Archive for the ‘Campaign against Crossrail’ Category

2158 Hrs GMT 2258 Hrs UK London Wednesday 9 April 2008: KHOODEELAAR! told you so! Crossrail hole plot-backer Ken Livingstone is a liar… He has lied again, today, Wednesday 9 April 2008….Plus ….Khoodeelaar! No to Crossrail hole plot, Crossrail hole plot and Big Business agenda… The detailed grounds, reasoning and constitutional arguments for the formally put objections by Khoodeelaar! to the UK ‘legislative’ ‘House fo Lords’….. First a look at the txts as published of the Khoodeelaar! objection… There are a few spelling errors that need to be noted…… In the next parts, we go into the details of how paragraph 3382 have been created by forces of Big business sabotage of the ‘parliamentary process

April 9, 2008

Editor©Muhammad Haque

2158 GMT

London

Wednesday 9 April 2008

 

 

 

 

Mayoral Elections

HEADLINES:
Ken Livingstone in 2004 with Sharad Patel 

Bollywood theme park: Ken Livingstone in 2004 with Sharad Patel

Ken Livingstone in 2004 with Sharad Patel A model of the Asia Centre Land for the proposed Asia Centre in Brent

Ken cheque for £30,000 handed over in a cafe

Andrew Gilligan
09.04.08

The Standard today publishes leaked emails and insider testimony showing that Ken Livingstone directly misled Londoners over secret donations by property developers to his election campaign.

Speaking on BBC London news on 27 March, the Mayor insisted that all donations to his campaign were handled by the Labour Party without his involvement or knowledge and said he “did not want to know” who had donated to his re-election.

Asked: “Are you honestly saying, can you put your hand on your heart and say that none of that knowledge [about who has donated] comes back to you?” the Mayor replied: “Absolutely. They [Labour campaign officials] have a firewall between the fundraising and the mayor … I don’t want to know.”

Mr Livingstone, a one-man planning authority with significant power over development, repeated the denials at last week’s Standard/ITV London election debate.

He said: “When I have to take a decision, I don’t want to have to think it will be influenced in any way by the knowledge they [developers] gave money… The mayor should not be involved in fundraising. I wasn’t last time [in 2004], I don’t want to be this time…You should not be asking people for money.”

However, we can reveal that during the 2004 campaign:

• The Mayor accepted a secret donation of £30,000 from a property developer, Sharad Patel, who was seeking Mr Livingstone’s support for a major planning application.

• The money was given in the name of Mr Patel’s wife and was handed over to one of the Mayor’s top aides in a coffee shop near City Hall.

• The cheque – made out to the Labour Party – was immediately brought into the building and shown to the Mayor, who then agreed to visit Mr Patel’s private home for dinner.

Mr Patel is a wealthy developer and film mogul who wants to build a Bollywood theme park, the Asia Centre, on a site by the North Circular. The project is opposed by the local planning authority, Brent council.

According to Atma Singh, a former senior aide to Mr Livingstone who negotiated the donation, Mr Patel hoped that the Mayor would intervene with Brent to push the project through.

Mr Singh, who was the Mayor’s Asian affairs adviser at the time, told the Standard: “We were approached by Sharad Patel. The basis of the donation was that Ken would put pressure on Brent council over the planning and would also come for dinner at Sharad’s house.

“Before accepting the money I discussed this with John Ross, the Mayor’s senior economic adviser, and he agreed that the Mayor would do it. It then became a technical matter of getting the cheque.”

Two days after the conversation with Mr Ross, says Mr Singh, he met Mr Patel in a branch of Costa Coffee near City Hall and was handed a cheque made out to the Labour Party.

Mr Singh described the Mayor’s denials about knowing the identity of donors as “clearly untrue”. He said: “Literally, as soon as I had received Mr Patel’s cheque, I went back into City Hall and showed it to Ken. He was delighted. I mentioned that Sharad wanted to have him [Livingstone] for dinner and he said yes straight away. He knew all about the agreement.”

Emails obtained by the Standard support Mr Singh’s story. In one email to David Hayward, Mr Livingstone’s diary secretary, Mr Singh writes: “Ken has agreed to a request from Sharad Patel of the Asia Centre for dinner at his house in Moor Park. This needs to happen fairly quickly… Can you please make the diary arrangements?”

The email was sent on 18 May 2004, four days after Mr Patel’s donation was received. It was copied to Redmond O’Neill, another senior Livingstone aide, who acted as the Mayor’s chief of staff during the 2004 election campaign while the Mayor’s actual chief of staff, Simon Fletcher, resigned to work on the campaign.

In another email – on 25 June 2004, after Mr Livingstone won the election and Mr Fletcher returned to his normal job – the diary secretary writes to Mr Fletcher: “Dinner with Sharad Patel… this is something that Redmond agreed could go in the diary when he was acting chief of staff. The diary has not been helpful and Atma [Singh] has simply asked I offer him something whenever is practicable, which realistically now will be in the autumn.”

Mr Fletcher writes in pen on the email: “Late summer or autumn,” then crosses this out and writes instead: “Atma – can you ring me about this?”

Mr Singh said: “When I rang he said he’d asked me to call because he didn’t want this to be in the email record.”

Mr Patel has been trying to build his £120million Asia Centre for 15 years. The original project, for a theme park, hotel and leisure complex, was given outline planning permission in 1993 and detailed consent in 1997, but did not proceed because of the cost of cleaning up the land, a former rubbish tip.

Mr Patel now wants to change the scheme, including more retail and housing to fund the cost of the clean-up, but the council has refused permission and is also saying that even the original planning consent has expired. Mr Patel disputes this, saying he has started work on the project, and recently won a court case over the issue, which the council is now appealing against.

At the time of the donation, the Mayor and Mr Ross enthusiastically supported the project. Mr Livingstone visited the site a few weeks before the donation was given and a GLA minute says: “The Mayor has given initial support for the proposed new development site for an Asia Centre.” Another senior mayoral aide, John Duffy, a former Brent councillor, visited the council several times after Mr Patel’s donation was given to talk about the project, said Mr Singh.

Mr Patel told the Standard: “When [Mr Livingstone’s team] came to power I presented myself to them and said here is a project, we need your support, we need your blessings and they did give blessings.” But he denied the later donation was directly intended to influence the Mayor, saying: “I don’t expect any favours out of anybody. I work through legal means. Ken and I started knowing each other before he became Mayor because he was [MP] in Brent. The impetus of the donation came from my wife – she is a great fan of Ken.”

The GLA and Brent council are preparing an “opportunity area planning framework” for Park Royal, the district which includes the theme park site. A draft produced by Brent in January last year makes no mention of the Asia Centre. But in the latest draft, dated this February, produced by the Mayor, mention of the project has been added back in. The draft says: “An appeal decision has established the commencement of the Asia Sky [Asia Centre] development.”

However, Mr Livingstone never apparently went for dinner at Mr Patel’s house and it appears his support for the Asia Centre has cooled since 2004.

Bob Blackman, Tory deputy leader of Brent council, said that Mr Duffy, the Mayor’s adviser who visited the council, now supports the retention of the site for waste use, in line with Mr Livingstone’s environment strategy. Describing his relations with the Mayor’s office as a “bit of a shambles”, Mr Patel told us: “John Duffy has been coming to my office promising a lot of things. It’s taking unnecessary time. We’ve been waiting for 15 years.”

Mr Livingstone has planning powers unique for a British politician. On his initiative he can accept or reject “strategic” planning applications across London, and has recently acquired powers to override borough councils. A spokesman for the Mayor denied he made any intervention over the Asia Centre. A spokesman for the Livingstone campaign said: “Ken Livingstone attends and hosts many fundraising events for the London Labour campaign and of course by definition many of those attending may possibly give money. However, all donations are handled by the Labour Party. The register of donations is compiled by the Labour Party and declared to the Electoral Commission in the normal way and in accordance with its procedures.”-Tory MP Greg Hands, who has called on Mr Livingstone to publish the names of his donors, said: “It is no wonder that Ken Livingstone has been trying to cover up his donations given what the Standard has found out. He appears to have deceived Londoners but the case is overwhelming for him to come clean on who has funded him in the past and who is funding him now.”

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2150 Hrs GMT 2250 Hrs UK London Wednesday 9 April 2008: KHOODEELAAR! told you so! Crossrail hole plot-backer Ken Livingstone is a liar… He has lied again, today, Wednesday 9 April 2008….Plus ….Khoodeelaar! No to Crossrail hole plot, Crossrail hole plot and Big Business agenda… The detailed grounds, reasoning and constitutional arguments for the formally put objections by Khoodeelaar! to the UK ‘legislative’ ‘House fo Lords’….. First a look at the txts as published of the Khoodeelaar! objection… There are a few spelling errors that need to be noted…… In the next parts, we go into the details of how paragraph 3382 have been created by forces of Big business sabotage of the ‘parliamentary process

 

 

 

 

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Editor©Muhammad Haque

2012 Hrs GMT

9 April 2008

 

No to Crossrail hole plot, Crossrail hole plot and Big Business agenda… The detailed grounds, reasoning and constitutional arguments for the formally put objections by Khoodeelaar! to the UK ‘legislative’ ‘House fo Lords’…..

 

First a look at the txts as published of the Khoodeelaar! objection… There are a few spelling errors that need to be noted……

 

In the next parts, we go into the details of how paragraph 3382 have been created by forces of Big business sabotage of the ‘parliamentary process..’

 

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200708/ldbills/014/l113.pdf

 

0700 Hrs GMT [0800 Hrs UK] London Tuesday 1 April 2008: Khoodeelaar! manifesto against Crossrail hole Agenda – starting here today …..

April 1, 2008

0700 Hrs GMT [0800 Hrs UK] London Tuesday 1 April 2008: Khoodeelaar! manifesto against Crossrail hole Agenda – starting here today …..

0410 Hrs GMT [0510 Hrs UK Time] Khoodeelaar! advice to all the remaining ‘party’ politically [!!!!!!!!!!] orchestrated participants in the parades of parasitic party political preferences on who should be given the decisive votes in the name of the people of london and to ‘elect a mayor’: Get real! The Heathrow ‘factor’ as a ‘plus’ for CRASSRAIL is NOT acceptable. It is unsound. It is untenable. It is unsustainable. It is a liability… So drop that and drop the plugs for the CRASSrail’ too… …..Who is out of touch? Who is ignoring reality? Who is being contradictory? ………………..Who is fabricating callously to ‘London voters’ re 1 May 2008? …………………..The KHOODEELAAR! position is in accord with universal observation and as Objectively verifiable evidence.

March 31, 2008

Editor©Muhammad Haque

0400 Hrs GMT

[0500 Hrs UK time]

London

Monday 31 March 2008:

 

Khoodeelaar! advice to all the remaining ‘party’ politically  [!!!!!!!!!!] orchestrated participants in the parades of parasitic party political preferences on who should be given the decisive votes in the name of the people of london and to ‘elect a mayor’: Get real! The Heathrow ‘factor’ as a ‘plus’ for CRASSRAIL is NOT acceptable. It is unsound. It is untenable.

 

 

It is unsustainable. It is a liability… So drop that and drop the plugs for the CRASSrail’ too…

 

 

Who is out of touch? Who is ignoring reality? Who is being contradictory?

 

 

Who is fabricating callously to ‘London voters’ re 1 May 2008?

 

The KHOODEELAAR! position is in accord with universal observation  and as Objectively verifiable evidence.

The answer is:

Whoever is promoting the idea that ‘Heathrow’ is ‘good’. That stuffing more passengers into any means of transport so they can be dumped at Heathrow for them to be  then dumped into the nightmare experience that Heathrow has represented in the past week, in  the past months, in the past  year… ‘is sensible’ , is, to say the LEAST,  beyond ridicule….

 

 

[To be continued]    

1935 Hrs GMT London Friday 28 March 2008: Khoodeelaar! shows up crassrail hole plot-backer ‘world class’ ‘news agency’ reuters for suppressing the truth about crassrail… reuters has published on its web site in the past 32 minutes a ‘news item’ which we reproduce in full text below. the dishonesty of the reuters ‘news’ organisation is in the fact that they have been promoting the big business crossrail hole scam as if ‘crossrail’ would not be affected by ordinary factors that affect other railway lines, systems and infrastructure… that makes reuters part of the big business lying brigade…by suppressing the truth and by confecting the contaminating list of fantasy ‘crossrail benefits’ which all the peddlers, touts and propagandists for ‘crossrail’ keep repeating, they are participating in and aiding and abetting the sabotaging of the accounting and the auditing of the decision-makers who [as gordon brown has behaved] are making decisions committing the public resources to the Crossrail London scam. the minimum that a basically ‘democratic’ society must afford its ordinary members to do in relation to any such scheme is to allow the people full and fair say… and also allow the process that is supposedly in place for democratic practice in decision making to be seen to be being put to that minimum use… that system is supposed to be the ‘house of lords’ for the time being [in relation to the CURRENT treatment of the particular draft crossrail bill] and the so-called specialist news and industry media, as typified in context by reuters and the Financial Times and of course by the bbc, are in fact openly and persistently contributing to the suppression of the only role that could make the ‘house of Lords’ make any claims to legitimacy….. [to be continued]

March 28, 2008

  

Brick Lane, Whitechapel, Bethnal Green ‘south’ and Stepney London E1 Area campaign against the Crossrail hole Bill [now in the UK legislative ‘House of Lords’]

 

 

Editor©Muhammad Haque

_____________________________________________________________

Legal affairs:

Lawmedia@hotmail.com

Campaign information:

Khoodeelaar@yahoo.com

 

1858 Hrs GMT

London Friday

28 March 2008

 

Coming up on the Khoodeelaar! Web sites and associated web blog during the weekend starting on Friday 28 March 2008: –

 

 

1.  Heathrow is a ‘national shame’ – so said the 6.30 PM ITV ‘national news’ today [21 minutes ago] Does ‘ITV national News’ know the meaning of the word? If it does, how come it has been party to and complicit in the lying propaganda for the past 4 years that says that ‘Heathrow’ is one of the three most important ‘destinations’ that justify the multi £Billion public money being pumped into the seriously flawed, dubious CRASSrail hole scam?

2.  Why did Channel 4 News reporter Jonathan Rudman make that irresponsible, vacuous and misleading reference to the ‘dazzling Canary Wharf’ as contrasted [by him] with Sarkozy’s allegedly undazzling and ‘dim’ Paris?

 

[To be continued]

 

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 LONDON (Reuters) – Workers at London’s underground have voted to strike for 72 hours from April 6 over a series of grievances, a move that could cause travel chaos in the capital.

Transport unions the RMT and TSSA — the two biggest unions representing more than 7,500 workers — will start the strike at 6.30pm (1730 GMT), they said in a joint statement on Friday.

The unions said the disputed issues included ticket office closures, lone working, and the use of agency and security staff which they called an unacceptable attack on safety standards.

“This is a dispute about the safety of our Tube system. The last people we want to hit are the travelling public but this seems to be the only way we can make LU (London Underground) listen,” TSSA general secretary Gerry Doherty said in the statement.

 

 

 

__________________________________________________________________

 

Editor©Muhammad Haque

1125 Hrs GMT

London Friday 28 March 2008 

 

1125 Hrs GMT London Friday 28 March 2008: Khoodeelaar! the campaign against the Crossrail hole Bill [‘the hybrid’ ‘Crossrail Bill’ in the UK Parliamentary ‘House of Lords’ at the time of writing] TOLD YOU SO [the second time this morning already] – Crossrail hole plot-peddler Ken confidence trickster Livingstone’s CRASS spin about ‘world class capitalist London’ is exposed as they confess that ‘commercial property values continue to decline….’ But the Big Business liars will not ever admit their lying … so they spin another one…. confounding their complete contradictoriness another time… 

 

 

 

 KHOODEELAAR! quoting from the following web site  that states Canary Wharf values are on the down…

 

 

 

http://www.financemarkets.co.uk/2008/03/28/commercial-property-values-continue-decline/ 

 

 

 “

 

 March 28, 2008

Commercial property values continue decline

by Gill Montia 

”Commercial

Songbird Estates, the commercial property firm that owns over half of London’s Canary Wharf, has reported that the value of its property fell by 4.3% in the second half of 2007.

The company expects further write downs in the value of its portfolio in the first-half of this year, as the global financial crisis continues to impact on the UK commercial property market.

The market value of Songbird’s portfolio stood at £7.3 billion at the end of December 2007, down from £7.5 billion at end-June. However, the December 2007 figure is up 4.8% on the same month in 2006.

Songbird says that it is confident that the quality of its portfolio means that rental income will be maintained, stating: “The high quality of our assets, the low level of vacancy and focus on active asset management mean we look to the future with confidence.”

For the time being, the firm says it will cease all speculative projects but has confirmed that the development of London premises for Bear Stearns, the troubled US investment bank will go ahead.

While analysts expect commercial property values to continue to decline during 2008, plans for Crossrail, the rail line that will link West and East London, should boost Canary Wharf’s appeal as both a retail and office development in the years ahead.

 

 

”