London Mayoral Election Day

[VERY] Unusually for me, I'm undecided about which candidate to support.

I think Ken has done a lot of good, but also I'm feeling echoes of the worst of the GLC days of cronyism and "special" interest groups benefitting to the exclusion of the vast majority of Council Tax payers...

I also believe that the policies and attitude of TfL reflect Ken's refusal to listen and unwillingness to take reasonable steps contra to doctrine.

As a (non-cycling) road user I wish that TfL would think about how hard they make it for people to get about London!

The brilliant idea of replacing the double yellow lines in Brixton (after 2 lanes of traffic from Stockwell merge with 2 lanes of traffic from Kennington) with car parking (so now 4 lanes of southbound traffic have to funnel into 1 lane within the space of a couple of hundred metres) seems to reflect the thought processes of TfL!

OK, so we now have a Red Route to facilitate arterial traffic to the south of the city centre.

But what good is that when half of it is car parking?

The response from TfL when I questioned this was that shopkeepers were losing business because of the Red Route - how is that any different than when there were double yellow lines?

As someone who has spent hours sitting on buses getting past the shops by The Beehive, I notice the difference between the occasional car double parked for a couple of minutes (usually picking up a fare from the pub/friend with shopping) and 2 stretches of legal parking!

It's made my bus journeys much slower if I travel anywhere near peak times (that includes from 3 o'clock when the children start coming out of school)...

And don't get me started on free travel for under-16s!

I thought we were trying to combat the obesity "epidemic" - how is letting the little porkers take the bus for free for 1, 2 or 3 stops helping them?

Sorry, rant over!

But that's why I'm not sure about Ken...

Boris - charming, but a jester?

And who wants a joker in charge of an already crowded city and its struggling public transport system...?

I'm not sure about Boris, either...

Brian - seeing the mess left in Brixton (when we read about primary school age children who don't attend school because they are too stoned on skunk, it doesn't seem unbelievable - especially when on the way in to work I've seen so many kids who seem unable to walk in a straight line and just launch themselves off the pavement without looking; who says cannabis doesn't kill?), I'm finding it hard to trust someone who left behind a policy of turning a blind eye to "soft" drugs.

So, probably not Brian either...

I'm guessing that a vote for any of the other candidates will only register as a protest vote (valuable, nonetheless), but that makes the second vote of crucial importance.

And if it gets to second votes (which sounds likely) it will be between Ken & Boris...

So I'm going to try out VoteMatch that I read about in Kate Egglestone's column in thelondonpaper yesterday...

Watch this space - not that I'm going to tell you who I'll vote for!

I'll just let you know how well I think the VoteMatch site works...