Brockley Councillor Darren Johnson is new chair of London Assembly

Slightly old news now, but in case you missed it, Green London Assembly member and Brockley ward councillor is chair of the London Assembly for the next year. See the press release here.

Boris Watch

2 things in particular that the Mayor of London has done have annoyed me this week:

1) Motorbikes can now use red route bus lanes on TfL roads. (Borough bus lanes are at the discretion of local authorities and Lewisham has already confirmed that it does not plan to allow motorbikes to use its bus lanes). This measure is not going to encourage people to take up cycling on London's streets. Motorbikes may use less fuel than cars, but they're still dependent on fast-depleting fossil fuels and contributing to greenhouse gases. The Mayor of London should be focussing his efforts on promoting walking and cycling, not pandering to petrolheads while imposing above inflation increases on public transport fares.

2) It's also been revealed this week that he is scrapping the London Green Homes Concierge Service. Regular readers of this blog will know that I signed up to this scheme last January, and since then have been working on ways to improve the thermal efficiency of my home. The scheme was launched a year ago by the previous Mayor of London and the London Development Agency and was designed to help Londoners cut climate emissions and fuel costs by making their homes more energy efficient.

It wasn't perfect (a London-wide free insulation roll-out to every home would have been better), but it's better than nothing, which, as far as I can gather so far, is what it's being replaced with. The London Development Agency has axed the Green Homes Service from its plans for next year and beyond. This was confirmed early this week by LDA chief executive, Peter Rogers, under questioning by Darren Johnson at the Assembly's budget committee. It seems a huge waste of money to scrap something just one on, just as it was getting established.

Anyway, that's the end of my anti-Boris rant for now. You may have gathered that I'm not a fan, and couldn't quite believe that the people of London elected him as Mayor last year, but I guess that's democracy and we just have to make sure a progressive and green candidate gets more votes than him next time!

Thank you!

Thank you to everyone who voted Green in Greenwich & Lewisham on May 1st. I didn't get elected (it was always a long shot!), but the 16,511 people who voted Green on the London-wide member list did help to ensure that our two existing London Assembly members, Darren Johnson and Jenny Jones were re-elected. Congratulations to Len Duvall who was re-elected as London Assembly member for Greenwich & Lewisham.

The 'vote Green on the peach paper' message appears to have worked, as although we were in 4th place in the constituency results, we leap-frogged the Lib Dems and were in 3rd place on the London-wide list vote. Our percentage of the London Assembly list vote rose slightly in Greenwich & Lewisham, from 10.9% to 11.2%, although this includes an increase of over 4,000 in actual Green votes, due to the increased turnout. We also came in a respectable 4th place in the mayoral race, both in Greenwich & Lewisham and London-wide. Well done to Sian for all her hard work.

Not quite the result Greens were after, as we had hoped for 3 or 4 Green members on the London-wide list, no elected racists and a Mayor who understands the urgency of action on climate change, but given the big squeeze on smaller parties' votes in the Ken/Boris battle, I think we did well to stand our ground, while Lib Dems lost a couple of seats and UKIP/One London were wiped out.

I fear London may now be in for 4 years we can ill-afford of inaction on climate change, worsening air quality and congestion and developers getting away with little or no affordable housing in new developments, but I hope that I will be proved wrong on this. Darren and Jenny will work hard to hold the new mayor to account and to push him to build on their hard-fought Green successes from the past few years, but with Conservatives hokding 11 out of 25 seats on the assembly, Boris Johnson has more than the third required to pass his budget, so the influence of members from other parties may well be limited over the next 4 years.

I very much hope that the new Mayor decides to stick with London's Climate Change Action Plan and the targets of 60% reduction in carbon emissions by 2025 as well as to proceed with the levels of investment in cycling and walking promised by the previous Mayor. I was alarmed by his comments in an interview immediately after his election where he again called for an airport in the Thames Estuary, which would suggest he hasn't grasped the urgency of the need to cut carbon emissions.

Finally, I'd like to congratulate fellow Lewisham blogger James Cleverly, who stood as Conservative candidate for Greenwich & Lewisham in 2004, and has just been elected as Conservative member for Bexley & Bromley with an incredible 105,000 votes. While we're clearly from different sides of the political spectrum, James is a decent bloke who doesn't fall into the 'nasty Tory' category. He's also a cyclist and will, I hope, push our new cycling mayor to make London the cycling capital of the world. Like I said, I hope.

Right, now I'm taking a couple of days off then it's back to business as usual and catching up on Council stuff!

Vote Green on the Peach Paper this Thursday!

Hopefully there are very few people living in London who are unaware that we have elections on Thursday. However, while many are aware of the London Mayor elections, there has been far less media attention given to the London Assembly elections.

The London Assembly is a 25-member body that is supposed to scrutinise and hold to account the Mayor of London, though with the exception of the annual budget it has very little teeth to do so.

Greens currently have two members on the London Assembly, Brockley councillor Darren Johnson and Jenny Jones, who have worked hard to see many of our manifesto pledges from 2004 put into effect. Labour have needed the votes of the Greens on the assembly over the last 4 years in order to get their budget through, and Greens have driven a very hard bargain in exchange for that support. I very much hope that they will be re-elected and joined by Noel Lynch and Green Mayoral candidate Sian Berry.

On Thursday Londoners have 4 votes - first and second choice for Mayor and two for the assembly - one for your constituency candidate and one for the top-up, London-wide list. Obviously, I hope that you will give Sian Berry your first vote for Mayor and me your vote for Greenwich & Lewisham Constituency.

However, the most important vote for us and the one where you can help to elect more Greens to the London Assembly, is the peach ballot paper, which is under a system of proportional representation.


London Greens' recommendation that Green supporters vote Sian 1 and Ken 2 for Mayor has also been quite widely publicised and is a position that I fully support. I'm not a huge fan of Ken and I loathe much about New Labour, but I am a pragmatist and I do believe that out of the three main parties' candidates, Ken's policies, particularly on transport, affordable housing, the London Living Wage and tackling climate change are the closest to those of the Greens. I also believe that his commitment to London and Londoners is indisputable, which I don't feel can be said for Oxfordshire MP Boris Johnson.

While Ken Livingstone as a Labour Mayor is unlikely to have enough votes to get through his budget without working with other parties on the assembly, Boris Johnson as Mayor would be likely to have the necessary third of London Assembly members' to drive through whatever budget he wanted, without any co-operation or discussion with other parties, due to the fact that many of the assembly constituency seats are safe Tory ones. So if you want to have a London Assembly with any power over the Mayor of London whatsover, there is a strong argument for giving your second vote to Ken Livingstone and voting Green on the peach ballot paper on May 1st.

Whoever you plan to vote for on May 1st, it is important that all Londoners who support a diverse, multicultural London and oppose the policies of racist, far-right parties, get out and vote on Thursday. Just as Greens only need 5% to get a seat, so do the BNP, and they came frighteningly close to it last time, with 4.8%. However, the higher the turnout and the more people vote for parties other than the BNP, the lower the danger of this happening.

For a discussion on why voting Green on the peach ballot paper might be the most effective way for voters to stop the BNP, see here. London Strategic Voter also discusses this in some depth.

Need more info?
For more on our policies for London, take a look at Sian's website, or see our full manifesto. The Observer article leader on Sunday argues the case for voting Sian 1, Ken 2. BBC article on Greens and the London Assembly. For more local discussion on the elections, see Brockley Central or Bob from Brockley. And finally, the Independent on Sunday's feature on Sian, in which I am embarassingly (but fortunately anonymously) quoted in relation to chipmunks!

London Assembly Campaign Launch

Today was the official launch of my campaign as Green Party candidate for Greenwich & Lewisham London Assembly constituency. The weather wasn't exactly on our side (someone joked that there was a good reason us Greens these days talk about climate change rather than global warming!), but nevertheless we did our launch on Ha'Penny Hatch Bridge, on the border between Greenwich & Lewisham. I was the Green Party candidate last time round and very much relish the opportunity to do it again, with a little more experience under my belt than last time round. With me in the photo above are Darren Johnson (Brockley councillor and London Assembly member) and Sian Berry, who is the Green Party candidate for Mayor of London.

London Climate Change Budget

Well done to Greens on the London Assembly for getting significant green initiatives into the budget last week. The Mayor needs the vote of the Green assembly members to get his budget through and pledged millions of pounds towards action on climate change in return for their crucial support. This will be the third year in a row that Ken Livingstone has come to such an agreement.

The projects agreed by the Mayor includes £150m investment in total, during the coming year. These projects build on the success of the Green Group's previous budget initiatives. The £150m includes many projects included in previous budget rounds, which have become a mainstream part of the work done by the Transport for London, the Metropolitan Police and the London Development Agency.

· £8 million to make existing buildings more energy efficient;
· a comprehensive green homes programme;
· an £8 million Transport for London Climate Change Fund to support green technology;
· an extra £40 million for cycle lanes, parking and training over the next three years;
· other projects to improve facilities for pedestrians, create more green space and tackle dangerous driving

Darren Johnson, said:

"The Mayor has taken on board our key demands and the result is a budget that provides a serious framework for tackling climate change in London. Climate change is the big issue for London’s future and I’m happy to play a key role in turning fine words into action."

Full details can be found in letter from the Mayor to Darren and Jenny.