The taxpayer funded propagandists at the Greater London Authority / Mayor of London press office have issued another misleading Press Release: British National Party told to stop publishing 'The Londoner' leaflets or face possible legal action
This relates to the GLA / Livingstone's unloved waste of taxpayer's money and blight on the environment, the awful propaganda sheet "The Londoner" newsletter, which they supposedly inflict on every household in London.
They even ship thousands of copies to unlucky elected officials and other people, outside of London, who almost certainly bin it straight away.
There should be a formal investigation into the claims that the GLA's "The Londoner" is published monthly, and distributed to every household in London, at vast expense, as there are many London households which do not receive 12 copies a year - is this claim another lie, or is there more incompetence or corruption involved ?
The GLA spin weasels are taking offence at the much smaller distribution of the equally odious propaganda sheet produced by the extremists of the British National Party, also entitled "The Londoner", who inflict their nonsense on the tiny proportion of London households which their dwindling number of official party activists can doorstep. The BNP appear to be in the process of splitting, due to the more moderate, less racist members being disgusted by the antics of a clique of incompetent, corrupt bully boys surrounding their leader. Parallels can be drawn between Nick Griffin and Ken Livingstone - they are both surrounded by such cliques of supporters, and they both insult and ignore any opposition to their fanatical views.
Neither of these publications actually represents normal Londoners at all.
Crucially, for Trade Mark protection purposes, neither of them is a real newspaper either, like , for example the Evening Standard, which has a far stronger claim to "The Londoner" Trade Mark as applied to newspapers.
The GLA Press release claims that
The Mayor publishes a monthly newspaper called 'The Londoner' which is distributed to homes throughout London. The Greater London Authority has been the registered owner of 'The Londoner' trademark since 2002
As ever, with the GLA press office propagandists, this is misleading and not strictly true.
They have had a registered Trade Mark since 2002, but not for a newspaper
Here is the description of their Trade Mark 2317413 entry filed in 2002, published in 2003:
List of goods or servicesClass 16:
Newsletters sent by the Mayor of London to all London households.
i.e. not a trade mark which protects an actual newspaper
Where are the GLA legal threats to the Evening Standard and the Associated Newspapers Group then ?
They do have a Trade Mark for "Evening Standard The Londoner" Trade Mark 1346786
List of goods or servicesClass 16:
Newspapers included in Class 16.
If anyone is infringing on trade mark rights to 'The Londoner", it is Ken Livingstone and his cronies usurping the Evening Standard's commercial rights.
If the Ken Livingstone and his GLA propaganda machine dared to take the Evening Standard to court over this trademark, then they would lose badly, and waste large amounts of public money on legal costs.
By using bullying threats of taxpayer funded legal action,
such as
A legal letter to the British National Party states: "The GLA believes that you are intentionally trading on the goodwill of the GLA in the trademark of 'The Londoner'
"trading" under Trade Mark law means just that i.e. commercially offering goods or services for money - neither propaganda publication is "trading" in that sense.
There is no "goodwill" in the sense of paying customer loyalty to a commercial business, which is what Trade Marks are about - GLA's "The Londoner"is utterly non-commercial and just a waste of taxpayers' money.
There is no "goodwill" involved in the more general sense for this blatant attempt to suppress free political speech of political opponents (odious though many of their views are) in the run up to an election campaign.
by using a trademark which is confusingly similar to 'The Londoner' and that the use of the trademark, does, or is intended to, confuse or mislead members of the public."The letter demands that the British National Party cease and desist from using the trademark and remove from circulation any publication using 'The Londoner'.
It is an insult to the intelligence of Londoners, to pretend that they cannot tell the difference between the two sets of propaganda leaflets or newsletters - there is no attempt at "passing off", by copying the logos or designs etc.
Has an actual legal court action been started against the odious BNP, or is this just an expensive, taxpayer funded legal threat, a tactic used by rich and powerful bullies to intimidate those people without the funds to fight expensive court cases ?
Is this just Ken Livingstone and his cronies ineffectually "Pretending To Do Something" about the BNP, but actually just providing them with the oxygen of publicity, when otherwise they would simply have been ignored ?
UPDATE:
Sections of this blog article have been lifted stolen without attribution or links back to this blog, and then spun his own way by a non-London BNP supporter on his blog. That is not the way to positively influence people who write or read blogs, towards your own political views.
I intended to hat tip you for the Trade Mark links but when I saw that you were obviously anti-British, I saw no reason to.
@ Green Arrow - you are very mistaken about that - you can not be any more British than I am.
Being British does not mean supporting either the BNP or Gordon Brown's NuLabour weasel words about "Britishness" or Ken Livingstone's looney ideas.