Month: Feb 2008

If you are a regular reader you will know that I have been fulminating about the £1.4 million cost of the Mayor’s bogus consultation on his ideas around emissions related congestion charging since last autumn.

It was only today, thanks to Gary Dunion, Chief Press Officer of the Green Party funnily enough, that I finally got hold of the report, follow this link.

This expensive piece of work from Ipsos MORI takes 104 pages to try to hide the following central facts.

When asked “Do you think the proposed discount would be effective as an incentive to use a lower CO2 emitting car?” 57% said it would be ‘not very’ or ‘not at all’ effective as an incentive as against 39% respondents who said the low CO2 discount would be ‘very’ or ‘a little’ effective as an incentive to use a lower CO2 emitting car. In other words most Londoners think that the Mayor is wrong.

When asked “Do you think the proposed higher charge would be an effective incentive to use a lower CO2 emitting car?” 60% said it would not be effective as against just 38% who thought it would be an effective incentive to use a lower CO2 emitting car. Ooops, the Mayor is even more wrong.

No wonder the Mayor and his Green allies have been hiding this report. The authors tried to use a truly shocking form of words in the management summary to hide the truth:

A very wide range of views was expressed during the course of the consultation, and it is apparent that opinions are divided on the issue of the proposed scheme. While over half of respondents thought that the proposals would have at least some effect as an incentive to use a lower CO2 emitting car, through use of a higher charge and discount, these are divided between those who say it will be “very” effective, “a little” effective and “not very” effective. Around one in three consider the scheme will be “not at all” effective.

Note they have taken those who thought the scheme would be “not very” effective and made them in favour of the scheme. They also call 41% “around one in three”. Ipsos MORI should be ashamed of themselves as should TfL, the Mayor and the Green Party.

Gary, do the Green Party really want to associate themselves with this rubbish?

The consultation elicited 4,831 responses and cost £1.4 million. That is £290 per response. Good value for money or just another £1 million towards the Mayor’s £100 million self-promotion budget?

Today the Mayor did a big song and dance with the Green party over signing some spurious document to do with his introduction of Emissions Related Congestion Charging.

Apparently this will come into force on 27th October when 4x4s and other large vehicles will have to pay £25 to enter the Congestion Charge zone and small cars will get in for free.

This announcement is the final admission that the Congestion Charge has failed and that the Mayor is trying to rebrand it as a CO2 charge.

Bizarrely the contrived signing ceremony involved the Mayor and his invisible deputy Nicky Gavron and also Green AM Jenny Jones and the leader of her party Sian Berry. It does seem strange that one of the Mayor’s opponents in the mayoral race wants to big him up like this. Given that she founded the Alliance Against Urban 4x4s I guess she could not resist. The whole exercise does underscore that she is not a serious contender and that the Green Party and the Mayor intend to encourage Greens to give the Mayor their second preference votes.

What is really outrageous about this announcement is that the Mayor spent £1.4 million on a consultation on this in the autumn of last year and has so far refused to publish the results. The Mayor has not yet published the consultation report in spite of repeated questions from Tory AM Angie Bray. She asked for the results in November and December but she was stonewalled each time.

The Evening Standard’s headline writers dutifully lapped up the dubious £500 million headline offered by the Mayor’s press people this evening. So, even the apparently rabidly anti-Livingstone Evening Standard can play the Mayor’s game when it suits. More interestingly the Standard’s map showed one of the cycling superhighways starting off in Ealing, see full story here. Good news indeed.

But, it seems that the Mayor is again trying to tell us what to do with the Uxbridge Road. Having lost the tram battle it looks like he is now going to try to push a cycle superhighway down the Uxbridge Road – at least between Ealing Town Centre and Acton Lane, see map below. I am not sure I would fancy competing with 207 bendies on this route. If these routes are to make sense they need to be a little more imaginative. To separate them from traffic without unnecessarily reducing the capacity of existing roads they need to use side roads and new bridges and tunnels to get across main roads and railways.

On his election website the Mayor lays claim to Crossrail. He says:

Ken achieved what no one else has done in two decades – to get the funding to go ahead with Crossrail.

Unfortunately his claim is rather undermined by this quote from Tony McNulty when he was minister of state for railways and the capital’s transport system. Read this interview in the Independent:

Livingstone raised the minister’s hackles again last week with comments at a trade show in Cannes on how the £10bn Crossrail scheme will be funded. “There is plenty of talk going on – some of it very, very loudly in France – which is not terribly helpful,” McNulty says.

So although the Mayor claims Crossrail as a feather in his cap the minister responsible described his behaviour as “not terribly helpful”.

The go ahead for Crossrail is great for London but the scheme was a no-brainer when Labour came to power and after ten years of a Labour government and 8 years of a Labour Mayor we are not talking quick work here and it seems that the Mayor is not the one to thank. You might however thank changing electoral sentiment in London and the Labour government finally finding a few pennies for the South East to shore up their chances of holding London.

Thanks to Cllr Harry Phibbs from Hammersmith & Fulham who put me onto this story. He has a whole heap of negative Livingstone quotes from London Labour MPs here.