Shows that under their new shine, the Conservatives are still the same...slightly worse than Labour. I'll email this to Timeout, hopefully they will cover.

I think this is to do with the political nature of the festival which makes it inappropriate for public funding. It would seem that the festival is aimed at the BNP, which is of course elected to the GLA. Johnson is no friend of the BNP of course but I think he is aware of the inappropriateness of using tax-payers' money for a party political campaign in a way Livingstone wasn't.

It generally isn't regarded as a proper thing to do for local government to use public money to campaign against their opponents.

although there is the element at rise festival that suggests using your vote will defeat fascism, the festival is more about anti-racism than voting.
Last year Boris chose to brand it as celebrating diversity, and explicitly removed the anti-racist message and eveyone including the unions that sponsered the event were pissed off about that. He says they havent been able to get sponsership for the festival this year, the unions say they havent been approached.
Regardless, London has lost an amazing free event, that hundreds of thousands of people enjoy every year. I have always had a great time at Rise festival (used to be respect festival) and seen some amazing bands etc there, De La Soul, Public Enemy, Geregory Isaacs, Jimmy Cliff and many more.
It really is an example of music, fun and politics, reaching a massive audience, and is an example of all thats good in London.
Stokefest has been cancelled this year because of council bureacracy making it unworkable, and now Rise Festival too!