Chair of the Met Police Authority, Toby Harris’s annual visit to Haringey Borough today. Trumpets please!

I attend this as a Haringey councillor. Despite living in Haringey, Toby has continually rejected my pleas to be the link MPA member for Haringey – although almost all other members of the MPA are given their own patch to work on. Why not me? Answer – I’m not Labour!

Not sure what these meetings actually achieve, but they do bring together the crime and policing partners in the borough and give a small opportunity to raise issues.

Leave meeting at appropriate time to meet car from BBC – BBC London had telephoned me desperate to get me onto lunchtime news regarding falling standards in police response.

No car there. Switch on mobile to find they have decided to take senior police officer rather than me. Just the way news it – but will be coming with cameras to afternoon meeting.

Call in from Andrew Clark of the Guardian re congestion charging. It’s coming up to one year since implementation and there will be a lot of media review over the next week. He asks what I would improve. The main thing would be allowing 24 hours to pay after 7pm on day of entry. Lots of honest people get caught by this and with such high penalty charges have no chance to rectify omission or forgetfulness. It’s a great scheme – but still relatively customer hostile.