BE PREPARED FOR YOUR POCKET TO BE PICKED BY THE MAYOR

Written by Graham Tope and published in Paddington Times on Tue 7th Sep 2004

So the schools are back, the Olympics past, the holidays are done and the summer that never started is now over.

As one of the many Londoners who have been away for a couple of weeks, and one of the few who forgot to cancel their newspaper delivery, I came across the rather nasty, but also expected, shock that the Mayor will in the next month be telling us how much his inflation busting rises in transport fares are set to cost each and every one of us.

It is a sad fact that last year the Mayor was warned by the Lib Dems that if he carried on spending the way he did, London would end up with a £1 billion debt for the capital. In simple terms, this means Livingstone needed £140 from each Londoner so that he could balance the books of his transport overspending.

When he was tackled on this, he dismissed this as scaremongering and said that this would be sorted out when Ministers published the Transport plans in the summer of 2004, and, because of this, there would be no need for these extra price hikes. Under this promise, Mr Livingstone published his manifesto to be re-elected Mayor and made no reference to fares having to be increased.

So now that the transport White Paper has been published, has this black hole of debt been paid off? Some has. But the funding crisis has not been averted. Now, according to Mr Livingstone, half of this debt has been taken on by central Government which still leaves a whopping £675million, or £95 for every Londoner, to be paid off.

Now that he is re-elected, Mr Livingstone now admits that either Council Tax or fares or congestion charge will have to rise dramatically. Or, more than likely, all three will have to be significantly increased.

There are very few people that object to the idea that there does need to be improvements in London's public transport infrastructure. But that also must be balanced against the costs of those increases in investment. Simply put, how do we as a city afford these extra busses? Even if, and it is a big if, every increase in public transport that the Mayor has made is a sensible decision, Mr Livingstone has been economical with the truth about how these projects would be paid for by London's transport users and council tax payers.

One of the problems that all politicians have always faced is that of a lack of trust. What New Labour, and that now includes Mr Livingstone, have helped to dissolve even further with Londoners, is the inability to be honest and up front with the public. People aren't stupid. You cannot get something for nothing in this world and the public know this.

It is just a shame that only after an election does the Mayor come clean and admit that he has overspent and that it is us taxpayers and transport users that will have to pay for his I spend now, you pay later mentality.