Mayor’s Question Time. Ken launches into the Professor’s visit as part of his verbal update to the Assembly. He speaks very well and totally refutes (and I believed him) the allegations that have been made as to what the Professor did or did not say in terms of incitement to hatred.  Ken then goes into the sad reality that we are probably, in fact almost certainly, going to get more tube strikes in the coming weeks.  I have a go at him to get down and get involved as he has such influence with the unions. He refuses. I ask him if, as he says, this is the best deal ever on the table, whether he thinks it would be a good idea to put a camera in on the negotiations so that we Londoners can see who is lying.  He’s a clever bugger – ‘cos he immediately turns it back on me as Chair of Transport and suggests I invite all of them in for an argy bargy in my committee. I would love to – but bet they wouldn’t come. I can only invite outsiders like the unions – unlike the GLA family who I can actually summons. Still – I’m still thinking about it……….

Ken and I have a little rumba over the 4 x 4 charging issue. Ken is keen to jump on my bandwagon – but warns that the legalities will be very difficult. We’ll see.

 

We get to the motion at the end. There have been fevered attempts by the Tories, Greens and UKIP to get an all party motion instead of the one they have tabled as they have managed to realise that they have knee-jerked to the tabloids tune. However, they can never manage to agree amongst themselves – and so the LibDem amendment gets put and passed and the Green motion falls even with Tory support.  Two gentlemen from the Muslim Council are in the audience and we have a brief chat afterwards when I sweetly point out that I was right to resist

their pressures.