Talk:Ken Livingstone

Opening of this article

To me it reads like the opening salvo in an attack piece at the moment. Rather than saying much about Livingstone's background, it opens by simply lists all the controversies:

He has been a supporter of communist regimes in Cuba and Venezuela and an opponent of New Labour, and of Gordon Brown's economic policies (having said in 1998 that "Gordon is not up to his job ... Britain is now heading towards a recession entirely of Gordon's making"). In a 2007 interview, he praised the fundamentalist Islamic cleric, Yusuf al-Qaradawi. He has attacked the policies of Israel's government, and has been suspended from office for comparing a Jewish journalist to a concentration camp guard. However, his limited powers as Mayor gave him little opportunity to give effect to those views, and his performance as Mayor has been generally regarded as satisfactory.

A reader will conclude the following about CZ from placing this so early and strongly in the article: we are anti-communist; we are anti-Muslim; we are pro-Israel. It even subtly suggests that, given the chance, Livingstone would use his position to advance Communism, Islamic fundamentalism, anti-Semitism, and action against Israel ("...give effect to those views."). It requires considerable re-balancing, with the controversies integrated into a larger piece covering his political career. I would move it down, but a big deletion will considerably alter the scope of the article, so I leave it open for others to comment. John Stephenson 15:49, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

I concur with this. –Tom Morris 16:00, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

I accept your criticisms, and I should be content to see the article redrafted or abandoned. I have moved the text around a bit, but I don't believe that I could find the material that would be required to alter its balance. Brief though, it is, I have found the article exceptionally difficult to research. Much of what little there is on record online by, or about, him is too abusive to be suitable for a CZ article, and I have done what I can with the remainder. So I shall have to leave it to others to make a better job of it. Nick Gardner 19:11, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

My feeling here is that it's a bit early to worry about balance and neutrality; when articles start as a stub they are often going to look very unbalanced, quite unintentionally - they may just contain a note of some things that probably should be included. I'd relax; it would be good to have an article on Ken who's such a colourful and interesting character, and I'm sure can develop a lively and balanced one. The present stub gives something to think about. But if any authors are worried about balance at this stage, just pull the text causing concern into the Talk page to hold until later when it can be reintroduced and developed within a more ully developed article.Gareth Leng 09:56, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

I respectfully disagree; I think it's more important to be neutral the shorter the article is. Anyway, I have rewritten the final paragraph quite a bit to try to soften things and add evidence - e.g. rather than praising a fundamentalist cleric, it now says Livingstone partly defended a cleric who is banned from the UK and US, and provides a link for that. The only one I now find problematic is the Israel reference - yes, he wrote a column criticising the country over the 2009 Gaza conflict, but a lot of other people did too, and he was out of office when he did it. I'm not sure it counts as a 'controversy', but could form part of a section on his political attitudes instead. John Stephenson 15:56, 30 October 2010 (UTC)