• Question by: Jennette Arnold OBE
• Meeting date: 17 November 2004

I will preface my three questions to the Mayor with just a little quick remark. I just think that we need to look and ask ourselves, "Why did we not get this update at the start of the meeting?" This is not an event just solely for us, but this is an event where the Mayor-Mr Mayor, you have told us that you have welcomed and you have been working hard to ensure that we get the East London Line, but can I just raise a couple of issues with you, and that is the phased approach. Certainly, members of...

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 17 November 2004

Labour were making promises that they knew they could not keep in 2001.

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 17 November 2004

I wanted to warmly support your comments about the Olympic bid, but I was going to suggest three further areas where we might make even greater progress in emphasising Londoners' and other people's support for the bid. The first is last week we signed a protocol with an organisation known as TELCO (The East London Community Organisation), which I think is ground-breaking. It talks about the ways in which local people will benefit from the Olympic Games in the area, through employment, training opportunity, and housing that is built on those sites. The second area is I know that there...

• Question by: Bob Blackman
• Meeting date: 17 November 2004

Can I take it, then, that you agree with the proposals to site a Super Casino in Wembley with wall-to-wall one-armed bandits that are basically going to be a process of milking the poor to fund excessive profits for those individuals that are running these casinos?

• Question by: Dee Doocey
• Meeting date: 17 November 2004

Thank you very much. I agree with almost everything you have said, but could I invite you ' rather than us agreeing that this unelected, £18 million a year of taxpayers' money should just be left as it is ' to take some direct action and to join with me in direct action to try to force the Government to close it down. It is a scandalous waste of taxpayers' money, and rather than huffing and puffing about it, I believe we ought to do something about it... I am suggesting that the Mayor and I might go to Downing...

• Question by: Dee Doocey
• Meeting date: 17 November 2004

I actually do not agree with that. I think it is just going on and on and on. Nothing is happening, and talk is cheap, and actions speak louder than words, and again, I invite you to take some direct action.

• Question by: Dee Doocey
• Meeting date: 17 November 2004

Good.

• Question by: Dee Doocey
• Meeting date: 17 November 2004

Nonetheless, you are in favour of direct action, or you are not?

• Question by: Dee Doocey
• Meeting date: 17 November 2004

I am inviting you to try, Mayor.

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 17 November 2004

Given that we are at one on the desirability of abolishing GOL, and given that I am sure you will acknowledge that the statistics which you quoted, with which I agreed in your earlier question, are in fact based upon Parliamentary questions put down by Mark Field (MP), the Conservative Shadow Minister for London, would you agree that the best step forward is for you to persuade your Government to include in its election manifesto a commitment to abolish GOL, as my party has?