Search questions

• Question by: Navin Shah
• Meeting date: 21 October 2009

Can you confirm that you have sufficient contingency funding and that will cover any slippage or any delays in programme or additional costs and that, therefore, there will be no requirement for building from the public purse or any other source?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 21 October 2009

Hopefully it creates one or two hostages to fortune and helps to raise the expectations on your performance even higher. My other question is about legacy. I do not want to steal Dee Doocey's question but it is this; it seems to me one of the biggest areas of risk is things that do not really have a proper parent so issues of legacy, such as what happens with the Stadium afterwards. If you are going for your mythical gong at the end of the Olympics it does not really matter to you what happens to the Stadium afterwards, particularly...

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 14 March 2007

Right. Are there instances of officers then seeking foreign trips which have been declined by yourself or the Mayor or through the machinery?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 14 March 2007

So they are always accepted?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 14 March 2007

Slightly harder question then. Can you tell us about a trip which was declined, having been requested through the machinery?

• Question by: Murad Qureshi
• Meeting date: 14 March 2007

I can give you two or three reasons why. For example, the old colonial links do mean the Stock Exchanges between London and Hong Kong are quite well established. Dubai; the gold markets are critical there. You would be surprised how much the Asian community uses them out there when they are travelling through. Singapore clearly is the hub of East Asia.

• Question by: Murad Qureshi
• Meeting date: 14 March 2007

This is a question directed at John Ross. You have mentioned BRIC quite a lot; Russia, India and China. What happened to Brazil? I am trying to work out in your international relation strategy for the GLA and the Mayor's Office whether approaches have been made to the Brazilians, given that they are a major exporter of bio fuels and ethanol. They are clearly a big player in some of the things that we want to do. I am not sure for what reasons they were dropped off the four countries that make up BRIC.

• Question by: Murad Qureshi
• Meeting date: 14 March 2007

That was discussed. I am glad to hear that. The other thing, you mentioned a Times article yesterday which I came across as well. Oddly enough, the three cities they mentioned - Singapore, Dubai and Hong Kong - were three cities I have seen on my own travels in recent times. We have colonial links with them. Is it not better to have partnership agreements with cities like that, the new emerging cities, rather than friendship agreements with the Dakars and the Delhis of the world?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 14 March 2007

To put this into another context, do you have a sense of the number of foreign cities that visit London on occasion?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 14 March 2007

Could you confirm that the Mayor receives numerous requests from cities across the world for him to visit, and that he only accepts a small minority of those, given pressures on his time?