London Mayor Sadiq Khan has spent more money on giving away free advertising for vaginal moisturiser and lingerie, and beach parties, than he has spent tackling food poverty, according to a new report.
Khan, who has served as the Mayor of London since 2016, announced last month in a now-archived press release, since removed from the official London government page, that he would be spending £400,000 on tackling “food insecurity” in the capital. This works out to around 37 pence for each of the 12% of Londoners who are struggling to make ends meet.
However, a new report from the Conservative group at London City Hall, revealed that in 2021, Replens MD, a vaginal moisturiser company, was awarded £500,000 worth of free advertising, across the Transport for London network from the London Mayor, as part of a scheme to “diversify” the network’s adverts.
The adverts portrayed older individuals, with the tagline of “sex never gets old,” plastered across London. The prize given to Replens MD was designed to help tackle the “inauthentic and one-dimensional portrayals of older people.” Lingerie brand Nubian Skin were given £500,000 in free adverts in a similar deal in 2019.
Over £700,000 was spent on free beach parties in East London in 2018 and 2019, with The Sun noting at the time that Khan was claiming that he did not have enough money available to tackle serious problems like rising knife crime.
“As is typical of the Mayor, his priorities are all wrong. He claims to want to help those who are most in need, but when it comes down to it, he splashes more cash on feel-good campaigns that boost his own PR instead of getting the money to the people who desperately need it,” said Emma Best AM, the spokesman for the GLA Conservatives.
“Sadiq Khan needs to get a grip and take real action to help Londoners in this cost of living crisis,” she added. “There may be good reasons to support these campaigns, but those reasons are not more important than helping struggling Londoners put food on the table. Yet again, when it comes to making the right decisions for the capital, Sadiq Khan gets it wrong.”
???? @emmabest22: “Sadiq Khan needs to get a grip and take real action to help Londoners in this cost of living crisis."https://t.co/Ihvx10EpBy
— City Hall Conservatives (@CityHallTories) October 31, 2022
In a statement provided to MyLondon, a spokesman for Sadiq Khan claimed that he was doing “everything in his power to support Londoners through these incredibly tough times,” citing various schemes, including £50 million spent on “fuel poverty” and £5 million to help provide “welfare advice” to Londoners.
This news and commentary by Jack Hadfield originally appeared on Valiant News.
