Ken's ad - dissected

Just been watching Ken Livingstone's election broadcast. I don't suppose he had any real place to go other than the relentlessly cheery. But just how much will people who live in the capital recognise as being real London?



Here's some thoughts:

3 seconds - A sprinkler hard at work. Bugger the environment.

7 seconds - Clever cutting shows a jogger looking over to see... Ken! On his way to work in his flasher mac with scarf tight around his throat.

10 seconds - A bike rider wearing proper safety gear clearly indicates and then obeys all traffic laws (so clearly not like Boris or Cameron then).

22 seconds - That's the second boat race style rowing boat we've seen.

32 seconds - Ken's still walking to work and he's still wearing that flasher mac

43 seconds - He's on the tube wearing the mac and reading a paper (more on that later). Isn't it easy for the Mayor to get permission to film on the tube from TfL when they wouldn't give anyone else permission until nominations closed. Not favouritism, surely.

50 seconds - "London is equal with New York as an economic power" - So that would be the New York currently entering a massive recession then.

56 seconds - He's at Canary Wharf in the mac with the scarf.

1 minute 06 - "25 years ago there wasn't a single job anywhere here" he says indicating models of the canary wharf area. Not strictly true. And then the Tories started the whole process of the Docklands redevelopment. Nothing to do with Labour and certainly nothing to do with Ken.

1 minute 10 - "When Crossrail opens..." That should be if.

1 minte 11-12 - Who's that in the background? Why, it's our Dear Prime Minister in a non-speaking role.

1 minute 18 - He's back on the tube wearing the mac and the scarf.

1 minute 20 - What paper is that he's reading. Couldn't be the Standard could it? Well, if it is, they've very deliberately made him drop the front page so you can't tell.

1 minute 33 - A dodgy cut there. Someone has dubbed the words 'central London' into the mix. Either the originals were lost or else he said something else first time round.

1 minute 38 - Gor' blimey guv'nor. Apples and pears. Luvly Jubbly.

1 minute 40 - He's in the mac and scarf in a market and 'happens' to bump into a relentlessly cheery woman in a wheelchair.

1 minute 52 - He's eating in a gresy spoon (in the mac and scarf, natch). Whatever happened to the champagne swilling lunches eh Ken?

2 minutes 03 - Ken won the Olympics for London. Personally. No mention of the costs though.

2 minutes 18 - "It is the best chance the East End has had to share in the propsperity of London for 40 years" - An admission that he did nothing for the area as Leader of the GLC and would have done nothing if Paris had won the Games then.

2 minutes 25 - It's all the fault of the housing market. Ken's been given the cash to sort it out with lots of affordable homes. The trouble is that, in among all the nice schemes the film shows of 'affordable housing' is one in Southwark. Yet they don't show the affordable bit - only the very, very expensive flats with balconies and 'iconic' wooden panelling which have been built to pay for the (semi) affordable few. And Southwark is the Lib Dem run authority which Ken always seeks to criticise for failing to meet affordable homes targets (despite doing more than most Labour boroughs)

2 minutes 40 - "There's more police on the streets and a real feeling of optimism" - That's his only mention of crime.

2 minutes 42 - He's back on the streets, in the mac. But it's open and the scarf has gone!

2 minutes 50 - Vote for Boris and the whole place will implode!

2 minutes 55 - "I'm only the Mayor, I'm not royalty". Hmmm.

3 minutes - "A budget of about £13 billion next year to spend" Only because you've more than doubled the amount of tax you take off hard working Londoners.

3 minutes 04 - "If they don't make him Mayor I'm going to go mad" says old dear. No comment needed.

3 minutes 12 - "The question of who is mayor might even be more important than who is going to run the Government" - I'm more important than Gordon Brown.

3 minutes 28 - The coat has gone!

A word on the mac and scarf combo. I presume he's wearing it because they filmed it over a number of days (or weeks) and he was wearing different shirts and ties underneath. Fair enough then, but it really is a horriblre flasher mac.