m electric like I’m lighting in this place (Yo, the vibe was, the vibe was electric, dawg)
Seconds after talking to Sadiq about strikes up in this place
“How you feelin’? How you feelin’?
In an interview around the release of the track – the lyrics of which include the Irish Republican motto “tiocfaidh ar la” – Bobby Vylan reflected: “‘Humble As The Sun’ is empowering for me, personally. I talk about interacting with people like Sadiq Khan, my interaction with Ghetts, winning the MOBO. I just had to immortalise those things on record – sometimes you gotta puff your chest out a little bit. You gotta shine.” With friends like these…
In a surprise to no one Sadiq Khan has jumped on the anti-welfare bill rebellion:
“I have always said that more must be done to support people to go from relying on benefits to getting back into work. It’s vital for a healthy and prosperous London.
What we can’t do is take away the vital safety net that so many vulnerable and disabled Londoners rely upon. Having looked at the analysis of the
Government’s plans, the impact on London will be substantial, and for too many disabled Londoners it will destroy their financial safety net.The Government must urgently think again. It must look again at the potential hardship these changes will force on thousands of vulnerable and disabled Londoners. The additional employment and training support ministers have promised must be brought in as soon as possible, and proper transitional protections must be in place before anyone starts to lose their benefits.”
As whips and senior government figures ring around Labour MPs they are somehow managing to convince even more of them to vote against the bill which is scheduled – though may still be cancelled – for next week. The figure is now around 127. Bedlam…
Tom Harwood and the Looking For Growth campaign made a splash on X over the weekend by cleaning graffiti off a Bakerloo line train. Why is TfL not doing this themselves…
Guido had a look at how much taxpayers are contributing towards the non-existent graffiti-cleaning services procured by TfL. Since at least 2017 cleaning services have been performed by ABM Facility Services with repeated contract extensions. The bill to taxpayers has only risen…
A 60-month tender from earlier this year for cleaning services including “Graffiti Removal Services” on “London Underground sites and trains” is worth £775 million excluding VAT. That means taxpayers are paying £12.9 million per month for graffiti cleaning on the Tube. £3.2 million per week, £461,310 per day…
TfL’s excuse for the train Harwood cleaned was that “a track defect in the depot meant we were unable to use our automatic train wash for a few weeks.” Guido doesn’t think that will wash with Londoners…
Jenrick’s video on the Underground has accrued 14.7 million views on X alone. The left continues to rage over it mainly by accusing Jenrick of being an attention-seeker. Ever heard of politics…
London mayor Sadiq Khan has issued a tantrum response towards the shadow justice secretary this afternoon on Times Radio:
“Fare evasion is an issue. It’s an issue for London, has been for some time and that’s one of the reasons why we’ve invested hugely in terms of not just enforcement officers, not just in terms of body-worn videos, not just in terms of CCTV, but invested in the police as well. What I find ironic, and it’s an example of the chutzpah of Mr Ozempic, is that he was in government when the government cut more than a billion pounds from their police budget. He was in government when the government removed Transport for London’s operating grant, and now he’s criticising the consequences of the cuts in policing and TfL made by his government. Where was he in 2010, 2024 when those cuts were being made in our policing? Where was he in 2015 when the government cut their operating grant to TfL?”
Guido remembers Khan whingeing about Trump giving him a nickname: “I’m a bit surprised that the President of the USA would, frankly speaking, behave like an 11-year-old and resort to name calling.” Rattled?
UPDATE: Tory Susan Hall AM told Guido:
“It’s relieving to hear Sir Sadiq suddenly discover how devastating police cuts are, considering that up to 1700 officers in London face the chop because he and this disastrous Labour Government refuse to make up the gap in police funding. Perhaps if the Mayor stopped calling a member of the King’s Privy Council childish names and focussed on the issue at hand, we could actually solve antisocial behaviour in the capital.”
Speaking at his speech on how to achieve “progressive capitalism” Wes Streeting fired a dig and Andy Burnham:
“Bond markets are not bond villains and fiscal rules matter.”