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London Gets Third World Aid
London. Europe's wealthiest city. The world's financial capital. Home of hedge funds and Russian billionaires, oil sheikhs and Hollywood stars. Boasting some of the earth's most expensive real estate and attracting immigrants from the richest and poorest nations on the globe, London is enjoying an incredible economic and cultural renaissance.
So why, then, is its public transport being funded with aid from one of Latin America's most poverty-stricken countries?
The Times reports that Mayor Ken Livingstone finally got round to signing a deal with Venezuela's main oil companies which will provide half-price travel on buses and trams for Londoners on income support.
Last May, Ken gave Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez a hero's welcome in London. Basking in the adoring applause of London's cultural elite, Ken and Chavez drew up a scheme to bring the British capital closer to the Latin American nation. London would send selected officials to Venezuela, where they will advise Chavez's lackeys on waste management, carbon emissions and recycling. In return, Chavez will give London oil, lowering the cost of petrol for London's buses by around 20 percent.
The full details of the deal are shrouded in secrecy. Ken, of course, is shameless. He has sucked up to left-leaning thugs for much of his political career: Chavez is just the latest in a rogue's gallery of Ken's Comrades which ranges from senior IRA terrorists to homophobic Islamist preachers. Even though his opponents in London have loudly criticised his deal with Chavez, Ken doesn't listen. It's another romantic-left poster boy for his collection.
Chavez, however, was stung slightly by criticism of the deal. In November, we reported that Venezuelan opposition leaders were critical of the London-Caracas exchange.
In the days before what looks likely to be Venezuela's last democratic election for some years, Chavez could ill-afford to be seen to subsidise wealthy London while 38 percent of his country starved. Opposition leader Manuel Rosales pleaded with Ken to halt the deal:
"I ask the (London) mayor not to commit that injustice to Venezuela... For me, it’s a crime that there is hunger, unemployment, poor services, hospitals that don’t work, roads that are a disaster — and the Government is giving away our wealth...Both the person giving it away and the person receiving it are sinning. Ethically, [Livingstone] should not accept it. In the name of Venezuela, we would ask him not to ruin the country any more.
“If London needed [the cheap oil], that would be one thing. But we’re talking about London here."
Ken's visit to Caracas, where the deal was supposed to be signed, was mysteriously cancelled.
Chavez went on to win the election by a landslide, and has since introduced new laws granting himself unprecedented powers. Safely ensconced in his rule by decree, he has obviously got back in touch with El Ken to renew his offer - and so the deal was signed.
For both El Ken's office and Venezuela's leftist government, it's a win-win deal. Venezuela has plenty of oil; Ken's London has no shortage of that very British resource, government-funded bureaucrats.
For the people of Venezuela, perhaps, it's not such a good deal. Another influential friend who won't come to their aid when they inevitably tire of Chavez's Socialist Revolution. 38 percent still live in desperate poverty - that's real, soil-eating scorched earth poverty, not the relative poverty that exercises Ken and his friends on the Guardian's Comments pages.
Chavez can sell his to to whoever he likes and he is not the first, or the worst politician to use oil to buy influence. But surely propping up his chums with cheap oil is less responsible that selling it at a fair price and doing as he promised - lifting his nation's poor out of their misery?
