Blog

By Jenny Jones AM, Green Party

The expansion of the cycle hire scheme to East London is great news for the people living there, but what about the rest of us? There is no big expansion south of the river to Clapham or Brixton (nor the Peckham border, where I live). There is no push northwards up to Camden Lock, or even westward into Hammersmith. It even falls short of actually entering the Olympic site, due to Met police demands for security and conflicts over sponsorship. It seems that Barclays have managed to secure the cycle hire bikes right outside their HQ while the Olympic site goes without.

This is a real disappointment for all the other people living and working in Inner London who won't have the scheme coming to their area. In fact, the London scheme will have only a third of the number of bikes that Paris has. The London Cycle Hire scheme will have around 8,000 bikes available by 2012, Paris already has 24,000 bikes. The Mayor has had a complete failure of ambition on this.

By Ken Livingstone, Chair, One Society Many Cultures

The economic downturn and deepest cuts to public services in decades will not only do enormous harm to our society. It is also creating fertile conditions for reactionary ideas to thrive.

Across Europe we are already witnessing a frightening rise of racism. There is a constant drumbeat of bashing immigrants and, in particular, the Muslim communities. The expulsion of Roma during the summer in France underlined just how repulsive the climate is becoming.

Much of this intolerance is being inflamed by mainstream governments who, in part, seem determined to deflect attention and blame from the recession.

A particular focus of much of the scapegoating is on bans to prevent the wearing of religious clothing and other forms of religious expression.

Commenting on the government’s welcome of the Browne review into Higher Education funding and house repossessions in the Capital, Ken Livingstone said:

“The higher cost of living in London means that students graduating from their degrees will be hit even harder here than elsewhere.

“The government talks about the need to reduce the national debt, despite the damage its approach will mean to the economy, but has no hesitation in ratcheting up graduate debt.  The government is going to make students pay for an economic situation that bankers, not students, created.

“This policy will deter poorer students and squeeze very hard those on middle incomes once they have graduated.

“If the government imposes this policy it will have a particularly severe impact in London, which has the largest student population in the country and where those graduates already contending with the higher cost of living in London would be saddled with debt repayments at the same time as they struggle to make ends meet. Trying to pay for the cost of a flat is already hard enough for most graduates in London – now repayments on even bigger tuition debts will be hanging over them too.   

“Boris Johnson has been silent on the Browne review today despite the particularly sharp impact the government’s approach would have on London.  The mayor has time to write his £250,000-a-year Telegraph column every week but not to comment on behalf of families and students who will have to contend with even higher costs as a result of his Parliamentary colleagues’ attack on middle and lower income people.”