• Question by: Andrew Boff
• Meeting date: 09 September 2009

Mr Mayor, will you join with me in congratulating the Mossbourne Academy which has --

• Question by: Jennette Arnold OBE
• Meeting date: 09 September 2009

Well I am glad I am the last woman standing to speak! Chair, thank you. It was just to extend what Mr Boff had said. I just resent the cherry picking approach and will the Mayor join me in congratulating all those other academies - in fact all the schools in London - who have done so well --

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 09 September 2009

Those of us who sat through the previous eight years of secrecy in the LDA and, frankly, Stalinist control from the centre, actually welcome the new transparent approach. Can I ask you though, Mr Mayor, to build on that by issuing a direction, or even just advice to the LDA, that they make more, or all of their agendas if possible - I accept some things are commercially confidential - but everything except those confidential figures should be public documents, so that we can all see what is happening at the LDA Board and form an opinion?

• Question by: Steve O'Connell
• Meeting date: 09 September 2009

Mr Mayor, if we can move back to pan-London policy and away from Hammersmith and Fulham for the moment and also get away from policy by think tank? If those of us that have read Observers and Guardians over the years took notice of think tanks then we would all be going pretty crazy. So let us place think tanks where they should be, which is aways over there. Would you agree that the threat to quality of life on our housing estates has been very much this raid by Government on the Decent Homes programme to cross fund national...

• Question by: Jenny Jones
• Meeting date: 09 September 2009

That is an interesting point. Are you going to tell the Metropolitan Police Service Commissioner to increase police officers on the buses? Are you going to tell him to do that?

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 09 September 2009

it is interesting to see, on a return from a long summer break, that Val's campaign to preserve the bendy buses continuing apace. The reason that there were problems with these buses was the second car nature of them, the fact that control of fare evasion was not allowed in the second car. It made them more dangerous on the roads. I have to say we had an incident in my constituency a couple of years ago where someone was trapped beneath a bus and dragged for over a mile because the driver could not see what was happening with...

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 09 September 2009

I think Londoners are aware that you have not yet been able to confirm that you have ever used a bus under your mayoralty, and I think more seasoned observers would be aware --

• Question by: Jenny Jones
• Meeting date: 09 September 2009

I am a bit worried that you are just putting your head in the sand and not accepting what everybody seems to know; that public spending is going to be cut and cut quite savagely and, in fact, there are people on your Conservative team here - if you can call them a team because a team works together does it not - on your Conservative Group, who actually want more and bigger cuts in public spending even than we might envisage. So you seem to be not prepared to say anything about difficult decisions.

• Question by: Richard Barnes
• Meeting date: 09 September 2009

Is it not the truth, Mr Mayor - and I note John Biggs has disappeared before he can hear it - that, thanks to the financial incompetence of this Government and its failure to begin to project what local government financing and rate support grants are going to be next year that all of us involved in local government are, almost, living in the dark because we do not know what our funding is going to be next year? We do accept the honesty of the opposition - the current opposition - that there will be cuts in national funding...

• Question by: Richard Barnes
• Meeting date: 09 September 2009

Will you assure Dee Doocey and, indeed, the Assembly that we are doing everything that we possibly can to ensure that both the Olympic Games and the Paralympic Games are the most accessible Games that have ever been held and that accessibility covers free to view viewing for the disabled people at both of these elements of the Games and accessibility does mean television contracts. The latter, which is not within your control, may be influenced but it is certainly questionable but, given the prominence we are giving to the Paralympic Games, it will be foolish of the television schedulers...