February 27, 2006
UK prime minister Tony Blair has said that the decision to suspend London's mayor Ken Livingstone had been 'silly'. A three-man committee from the Adjudication Panel for England held unanimously on Friday that Livingstone had been "unnecessarily insensitive and offensive" to Oliver Finegold, a journalist working for the London "Evening Standard". The tribunal suspended Livingstone from office for "four weeks from 1 March" and fined him the costs of the litigation, approximately US$ 120,000. On Monday, Livingstone announced his intentions to appeal the panel's decision to Britain's High Court. The Livingstone case was only handled by the panel because members of the London Assembly voted to censure the mayor at the height of the row, thus rendering themselves ineligible to hear a disciplinary case. The panel reacted after receiving a complaint from the Board of Deputies of British Jews.
