• Question by: Tony Arbour
• Meeting date: 20 October 2004

Londoners will be relieved to hear that. Can I ask whether or not, since this actually affects many hundreds of thousands of Londoners, the GLA will be contributing to challenges to the Government on this policy?

• Question by: Tony Arbour
• Meeting date: 20 October 2004

Well, indeed, that would make an article, I suppose, in The Londoner for all those people you have been telling us have withdrawal symptoms because they have not been receiving it over the past six months. Do you not think that it is reprehensible for the Government to have firstly challenged the human rights court decision, which you will recall said that everybody had the right to a decent night's sleep, and do you not think that, if you really were, from what you are saying on this particular issue, a true libertarian, believing that the rights of Londoners are...

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 20 October 2004

I will resist the temptation to say what it means in English. The truth is, that the Forum is a political organisation which you have funded out of public money, is it not? It is not a social organisation at all.

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 20 October 2004

You were quoted in The Guardian after the event referring to the European Social Forum in this way: 'As against some backward traditions in parts of the left, they positively celebrate and give voice to the diversity of the movement seeking alternatives to neo-liberalism.' Is that an accurate quote?

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 20 October 2004

October 2003.

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 20 October 2004

The reference to the GLC may be a more appropriate Freudian slip than usual in the context of this expenditure. We know that the first Mayor's approval form reported to the Assembly concerning any expenditure on this was on 31 March 2004 of £25,000 for a feasibility and logistical study. However, it is reported in The Weekly Worker on 23 October 2003 that you had been approached for financial support as long back as then and were very enthusiastic. Is that right?

• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 20 October 2004

I certainly welcome your decision to help host the ESF, but is there a balance to be struck in helping pay to host something and controlling the agenda and how the event is organised?

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 20 October 2004

We note that in one of your speeches at this event, you gave a commitment that in 2008 London would be celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Cuban revolution. Can you tell us more about your plans?

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 20 October 2004

Do you not think it would have been more upfront to tell people about the level of commitments you were giving before they had a chance to vote?

• Question by: Damian Hockney
• Meeting date: 20 October 2004

On the basis of that argument, you could say that things like fare evasion do not cause the running of additional trains. In actual fact, with 20,000 people given free travel, you could argue that the transport system would have actually achieved more in income, because those people would have had to have used it and would have paid. London therefore has effectively lost £100,000, £200,000, or £396,000.