In Bed with Hugo

Come again?

Chávez oil dollars buy bus tickets for London

Hugo Chávez, Venezuela’s president, broke new ground in his campaign of global oil diplomacy on Monday when London mayor Ken Livingstone announced half-price bus travel for poor Londoners, funded with millions of Venezuelan oil dollars.

(...)

Mr Livingstone on Monday denied he had been seduced by Mr Chávez’s petro-diplomacy. “When someone turns up and says: ‘Do you want £14m?’ they get my attention,” Mr Livingstone told the Financial Times.

But he told reporters: “Frankly I’d rather be getting into bed with [Mr
Chávez] than, as the British government has been, getting into bed with [US president] George W. Bush.”

I wonder how long Berlin's mayor would resist such an offer. He recently declared Berlin "poor, but sexy". Then again, who would not trade sexiness for some millions?