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• Reference: 2008/0798
• Question by: Peter Hulme Cross
• Meeting date: 12 March 2008

Does the Mayor believe that it sends a good signal to children to allow them to travel at taxpayers' expense? Does this not promote the dependency culture?

• Reference: 2008/0795
• Question by: Peter Hulme Cross
• Meeting date: 12 March 2008

Further to your answer to my question 531/2008 please can you supply the cost/benefit analysis figures for the solar panels on City Hall and the solar panel/wind turbine scheme at Palestra, both of which are unlikely to generate enough electricity in their entire lifetimes to even pay back the installation costs. How do you judge that such uneconomic projects promote London's economic development?

• Reference: 2008/0797
• Question by: Peter Hulme Cross
• Meeting date: 12 March 2008

Is the mayor confident that TfL will continue to receive the expected revenue from this contract now that the assets of PDVSA have been frozen?

• Question by: Peter Hulme Cross
• Meeting date: 12 March 2008

Just a quick question about the building that you are talking about in Ealing. I have to say I do agree with what you say in this respect because I thought it was an extremely ugly building. It has been nicknamed the Penny Whistle. But 700 odd flats there. You did not mention the effect that that would have on the local infrastructure. You have 700 odd new families in that area. What about the schools, the hospitals, the doctors, the dentists and the transport; all of that will be affected and there is no provision in those plans to...

• Question by: Peter Hulme Cross
• Meeting date: 12 March 2008

Mr Mayor, the Assembly has no power anyway. You know that better than anybody else. The only power that the Assembly has is to amend your Budget if we have a two-thirds majority and that is hard to achieve. If we were here 24 hours a day we still could not hold you to account, we still could not scrutinise what goes on effectively so that is not the issue. It is not the issue that Assembly Members have other jobs elsewhere. The issue is that when we want to scrutinise something we get the information at the last minute...

• Question by: Peter Hulme Cross
• Meeting date: 12 March 2008

I think you are diverting the question here. That is what you are very good at, I have to say. Every time we ask for information we are told we cannot have it. We then have to make a Freedom of Information request which takes endless time to do. The supply of information is like getting blood out of a stone, particularly from your office.

• Question by: Peter Hulme Cross
• Meeting date: 12 March 2008

Yes, but children do not think about what contribution they are going to give in future years. They are focused on the present, quite rightly. Getting on to a bus does not cost anything, it is free. They get the idea that that is a right, that that is free. It is a very difficult thing to shift later on. It gives them quite the wrong idea. We have seen, where children get on to buses, they behave like children very often and it has an effect on all the other passengers on the bus. There are old people who...

• Question by: Peter Hulme Cross
• Meeting date: 12 March 2008

It is not the right message to give to children that something is free. You do not go into a sweet shop and help yourself to a handful of sweets; you pay for them. Likewise, if you are going to get on a bus and travel from A to B there should be a charge for it, otherwise children get the wrong idea that something is provided free and they can just make hay with it, as many of them appear to do.

• Question by: Peter Hulme Cross
• Meeting date: 12 March 2008

lot of children like to be independent; a lot of them will get on a bicycle and some of them will walk, but where travel is free on a bus they will just jump on a bus.

• Question by: Peter Hulme Cross
• Meeting date: 12 March 2008

You mentioned that a lot of children are living below the poverty line. Undoubtedly this is useful [information] in that context but here you are dabbling in social engineering are you not?