Today’s Guardian (no online equivalent, sorry) reported on a recent Mori poll undertaken for the Greater London Authority, that reinforces what we as Londoners apparently already knew, everything is going just swell, London is now officially ace, and it's all down to Ken Livingstone, the greatest Mayor since Dick Whittington.
Actually the article dwells a little more on statistics and graphs, not of actual improvements to facets of London life, but more on how people don't worry about them as much. For example, Londoners used to think that litter was a tub-thumping 38% rated issue, whereas now it’s more of a shoulder shrugging 22% kind of issue. Other stats include a 40% satisfaction rating for Ken, and 40% were satisfied with policing in their neighbourhoods while 33% were not.
The reason why these satisfaction rates are important is that they could play an important part in swaying marginal London constituencies Labours direcion, which is a fairly quick transition from being the scourge of a party to being its saviour.
General London apathy aside, what else the nice folks at Mori tell us is that Kens a Marmite kind of Mayor.
"Ken is like Marmite because people have very strong views about him one way or another" says Ben Page, Mori surveys director.
So he's not like an actual thing, he's like a marketing tagline for an actual thing.
