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@turpe
*London Assembly Liberal Democrats will ask tomorrow why Ken Livingstone has poured another £31 millions of taxpayers' money into congestion charge contractor Capita.
At a London Assembly budget committee hearing, Lib Dem members will grill the mayor on his new contract with Capita Plc as well as the original deal that Transport for London entered into.
Sally Hamwee, Lib Dem chair of the London Assembly, warned that there were at least three serious unanswered questions about the mayor's deal with Capita:
'The mayor told us traffic in the charging zone would fall by ten to 15 per cent,' she said. "In fact it is just one per cent higher than that. He has to explain why that means the net income has been halved from £130million to just £65 million.
'Despite a 27 per cent increase in half-year profits in July, Capita claims it is not making a profit on congestion charging, and Mayor Livingstone gives them an extra £31 million. We need to know whether Capita can come back every year to ask for more cash.*
(Lib Dems, 2003)
Or, in other words, the Congestion Charge was never intended to work - it was intended as a revenue generator and, when it failed to generate enough revenue for Crapita, the good taxpayers of Olde London Towne were forced to shore up Crapita's profits.
I'm well aware that Crapita no longer administer the C-Charge, but the pessimist in me doubts that the new operators are going to do this out of the goodness of their hearts. Something tells me that IBM will be making a hefty chunk of change and that the rest of the revenue will be pumped into London's transport network - another public service that is being run as a private, profit-making business.
I'd love to think that this new charge is about something other than making money (and god knows, I hate idiots that feel like a 4x4 is necessary to navigate the cratered, pock-marked landscape that is Old Brompton Road) but - as already opined - this is just going to be another slight inconvenience for Araminta. Her husband Jeremy will simply put up the already-exorbitant rent he charges on those buy-to-lets he bought in awful Hackney to cover the costs.
I'm sure Private Eye will probably dissect this in a far more comprehensive manner than I can.