Fox standards and morals brought to British screens.

Tory TV (18 Doughty St) has produced a nasty viral 'US style attack ad', full of lies and misinformation in an attempt to smear Ken Livingstone.

Tory TV's slogan is 'politics for adults'. Not since Fox TV's 'fair and balanced' motto has there been a more laughable slogan.

The standard they are setting caters for the lowest form of debate and covers all the usual right-wing subjects - supposed left-wing bias in BBC - because it is not the Daily Mail, ill disguised personal attacks on anyone who tells the truth about inequality - Polly Toynbee, Livingstone etc, perpetuating myths of big bad government - when the opposite is the truth.

Anyway, as they don't seem to allow my comments on their site, well not the ones that properly detail all the misinformation in the ad (another example of how much they really value fairness). I have been forced to point out their distortions here.

1. They lead with an attack on two taxi rides Ken has taken from Blackpool costing over £200. This is THE No. 1 BIG evidence they have of his high spending ways. How pathetic, is this the best they can do after seven years of Ken? The truth is Ken's total expenses as Mayor of London are less than others on the assembly and less than the expenses of an MP. Perhaps they would be better off focussing on the £5,534 spent on taxis by Brian Coleman - Tory chair of the London assembly - which is twice the second place taxi grabber and is THIRTEEN TIMES what Ken has spent. (I also like the way they try to paint Ken as having free alcohol junkets at our expense in the expensive attack ad they have produced. Not since Nazi attacks on the Jews have there been adverts this obviously grotesquely inaccurate and full of hatred).

2. They claim Ken is not value for money. Council tax up (in cash terms ignoring inflation) 135% from £123 to £289 over Ken's 7 year period. This is actually lower than a lot of Tory controlled councils over the same period. Also they are looking at Band D which is unrepresentative, as most people pay less than this. When you consider that unlike Tory councils - Ken has introduced free travel for under 18s and is introducing half price travel for those on income support (on top of the free travel for pensioners and disabled), a lot of people are getting excellent value for money as well as a significantly improved bus and tube network, with record rises in public transport use.

3. They claim traffic speeds are the second lowest since 1968. Apparently they could only find a Tory to verify (make up?) these figures for them and as peteblogging points out when you follow the Tory link they provide it clicks through to a dead link on the DLA. Their claims however seem very unlikely considering the congestion charge has cut the number of vehicles in the central zone by 70,000 a day. A figure that is not questioned since we know exactly how many cars entered the zone just before the scheme started and can compare with the present day figures. If their claim was true about traffic speeds it would be as a result of better enforced speed limits and lowered speed limits, more buses and more time for pedestrian crossings etc leading to less deaths on the roads. All a good thing in my opinion. They try to imply congestion as a cause, clearly not the case.

4. They claim London is less safe than New York. London has a third the homicide rate of New York and less deaths from traffic accidents - these are real figures. You can find a 'survey' that backs up anything if you try hard enough especially if you ask the 'right' questions. I know because I used to work in market research and most 'surveys' were designed to get the answer the client wanted rather than actually find out anything.

For the rest (that criticise an Olympic conference visit by Ken at the invite of a former Tory Sports Minister, repeat untrue allegations in the Evening Standard about festivals, claim Ken has spent £100m on self promotion since 2000 when this was the GLA promotion budget - not unreasonable for a city the size of London over 7 years, and finally they try to link Ken to Al Qaradawis extreme views on homosexuality etc and to Bob Crow's Communist views) then best go over to peteblogging who highlights 18 DS's poor sources and misrepresentations in more detail.