Caroline Pidgeon AM was delighted to join many local Councillors and other local members out door knocking on Saturday 9th February. The team were joined by Council by-election candidate Sushila Abraham who is standing to represent Berrylands Ward following the sad death before Christmas of the wonderful Cllr Frances Moseley. Sushila has lived in Surbiton for 20 years and is a local solicitor specialising in family law.
The amount of unpaid Congestion Charge and penalty charge notices owed by embassies and diplomatic missions that evade paying the Congestion Charge now stands at £68 million according to new figures obtained from the Mayor by Caroline Pidgeon AM, leader of the Liberal Democrat London Assembly Group.
The Liberal Democrat London Assembly Group has presented a radical alternative to the Mayor’s draft budget, focused on creating 37,000 new jobs, safeguarding London’s fire and police services, and investing
£1.7 billion to build 55,000 new homes.
The proposals involve reponsible borrowing to invest, along with reversing the Mayor's proposed cut of council tax - by 7 pence per week.
At the same time the Liberal Democrat London Assembly Members have shown how extra resources can be found by cutting out long-standing wasteful and unnecessary expenditure, such as chauffeur driven cars for senior Met police officers.
Caroline recently attended a RoadPeace vigil dedicated to all cyclists and pedestrians who have been killed by lorries on our streets. The event was held near to Moorgate, at the London Wall junction with Copthall Avenue. It is the location where RoadPace Chair Cynthia Barlow's daughter Alex was killed by a lorry in 2000.
It is now a year since RoadPeace launched their new campaign: See Me Save Me. The See Me Save Me campaign is dedicated to reducing lorry danger and saving lives, and calls for the elimination of the blind spot through the use of HGB safety technologies such as sensors and cameras.
The Evening Standard has an article exploring the problems faced by commuters trying to use the cycle hire scheme, but finding there are no bikes available, or nowhere to dock them at the end of their journey. As the London Liberal Democrats have discovered, in May 2012 an astonishing 381 stations were entirely empty for more than an hour each day on average, and that 83 stations were empty for six hours or more each day — rendering them futile for long periods.
