Occupy LSX evicted from the Bank of Ideas

Ken Livingstone says London's supply of cocaine and women will keep bankers happy here

Cocaine and girls. Ken Livingstone explains why bankers won’t relocate from London in an interview with the Guardian’s Andrew Sparrow.

He also called for pay ratios between the highest and lowest earners, said there might be case for corporate manslaughter at TFL over the Bow roundabout cycling deaths, said he wasn’t going to buy any more of the new Routemasters*, and used the word orgasm twice. Read the interview for more.

The Guardian – Ken Livingstone: It’s policies that matter this time, not personalities

*Everyone’s calling them Routemasters except for a small number of pedants who say they aren’t to be called Routemasters. These pedants may well be right.

**Please see the comments for a fair point raised aginst the assumptions behind this intro.

Bad for Me by Brendan Benson

Mayor Johnson confirms all preconceptions by charming attractive Fox News host on money-soaked Davos ski slope

London agenda for Friday 27 January

There are almost three times as many empty homes in London as homeless people

Star of "the Leveson Inquiry" David Allen Green speaks on scepticism next Monday

Ken's open letter to Boris ends with a cracking gag

Ken’s open letter to Boris ends with a cracking gag. This at the end of a letter which calls Mayor Johnson “complacent”, says he “reacted badly to pressure”, refers to Lynton Crosby’s “nasty dog whistle politics”, to the behaviour of Tory AMs as “nastiness”, and says that the Conservatives have “turned to the dark side”.

It’s all good fun and some of it hits home. But clean? This election is already as dirty as hell, and all the better for it.

Ken Livingstone – Letter to Boris Johnson
Snipe – An open letter to the writers of open letters

Intertextual news: official cars good for some, bad for others

Cliffs Notes do Shakespeare videos now. They call Romeo "a total emo." Children everywhere doomed