Journey intrepidly to Orpington Methodist Church to address the Liberal Democrat Youth & Students conference.

It’s the first time I’ve been invited to one of their events. Display my ‘youth’ credentials by regaling them with

tales of my street cred, In the 70s I marched against ‘Maggie Thatcher – Union Snatcher’ and threw flour bags at her effigy when (before she was Prime Minister) as Education Secretary she wanted to take away power from student unions. All sadly a very long time ago.

Talk about transport and young people – get so carried away that run out of time and lots of people came to me afterwards with questions.

See my fan club are out in force in letters page of Ham & High! Three vitriolic attacks on me personally and the LibDems collectively. Anyone would think there was a by-election on – and there is.

My campaign manager tells me that the more attacks on me the better it shows I must be doing. Of course, it’s not his name in the frame!

High noon with Tube Lines! In reality a working lunch with the Chief Exec of Tube Lines, Terry Morgan. Tube Lines is the private consortium who is contracted to look after the infrastructure on the Northern, Jubilee and Piccadilly lines.

Lunching with the enemy – having been a staunch, to put it mildly, opponent of the PPP, I guess the idea was to seduce me in their stylish Headquarters building with its posh conference room with stunning views of the river. Terry gave me a presentation to show me how much they are doing and how well they are doing.

Of course, the PPP companies now have to deliver what’s in the contract, so in many ways my real argument is with the Labour government who part-privatised the tube in a way that will deliver almost nothing in terms of relieving overcrowding and in which there is loads of work and profit for the lawyers – particularly in arguing over who is responsible for what.

One bit of new information surfaced of real interest – but it can’t go into the public domain – yet!

Mayor’s press conference which, not unnaturally, centres on Congestion Charging. He maintains it has been absolutely successful and there are no real problem with business downturn or customer service problems. My own view is that whilst a stunning success on reducing congestion – there are still a few question marks.

Firstly, the charging regime is very punitive. This shouldn’t be about catching out the honest – but simply charging people who still choose or even need to come into central London by car. 165,000 penalty notices a month are being issued. No way are all of them trying to dodge the charge. Casual users often simply forget and by the time they remember they are

whacked a huge penalty charge. I am suggesting that instead of penalties kicking in by 10pm on the day people should be allowed a further 24 hours in which to redeem themselves.

I want people to pay the charge – but it should be easy and not simply nab them for being human. Traffic measures should be about controlling bad behaviour, rewarding good behaviour and targeting the purposely dishonest.

Secondly, I don’t think that one year of a scheme this huge and this new is enough to be confident of the social, financial and business impacts of the scheme. That needs more time, more assessment and more analysis before moving onto other areas.

And thirdly, while the scheme isn’t there to raise money, the original projections of net income by Transport for London put the revenue stream at around £200 million net of penalty notices. In reality this is around £18 million. That throws a huge question mark over Transport for London’s ability to project the economics of transport schemes – which is worrying to put it mildly given the number of other transport schemes in the pipeline.

Transport Chair’s Briefing today. Nothing but storm clouds on the horizon for committee business between here and the election. The Committee’s report on Congestion Charging has run into political difficulties. The Tories won’t sign up to it because it is not critical enough of the Mayor’s scheme and Labour may not because it is too critical. Strikes me then, that the balance is just right! There are only minor amendments still wanted by Labour – so hopefully will sort by time of meeting next Monday.

As for the report on LTUC (London Transport Users Committee) which is aimed at bringing them into the modern management framework – they are not happy. Many complaints and meetings and lobbying going on. The report simply asks the Transport Committee to agree the report and that it be sent to LTUC for response within a month. Change is always a challenge.

But given that LTUC has as many staff and as much money as London Government itself has for all its scrutiny work, we do have to find a way of making it accountable in a way it has not been used to before.

Post arrives – casework, documents – but sadly – no valentines!

Meet with woman from Finsbury Park Trust who read of my efforts to clean up Harringay station and contacted me offering to install some rubbish bins.

Fantastic woman. We agree on four new bins – which should help people to behave better. Notice that the new fencing I asked for from Network Rail has now been built – it is excellent.

However, they have still failed to clear the dumped rubbish behind fence. Will have another meeting with Network Rail to push them again on this. It was contracted to Jarvis originally – need I say more? I also see, that despite promises following meeting with WAGN to sweep bridge every day, they clearly haven’t done it.

Lifelong job to get them to do it properly I reckon.

Fabby news! I am a runner-up in the Guardian political blogger of the year competition – voted on by you the public!

I have attained genuine geek status (and risen in the eyes of my daughter for having a write up in On-Line section of the Guardian the week before as having fab website too).

Of course, the irony is that the techno side is still a complete mystery to me. I write my blog and email it to my web-master who does the business.

My blog is a kind of stream of consciousness. The Guardian write up of my award said it was ‘Down to earth and humorous’!!

I am thrilled though – genuinely. I love writing and I love the very personal engagement it allows to people into my life. I just do it – but it takes on a life of its own out there in cyberland. (A special hello to my reader in Mexico!).