Ken will get through won't he?

I am getting rather worried that Ken won't be London Mayor for long and that a Boris win will usher in a new era of blueness in the land. After all, the people of the UK are actually a lot more conservative than London gives them credit for.

A guardian interview with ken, hillary's resurgence, pro-boris opinion polls and local media suggest that the whole lee jasper resignation affair (key variables: rude email, LDA grant to Brixton Base, Evening Standard and Martin Bright) is going to linger a bit and benefit boris.

The whole business of getting government funding to do good stuff in less organised, reorganised communities who dont focus too much on administrative mojo is tricky. Ken goes,

"If we had given this money to - what kind of organisation can I
think of? - a well-established, functioning group like the RSPCA, you would
expect much clearer lines of accountability. But you're dealing here with a
marginal, excluded group of kids, and people who do not have, as many of those
charities have, 50 or 100 years of established banking practice, legal
practice, accountancy practice. You're dealing with communities that don't
have lawyers and accountants who just happen to live down the road ..."

Not too long ago i think i faced a similar scenario, well not directly. If you want to work with youth you need to do it through youth groups, and yes these groups arent going to be very clear about what they are about. I can see a thread running through ken's defence of his colleague, and i'm always miffed when some lefty type goes bahaya. More fundamentally, I think a lot of group autonomy is lost by registering as a charity and playing the funding game. It detracts from the work one is hoping to accomplish, opens you up to being hamstrung and organises your collective life in a certain way. I'd prefer some kind of jizya or khums financial arrangement to make things easy though more realistically we should go for small community donations. The dishonour of sponging off the state should be avoided if possible.

The london press and electronic media is quite fed up with Ken. Certain forces have been picking off his political comrades one by one for years now. The innocent bystander wont be able to sense the tacit goings on here, especially as the london media is so partisan and some fool leaked some randy sounding emails.

Oh well. I saw lee jasper at the european social forum a few years ago, just after my foot-in-the-sink-moment with george galloway. His speaking style was entertaining to say the least. Yooowkip, Raysisum et al. I wonder if he gets exhonorated in the end?