Despite the best efforts of his lawyer to compare Ken Livingstone to Bill Clinton and Jeffrey Archer and a central argument which concentrated on the fact that Livingstone had 'been rude to journalists for years' (note to Ken: get a better lawyer), the mayor has been judged guilty of bringing his office into disrepute.
The Beeb reports that "The Adjudication Panel for England ruled Ken Livingstone had acted in an 'unnecessarily insensitive' manner" when he compared Jewish Evening Standard journalist Oliver Finegold to a German concentration camp guard (see our post from yesterday on perfectly justifiable insults to throw at ES journos).
As we've been told about a thousand times now, the maximum penalty for Ken's crime is a five-year disqualification, but that's not what's being called for by the Jewish Board of Deputies who made the initial complaint (in fact they never asked for that but it hasn't stopped the press implying that it could possibly happen to Ken).
We haven't been told what the final punishment will be yet, but the assumption is that Ken will be slapped on the wrist and told not to do it again.
An alternative option, that of forcing Ken to read a year's worth of Evening Standard back issues, was ruled out as it was agreed it would amount to severe mental cruelty.
