Here London Mayor Ken Livingstone admits he is powerless to stop young
people stabbing and shoot each other….
From the Evening Standard:
Ken admits: I can’t stop killings
Ross Lydall, City Hall Editor
11.01.08
Ken Livingstone has admitted he is powerless to halt the soaring death
toll of young Londoners.
The Mayor used his biggest set-piece speech of the year to confess
that he had no easy answers.
His admission comes only days after his Tory rival Boris Johnson
accused him of treating the killings as if they happened on another
planet.
Addressing hundreds of London politicians and VIPs for his annual
London Government speech at the Mansion House last night, Mr
Livingstone said the overall murder rate, which stood at 204 people in
2004, was expected to fall 27 per cent in 2007.
But he added: “The real pressure is the growth of violence among
teenagers.
“No Mayor or Commissioner of Police can stop that. It’s about giving
young people a moral code.”
Mr Livingstone was unusually subdued and didn’t use the speech to
showcase new ideas for a third term.
One senior Tory said it showed the Mayor “had run out of ideas”.
And in a televised debate with his Mayoral election rival Boris
Johnson he blames violent films and TV shows for the rise in violent
crime amongst young people…
From the London Paper:
Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson’s Televised Row by Hannah Summers.
Thursday, 10 January 2008
Ken Livingstone has clashed angrily with Boris Johnson over London’s
epidemic of teenage murders during a current affairs show to air tonight.
They exchanged harsh words in the first head-to-head televised debate
between the three main Mayoral candidates on ITV’s London Talking.
Just 111 days ahead of London’s Mayoral election, Livingstone’s Tory
opponent urged him to explain “the spate of gang-related teenage
murders over the last year – 27 of them”.
London’s current Mayor blamed the recent murders of young people on
the “horrendous levels of glamorised violence in cinemas and on TV”.
The 62-year-old, who has held office for eight years, said: “This is
the generation whose parents grew up in the 80s – get your snout in
the trough and it doesn’t matter a damn about anyone else.”
He insisted violent crime has fallen by six per cent in the last year
and that the number of murders in London has been cut by 27 per cent
in the last four.
But Johnson, 43, accused him of wasting money on youth groups that
have failed to make “any visible return” and laid down his priority
for London as a “safe environment in which to bring up our children”.
Hosting the debate, Blue Peter presenter Konnie Huq, was forced to
call for calm when things got heated and the two leading candidates
began shouting at each other.
Livingstone told his rival: “Boris you have got to let me answer the
question. This is not the House of Commons, you can’t shout.”
They were joined by Liberal Democrat candidate and former police chief
Brian Paddick, 49, who waded into to the argument.
He told Livingstone: “The investment you have made in police and
community support officers has not made one bit of difference to real
crime levels in London.”
The debate comes as a 16-year-old boy is critically ill in hospital
after being stabbed yesterday near a school in Borough, south London.
Ken has previously blamed rap music for violent crime amongst
youngsters. It’s obvious he has no soloutions to the spate of violent
crime amongst teenagers and would rather sit on his arse and point the
fingre at scapegoats like films, TV shows and rap music. He’s hardly
doing his election prospects any good!
