Address huge rally on Haven Green in Ealing ‘Against the West London tram’. Ken’s proposal for this tram will cost £648 million and will displace 27,000 cars into local residential roads as they close off various bits of the Uxbridge Road. Trams are great – but this is the wrong place to force this through.

I arrive early (by car – yes even I occasionally use my car) and am sitting parked outside a house near the Green where a man is trimming his hedge. Very Saturday morning………. I realise that I need the loo and that I will never last the 2 hours of the rally without going. Can I ask a stranger to use his loo? I decide I have no choice, explain that I am about to give a speech at the rally down the road and am a London Assembly member and can offer identification. He says yes of course – but does add that it is conditional that I am giving a speech against the tram as he and his family will be there to demonstrate against. Happily, I am therefore allowed to relieve myself!

It was an outdoor rally, with shaky podium and microphone and strong wind. As Chair of Transport I get a five minute slot and did my best to support the local people who are really going to be screwed by Ken’s proposals – and for that matter the consultation which is just starting, but which questions are, as ever, designed to get answers on detail rather than ask people what they feel about the whole scheme.

Fantastic crowd – with a good MC and a poet who started the whole shebang off with a fiery poem against the tram. Speaker after speaker gave their own personal reasons why this was an untenable proposal. Banners were waved, TV cameras rolled – and then it was home for the Women’s Final for me.