• Question by: Sally Hamwee
• Meeting date: 20 November 2002

It's a long game, getting longer. Just, going back to the figures on the shortfall, you told us on the LUL shortfall which were broadly accepted and which were disputed by LUL and by the Government. The funding gap in the LUL plan, which is obviously their figures, I may have missed it, is that accepted by the Government?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 20 November 2002

I remain in a state of ecstasy on this matter. Returning to the PPP, I put to you that you're saying that your approach to this is a negotiating tactic, and you're assuming the Government will buckle under. What is your next best expectation?

• Question by: Eric Ollerenshaw
• Meeting date: 20 November 2002

So, am I to understand that next year, they will be pressing for next year's pay claim, leaving this year's pay claim until 2006, until you sort it out, or independent arbiters, so we could face the likelihood of strikes next year then?

• Question by: Eric Ollerenshaw
• Meeting date: 20 November 2002

They'll do everything, as they have in the past, to do your bidding within the London Labour Party, as you now have it totally in your pocket. Are you actually telling me, Ken, that the RMT has said there will not be any pressure for any kind strike over pay, and they are quite prepared to wait for 2006?

• Question by: Eric Ollerenshaw
• Meeting date: 20 November 2002

: I assume the Deputy Mayor is in agreement with your figures here, and, therefore, she, in her capacity as the Labour Mayoral candidate will be able to put some pressure on the Government. And I also assume that your candidate for Chairman of London Labour Party, Len Duvall, will presumably be helping you in this pressure on the Labour Government, and indeed we would have some sympathy with you, in terms of putting some pressure on the Labour Government with this fiddle that's going on. But the particular thing I'm interested in is when you said, I think, last...

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 20 November 2002

So, suddenly now, you can't provide the money it's totally insignificant and no-one wants it, whereas when London Underground had to provide the money, it was a life and death issue, sufficient for you to go around abusing the management there and calling them knuckle heads?

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 20 November 2002

So, where does this leave what Bob referred to as the Big Easter Present, at the time, for his members? Presumably now he is going to have to wait until Easter 2006. So, does he or any of his drivers have concerns about that?

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 20 November 2002

You've got Bob Crow on the board of Transport for London. He's actually voted to support the way you're handling this, has he, without any reservations?

• Question by: Brian Coleman
• Meeting date: 20 November 2002

But surely the whole point is all that information about night buses, about congestion charge, about policing, is being delivered through people's doors, in London by other bodies by other means. What we don't surely need is a return to 1980s' municipal socialist newspaper, which most boroughs of whatever political persuasion have scrapped long ago, in the interests of cost saving, and in fact in the interests that all the evidence says the residents never read them anyway.

• Question by: Brian Coleman
• Meeting date: 20 November 2002

I was fascinated by this newspaper. Many thousands of copies will be recycled in Barnet. Particularly the letters page - "Dear Ken". I wonder what's happened to the letter, "Dear Ken, why are you so marvellous" signed Ms N Gavron of Highgate? I don't quite know why that one didn't get in. But I did wonder quite how we select these letters for publication. And are letters critical of the Mayor going to appear in this publication? Or will it just be letters saying, "Dear Ken, you are marvellous." Love every Labour Member in London.