Why did BBC NEWSNIGHT allow Ken Livingstone to lie again ?
[NEWSNIGHT Wednesday 30 April 2008].

The lie was in David Grossman’s piece that included a sample ‘statement’ by each one of the ‘three’ ‘mainstream parties’ ‘candidates’ for mayor’ at today’s London ‘regional’ assembly 'election' Livingstone was allowed to say that he was the right person to address the educational needs of the children that ‘we’ [that was Livingstone's’ word] had failed over the years.

That was not just a lie. But an aggravated criminal lie by the immoral Livingstone.

Only a few weeks earlier, he had showed naked contempt when asked about the high number of young people being killed in London. He unhesitatingly dismissed that and instead pointed the finger at the parents of the youngsters.

And now, on the eve of polling day, he is being allowed by the BBC’s ‘flagship’ news and current affairs programme on TV to make an assertion that takes no account of the role that Livingstone's had played over the previous years and on previous programmes...

Livingstone was promoting himself in a contrived crowd of mainly Asian people in Newham on Wednesday. Not far from the Stratford school, the subject of a campaign in defence of the mainly Asian governors of that school who were being undermined by the racist education bureaucracy at the centre [fronted by the Tory ken Clarke as Secretary of State] and locally by the residual racists of the former local bureaucracy. Newham Council, although controlled by the former Labour party [1992], was just as racist and hostile to the ASIAN governors as was the central Conservative Govt.

And what did Ken Livingstone do? He was an MP from Brent, East. Not from Newham. But he found it possible to join a group of racists whom the Guardian collected and together they issued what they thought would be a ‘respectable; comment. They libelled the campaigning Asian governors and their organiser.

This is how ‘friendly’ Ken Livingstone has been to ‘Asians’ and ‘Muslims’ and ‘ethnic minorities’.

Ken Livingstone was openly OPPOSING through the Guardian the right of Asian school governors to have the equal [powers and the equal say as their white counterparts....

[To be continued]