• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 16 April 2005

Therefore you think it is ours anyway. I will pass that on to the Labour councillor.

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 16 April 2005

I was just looking up the majority in Hammersmith and Fulham and I think it is survivable. I think we are probably going to increase it on 5 May. To return to the matter in hand, it seems to me there is a fundamental problem here which is that earlier today the Assembly united in supporting all sorts of high-level improvements to London's transport and yet every time we come up against an individual scheme up they pop saying we cannot have this, we cannot have that, it is an elected dictatorship, there is no consultation. There is a fundamental...

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 16 April 2005

Nobody recognises what you mean by the word consultation. Are you prepared to have a little bet with me on the outcome of the election in Hammersmith and Fulham?

• Question by: Damian Hockney
• Meeting date: 16 April 2005

I wanted to know about the measures.

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 16 April 2005

I have to say that people do wonder what is the point of your consultations because in your election manifesto you did not even mention the possibility of raising it to £8. You have heard the voices behind me today (in the public gallery of the Chamber). You are being described these days as a dictator ' a tin-pot one, I think I should add ' for the arrogance with which you choose to dismiss anybody, any views, any advice, including that of your advisors, that does not happen to accord with what you obviously intend to do anyway. Consultation...

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 16 April 2005

I think the proof will be in places like Hammersmith and Fulham for people who find it creeping ever closer to them. I wonder whether you have had words there because I know that the local Labour council is very concerned about the negative image it is giving the Labour Party locally?

• Question by: Damian Hockney
• Meeting date: 16 April 2005

He has made the point quite correctly that I selected certain things; nevertheless they were said. The main point is that what we want to know is not that we see two years on a situation where we still do not really know, but that we know. What are the measures?

• Question by: Damian Hockney
• Meeting date: 16 April 2005

I absolutely agree with what John Biggs just said and indeed with what the Mayor just said. As an opponent of the tram and of the Congestion Charge, I nonetheless think that people do have to have an alternative vision. For example, Tony Travers (Director, Greater London Group, London School of Economics) when he came here a few months back said that one of the problems of analysing what has happened in this first two years of it, is that there is no real proper research on the outcomes that everybody can say is credible, that that is something we...

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 16 April 2005

I think the point, Mr Mayor, is that you do not live in West London and do not have a clue about what is actually required there. Let me carry on to my next question. It turns out that even your own officers advised you against the tax hike of 60% from £5 to £8. What is your message to the 75% of residents, 87% of businesses, including your old friends London First who have begged you not to raise the charge?

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 16 April 2005

In fact, you are saying that you are quite happy to be described as a dictator.