Lyons Report

After all that waiting, and months of enquiry we have the Lyons report which at first summary does not seem to offer much for Londoners. Simply adding higher and lower council tax bands will not address the unfairness of the Council Tax on Londoners; where house prices are higher than the rest of the country.

There seems to be the presumption from civil servants that if you live in London you must be wealthy, which does not take into account those on fixed incomes, or the retired, let alone single parent families.

Yes the Lyons Report has given our Councils the opportunity to charge more for their services, and take more money from us, but that is not the solution. London still relies more on Central Government funding that almost every other comparable world city.

It should not just be a case of this government taking more from us, but giving councils back more money to spend on local services.

Ken you should be speaking up on behalf of Londoners here – why are you keeping quiet?

Olympics - here we go again

So its £9 billion now of our money for the Olympics. We are already spending a billion a year of our money on this project.

Lord James (David James who saved the millenium dome project) said the 2012 Olympics could follow the Dome to become 'an enormous waste of money' unless the Government gets a grip on the event's finances.

Every day you open the paper and the figure has gone up another BILLION - not millions, but Billions of our money.

Now we hear that £675 million will come from the National Lottery - what consolation is that to the good causes who will miss out?

Ken Livingstone has said, in addition to our current planned contributions - sorry planned by whom? Londoners will pay another £300 million over the lifetime of the games.

Yes of course we are pleased for the parts of London that will see a tremendous regeneration over the next five years, but do you get the feeling that too much money is being wasted? Do you feel that your money is being wisely and carefully spent?