Guido’s FoI Unit can reveal that since Labour took office, Sadiq Khan’s Transport for London has forked out a whopping £235,000 of taxpayers’ money on social media influencers to encourage cycling in London. All while Khan complains about “insufficient funding” for the Met Police and misses his own housing targets…
The TikTok brigade were hired to explain the Cycle Hire Scheme – the Santander ‘Boris bikes’ seen all around London – and to “encourage participation” in Cycle Sundays. Some were paid to post about “how to help when there are incidences of sexual harassment on the transport network.” TfL also splashed another £107,045 on its own social media ads across Facebook and TikTok to promote:
They probably could have just relied on the tube strikes to advertise cycling for them…
The fellow Labour mayor and “dear friend” of Andy Burnham has said he is “raising legitimate concerns that he has.“ Khan hastened to add that he hadn’t spoken to Burnham recently…
Khan played down the scale of dissatisfaction with Starmer in the Parliamentary Labour Party, telling James O’Brien:
“We’ve got 400 MPs so it won’t be a surprise to anybody that there may be a small minority that are not happy with the leadership.”
He added he has “no intentions of leaving this job for another job in politics” and, when asked if he would be standing for a fourth term, said: “That’s my intention, yes.” One less rival for Burnham to worry about now…
Sadiq Khan last week approved £66.6 million in new spending for cultural events in London over the next three years. Wouldn’t be surprised if those now include anti-Trump street parties…
Some examples include:
Remember that in 2018 only £49 million in extra funding was committed to combatting knife crime and upgrading Met Police pay. This year the Met has only managed to secure £32 million of extra funding from both City Hall and the Home Office for boosting officer street patrols to “tackle high-harm offenders.” Khan has signed away double that figure on vanity events with a flick of the pen…
At Reform’s press conference on immigration Guido’s Editorial Director Adam Cherry asked Farage to respond to Sadiq Khan’s attack on his proposals. The London Mayor said:
“Thousands of Londoners have indefinite leave to remain. They have legal rights and are our friends, neighbors, and colleagues. Threating to deport people living and working here legally is unacceptable.”
Farage came out swinging:
“What about the ones that aren’t working? What about the ones that have never worked and never will work? What about having an honest debate about those we’ve let into this country, many of whom are great people? Fine, we understand that. But too many of whom are not. We’ve totally we’ve totally misunderstood what a work permit, what a work visa is. It’s been a backdoor to full-time settlement. And look, you know, we will do battle with Mayor Khan in the 32 London boroughs that are up for election next May.”
Meanwhile Labour is insisting it is doing enough by “looking at” doubling the length of time it takes to get ILR. All is not well in the ranks of the party of government…
Now that Sadiq Khan’s generous £170,000 salary makes him the highest-paid politician in Britain, the TaxPayers’ Alliance have crunched the numbers on just how much it costs Londoners to foot the wage bill for City Hall’s top brass. Brace yourselves…
It takes 347 band D London council taxpayers to fund the mayor’s new salary alone. For his nine deputy mayors (yes, nine), it takes 2772 hardworking band D taxpayers to cough up the cash. They also accepted generous salary bumps earlier in the summer…
In fact, combining the salaries of the mayor, his nine deputies, and his six other top aides is equivalent to 232,282 daily capped tube fares for zones 1-3 – or roughly 193,437 ULEZ charges. Co-conspirators living in the capital: is it worth it?
As Londoners struggle through a week of travel chaos with tube drivers on £55,000 walking out for fewer hours and juicier perks, Sadiq Khan’s TfL is hiring a new spin doctor to handle the fallout. On a whopping £51,550 salary…
On Monday, TfL quietly advertised for a “Government Relations Adviser” tasked with “safeguarding TfL’s reputation through the effective resolution and coordination of TfL responses to political correspondence” and “managing successful relationships” with MPs and ministers. The hire – who must have “strong political judgement” – will also get free TfL travel, 75% off National Rail, retail and leisure discounts, cut-price private healthcare, alongside hybrid working. Nice work if you can get it…
Shadow Minister for London Gareth Bacon told Guido:
“Sadiq Khan and TfL clearly can’t manage basic relations with Government, so now they’re splashing £50k on an adviser with gold-plated perks to butter up ministers and paper over Khan’s spiralling mess. It’s another job for spin doctors while Londoners are trapped in strikes, crammed on buses and missing work. Instead of fixing the Tube, Khan is allowing TfL to fix themselves a cushy deal. Londoners deserve much better than this.”
Khan promised “zero days of strikes” when he was elected in 2016. Since then there have been 149 strikes. Meanwhile the London Mayor is nowhere to be seen…
Former Labour leader Neil Kinnock was asked if Burnham will take Britain back into the EU:
“Yes, sure – his commitment is authentic. He really does understand from the grassroots up why restoring what I think of as normality in our continent is vital for every party economically, politically, culturally, in terms of security, and he’s able to articulate it in language that people can understand. So yeah, he is definitely”.