Month: Oct 2007

The Mayor has been in support Ian Blair mode for a week and this graphic only replaced last week’s picture of Sir Ian Blair on the headline spot on the Mayor’s website today.

Today’s press release jumps through all kind of hoops to make out how generous the Mayor is being with our money. He tries to make out that “the freeze” is bigger than it is. Most people use travelcards to get to work so the freeze only applies to a minority in any case.

What is more the index used to uprate travelcards is RPI which is typically much higher than CPI. In September CPI stood at 1.8% whereas RPI was at 3.9% – RPI is increasing more than twice as fast as CPI right now – see National Statistics website.

Back in August I showed how TfL has been runing a structural deficit of £1.6 billion for the last 4 years so there is no way that the Mayor can afford to be generous with fares. All he can do is make out he is being generous with fares.

The Evening Standard reckons that 7 out of 10 Tube passengers will miss out.

Back in August I did a piece for ConservativeHome on TfL’s finances. At the time some people tried to rubbish what I was saying. It seems that the Mayor agrees with me though. In a recent answer to a question from Assembly Member Andrew Pelling the Mayor said:

TfL’s Annual Report for 2006/07 shows Tube gross operating costs as £2,087.2m and gross revenue as £1,534.3m. There were 1,014m Tube passenger journeys. That gives an average cost per journey of 205.8p against fare revenue of 151.3p, with a difference of 54.5p.

For buses, gross operating costs were reported as £1643.4m and gross revenue £1026.8m, with 1,880m journeys. Hence the average cost per bus journey was 87.4p, with 54.6p raised from fares, leaving a difference of 32.8p.

My way of expressing the same facts was to say that it costs us 55p every time someone gets on a tube and 33p every time someone gets on a bus. The idea that the Mayor can afford to cut bus fares to 90p and offer half price bus rides to low income people is ridiculous. They may be admirable things to do but they are unaffordable and unfinanced. The only way money can be made available for these initiatives is to reduce investment or put up other fares. No doubt the Mayor will burn TfL’s reserves and/or delay capital spending this year to pay for these rises and then hope to put up fares again if he gets re-elected.

I got an e-mail from the Mayor’s office this afternoon. It must be a quiet afternoon if they are browsing blogs. Sam Strudwick writes to say:

Dear Phil,

The Sun’s story on Friday was actually inaccurate. The car was in fact hired by LBC radio to take the Mayor to their studios. The Sun printed an apology in Saturday’s newspaper. You can read their apology here: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article365952.ece

Yours sincerely,

Sam.

I replied straight away to say that I would put things right. Hasn’t he (she?) got anything better to do?

Anyway the Sun story is wrong and they have apologised. Shame they couldn’t have chosen a more flattering picture of the Mayor with which to illustrate their apology.

I am very keen to keep this blog accurate so I too in turn apologise for re-printing the Sun’s inaccurate story.

The other stories here are all too accurate!

The Mayor used this graphic on 29th August to mark the unveiling of the Mandela statue in Parliament Square. I figured that I would write and find out how much it all cost. The Mayor’s reply (click to enlarge image below) arrived this morning dated 19th October. A seven week turn-around is a little poor but I am grateful anyway for the information.

It looks like Londoners paid £464,000 towards Nelson’s big day. The contrast with the Victorian generals Napier and Havelock whose statues in Trafalgar Square were raised by public subscription (see previous posting) does not look good. Livingstone easily has the charisma and authority to lead a campaign to raise the money for a statue to Nelson Mandela. It is a shame he thinks it is OK just to raid the public purse for every little boondongle he thinks is right. Why not ask the people?

Rather cheekily the Mayor asks Ealing for a donation. I will send the Mandela Statue Fund fifty quid. I am not sure many others will and I think the London precept payer can assume that the £219,000 ain’t coming back.

I bought the Sun today, purely to read their withering “Betrayal will haunt Gordon” leader on Brown’s Euro sellout you understand. In passing I saw this photo spread (click image to enlarge) featuring a minicab waiting in a disabled parking bay to pick up Livingstone to take him to work. Although he is in charge of TfL, chairman of the board no less, it still doesn’t suit him to use public transport – unless there is a photocall involved.

Update: Apparently this story is inaccurate – see here.

I reported on this bogus consultation exercise in early September, see previous posting. It closed today.

Yesterday the Evening Standard was reporting that a study, funded by Land Rover, from the Centre for Economics and Business Research found that the scheme will push 10,000 new cars onto roads in the zone.

Today the Standard says London Councils and London First are pretty down too.

London Councils says:

As the emission related proposals relate only to the central area – the impact on CO2 emissions across London will be marginal.

The lack of a residents discount for vehicles liable for the higher charge will cause many residents to sell their vehicles and purchase different vehicles. Therefore the emission benefits of the higher charge are only realised when Band G vehicles are scrapped altogether as a Band G vehicle used outside the congestion charging zone will still contribute towards CO2 emissions.

Tackling the emissions from Taxis would be a more cost effective way of reducing CO2 emissions than the current proposals.

London First’s Baroness Jo Valentine, Chief Executive of London First, said:

The Mayor’s proposals are unlikely to work. Politely, it’s a dog’s breakfast. By letting Fiestas, Puntos and Polos back into Central London for free, the Mayor will encourage more cars back onto our clogged up roads.

We must reduce emissions but a costly scheme that will have, at best, a minimal effect is not the right solution. By all means, reduce the charge to encourage cleaner cars. But the Mayor must not use taxpayers’ money to increase congestion in the name of climate change.

Business backed the original charge because it promised to reduce congestion. We aren’t prepared to endorse a naive, green-washed proposal that represents a backwards step.