Inside City Hall

Series 3 Episode 1

On Inside City Hall this episode, London Assembly Members Neil Garratt and new co-host Emma Best discuss:

• Election Results. Including a sales pitch for the modified d'Hondt electoral system used for electing Assembly Members.
• Tram Trouble. Rolling stock problems on the Croydon Tram, echoing Central Line problems. The repeated fares freezes sound good, but is it short-term gain, long-term pain as they drain capital investment from London's infrastructure.
• Pay Per Mile. The media have been reporting that Conservative pressure forced Mayor Khan to abandon plans for Pay Per Mile. That's curious because he never really admitted to having such plans! Regardless of your view, it would fundamentally change the way people think about the roads across London and such a change needs an open debate not to be snuck through.

Do you have a question for us?

Tweet us:

@NeilGarratt

@EmmaBest22

@CityHallPodcast

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[email protected]

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Need more City Hall news?

Try:

Neil's City Hall Diary on substack

City Hall Conservatives on substack

Or the City Hall Conservatives on YouTube

Series 2 Episode 13

On Inside City Hall this episode, Neil Garratt and Nick Rogers discuss:

• ULEZ - a "major" announcement. The Mayor makes a "major" announcement about ULEZ Scrappage, but it looks more like a rounding error that fails to solve the cost of living impact of the Mayor's charge and still leaves companies playing ULEZ Musical Chairs with too few compliant vans available to meet the demand.
• Solar Together. The contractor that caused so many problems with their Mayoral-approved solar panel programme has gone into liquidation, making a bad situation worse. A follow up  to the story in Series 2 Episode 7, in January.

What have we been reading, watching, or listening to this week?

Nick. After the movie, now the book: Master and Commander and the Patrick O'Brian Aubrey-Maturin series.

Neil. Human Factor by Graham Greene, my first Greene but certainly not my last!

Do you have a question for us?

Tweet us:

@NeilGarratt

@NJROnline

@CityHallPodcast

Email us: 

[email protected]

[email protected]

Need more City Hall news?

Try Neil's City Hall Diary on substack

Or the City Hall Conservatives on YouTube

Series 2 Episode 12

On Inside City Hall this episode, Neil Garratt and Nick Rogers discuss:

• Shawcross review. The Police and Crime Committee looked at the major review of the Prevent anti-terrorism programme.
• ULEZ. Unusually, not the charge itself but TfL's "computer says no" approach to people trying to pay it.
• Wennington fire. The London Fire Brigade's review of last year's major blaze which highlights that the LFB faces some distinctly rural firefighting problems, as well as more familiar urban and high rise challenges.
• Mayor's Junk Food ad ban. Research widely quoted by the Mayor and his allies has been cited by academics as case study for bad science, the kind of activist "research" that undermines public confidence in science.

What have we been reading, watching, or listening to this week?

In a naval-themed discussion, Neil's been watching the classic Master and Commander starring Russel Crowe, while Nick watched BBC documentary The Warship: Tour of Duty following Britain's biggest ever warship HMS Queen Elizabeth's maiden voyage through disputed waters around China.

Do you have a question for us?

Tweet us:

@NeilGarratt

@NJROnline

@CityHallPodcast

Email us: 

[email protected]

[email protected]

Need more City Hall news?

Try Neil's City Hall Diary on substack

Or the City Hall Conservatives on YouTube

Series 2 Episode 11

This week on Inside City Hall, Neil Garratt and Nick Rogers discuss:

• People's Question Time. The people want to talk about ULEZ, but the Mayor wants to smear critics as "holding hands with the far right".
• City Hall Budget. And the Conservative alternative to tackle dirty air and the cost of living.
• Road Pricing. The Mayor's post-ULEZ pay-per-mile plan to charge every vehicle in London every time it moves, which is starting to look increasingly like a plan to tax outer London to fund TfL services in central and inner London.
• Operation Elaborate. A major police operation to tackle organised online and phone fraud by shutting down iSpoof.
• Met Recruitment. Mayoral rhetoric meets reality: the Mayor has been claiming the government must fund 6000 extra police officer this year not the 4077 offered. But they've only managed to recruit about 3000.

What have we been reading, watching, or listening to this week?

Clarkson's Farm, on Amazon Video

Do you have a question for us?

Tweet us:

@NeilGarratt

@NJROnline

@CityHallPodcast

Email us: 

[email protected]

[email protected]

Need more City Hall news?

Try Neil's City Hall Diary on substack

Or the City Hall Conservatives on YouTube

Series 2 Episode 10

This week on Inside City Hall, Neil Garratt and Nick Rogers discuss:

• The Mayor's Cost of Living Summit with Martin Lewis the Money Saving Expert does not go as planned when the public bring up ULEZ and Martin thinks they have a point. Then undermines the Mayor's rent control obsession.
• Blue light shared working, eg police making use of space in fire stations.
• Missing children. Staggeringly, Police in London record 25,447 cases of missing children per year relating to 8,414 individuals.

What have we been reading, watching, or listening to this week?

Diary of a CEO Episode 216 interview with the Mayor (YouTube)

Ealing Comedies: Passport to Pimlico, The Titfield Thunderbolt, and Whisky Galore!

Do you have a question for us?

Tweet us:

@NeilGarratt

@NJROnline

@CityHallPodcast

Email us: 

[email protected]

[email protected]

Need more City Hall news?

Try Neil's City Hall Diary on substack

 Series 2 Episode 9

This week on Inside City Hall, Neil Garratt and Nick Rogers discuss:

- The new ULEZ Scrappage scheme, which launched on Monday,

- How Sir Mark Rowley is cleaning up the Met, while the Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime may not be helping,

- Nick's article on the future of Conservatives in millennial London,

- The Night Czar gets 40% pay rise, but what is there to show for her existence?

What have we been reading, watching, or listening to this week? - City Journal's 10 Blocks podcast - Short Circuit (1986) classic 80s sci fi - I, Robot by Isaac Asimov - Exploring ChatGPT and Novel AI

Do you have a question for us?

Tweet us:

@NeilGarratt

@NJROnline

@CityHallPodcast

Email us: 

[email protected]

[email protected]

Links we mention in this episode:

Neil's City Hall Diary:

Neil Garratt's City Hall Diary | Substack

TfL scrappage scheme:

Scrappage scheme - Transport for London (tfl.gov.uk)

There's a ~1 minute excerpt of Neil's Q&A with MOPAC in the podcast, here's the video of the full exchange:

https://youtu.be/skC7ZxUoubo

Nick's OnLondon article:

Nick Rogers: Millennial voters are key to restoring Conservative fortunes in London - OnLondon

This is the 10 Blocks podcast episode about the way crime is concentrated:

Stubborn Facts About Crime: 10 Blocks podcast | City Journal (city-journal.org)

ChatGPT, the new AI system everyone's talking about:

New chat (openai.com)

Novel AI, an AI bot powered by ChatGPT that apparently will write a novel for you, or help you play a game of quasi-Risk!

NovelAI - The AI Storyteller

Series 2, Episode 8. How the Mayor's ULEZ lines crumbled

Neil Garratt and Nick Rogers are joined by fellow AM Peter Fortune in the aftermath of an explosive January Mayoral Question Time at which we confronted Mayor Khan with the paper trail showing the Mayor had made false and dishonest statements about his ULEZ consultation.

It's been covered by the BBC, ITV, the Evening Standard but here we go behind the scenes to discuss what we actually knew, what the Mayor claimed, and how the Mayor's statements simply don't hold up. 

We also discuss The West Wing, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, the double slit experiment, and how WWI began because that's just how we roll.

Do you have a question for us?

Tweet us:

@NeilGarratt

@NJROnline

@PeterTFortune

@CityHallPodcast

Email us: 

[email protected]

[email protected]

[email protected]

Links we mention in the show:

Peter, Nick, and Neil quiz the Mayor in October 2022. Notice that the Mayor repeatedly denies knowing anything about the consultation results. We now know he received a detailed briefing 2 weeks before this and his Deputy Mayors and Chief of Staff were being briefed weekly throughout...so bear that in mind when you listen to his answers.

YouTube: Mayor grilled on ULEZ after leaked consultation results revealed 66% oppose London-wide expansion

June 2022, Peter quizzes TfL Finance Director about road user charging, finds out that it's already being worked on.

YouTube: London Mayor already has teams working on road user charging

The Integrated Impact Assesment (IIA) for expanding ULEZ to outer London, by Jacobs engineers. Commissioned by TfL as part of the consultation, this is the most comprehensive information we have on the likely impact of expanding ULEZ, the Mayor ignores it because it shows the change in air quality will be tiny. Jacobs IIA (PDF)

We discuss our alternative air quality plan, which you can read here  Every Breath You Take (PDF)

Series 2, Episode 7. Neil Garratt and Nick Rogers review the latest news from London and City Hall, in this episode:

- Mayor Sadiq Khan's Solar Together plan for home solar panels. Aiming to generate electricity, it's also generated huge numbers of complaints, even the Mayor publicly admitted it had gone wrong. Neil's Audit Panel has investigated and found serious problems with the process.

- A year of zero youth murders in Croydon. A great news story and a big turnaround from 2021, what's beind it?

- The Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) consultation results are in, what did Londoners really think? And did the Mayor pay attention?

- Cargo bikes. A modern version of the classic "butcher's bike" with electric assist that can carry a surprisingly large load, increasingly common in central London as businesses find they make commercial sense. What is the potential and what are the obstacles to growth?

PS: in the episode Neil says it'll take between 27 and 28 minutes to cycle from City Hall to London Bridge. Actual elapsed time: 27 mins 36 seconds from bike shed to ticket barrier. Bosh!

@NeilGarratt

@NJROnline

@CityHallPodcast

Series 2, Episode 6. Neil and Nick are joined in the Windsor Castle pub by special guest Dr Tom Cohen, a Senior Lecturer in transport at the University of Westminster. We discuss:

- Childhood transport memories,

- Active travel, cycling, e-bikes and e-scooters,

- "shared mobility" such as dockless bikes, and why it's not really sharing if you charge rent,

- How to run consultations with the public that don't look like a "fix" (one for the Mayor to tune in...) 

- The 1 hour transport "budget" and whether transport should try to go faster.

- The 15 minute city, how it goes wrong (clue: people will make their own choices)

- We also touch on "Order Without Design" by Alain Bertaud, a superb book about the way cities are better shaped by markets than by central planning. I highly recommend it, we hope to do a fuller review in a future episode, but here's a little taster.

Finally, an apology for the sound quality in parts of this episode, I'm afraid that's entirely my fault - Neil

@NeilGarratt

@NJROnline

@CityHallPodcast

This week on Inside City Hall:

- Neil and Nick give their first impressions of Sir Mark Rowley after his first appearance at the Police and Crime Committee,

- What to do about Just Stop Oil? What did Sir Mark say when we asked him?

- Neil laments attacks on art, will galleries just put everything behind glass like the Mona Lisa?

- Sustained questioning of the Mayor about ULEZ, where he admitted it might be delayed because of the cost of living pressure,

- and the Mayor's extraordinary claim that he neither asked for nor received any information about the ULEZ consultation between May and October, nor asked any questions about it at TfL Board meetings. Can that really be true, or will he be "clarifying" his answer?

@NeilGarratt

@NJROnline

@CityHallPodcast