I spent the afternoon being Simon Hughes!

Not easy. Capital Transport at its AGM was holding a sort of early hustings for the Mayoral candidates – but Simon is in New York, so I was standing in for him in his absence. However, in the event, Mayor Livingstone wasn’t there (because he was hosting the London Conference), Norris wasn’t there because he won’t appear unless Ken is there (plus I think he should be hanging his Jarvis head in shame and not being seen), Nicky Gavron wasn’t there because she doesn’t know if she is the candidate for Labour or not – and doesn’t want to appear in debates until this is decided. That left me (as Simon) and Darren Johnson.

It was fun, however. Transport is one of those issues that everyone has a view on and gets everyone going. As I was representing Simon, I couldn’t tell everyone our manifesto ideas as they will be launched in due course – so I had in the initial speech to speak in general terms about where we are going on transport.

I suppose there are two main thrusts. The first is that ‘things cannot go on the way they are’ – i.e. outside of buses which are greatly improved, everything else is falling apart. We have no redress on the tube, no control over the rail and so on – and obviously what Simon would do about it.

The other thrust of the speech was about our main themes for the election. I suppose you could sum it up with: ‘think customer, think local, think environment’. But more of all of this as the campaign hots up.

The questions rained thick and fast for about another hour and a half – on bus driver behaviour, speed, pedestrians, ticketing, congestion charging, disabled exemptions, road building and so on. Time flew – and then I did too!