This is not the bit where we tell you what to think. We at Time Out want to create a mayoral manifesto for Londoners, by Londoners: our ideas on the key issues affecting the capital are below, but we want you to help us create a truly representative final blueprint for London.
You can contribute to our ongoing Londoners’ manifesto here.
Or contact our campaign office directly here.
Public transport
PPP has been a fiasco: let’s re-nationalise the Underground.
Every FTSE100 company with an office in London should sponsor a tube station. Force train companies to introduce Oyster cards.
Reintroduce bus conductors.
Halt the extension of bendy buses and reintroduce traditional buses on more routes.
Congestion charging should be extended but rationalised: those with particular needs (such as mothers with young children) should be charged less than the congenitally lazy.
The environment
We need greater efforts to clean up waterways. Potential polluters like Thames Water, who discharge effluent into the Thames, should be subject to more punitive fines.
We should be informed how much of the licence money paid by free newspaper publishers goes towards street cleaning; that proportion should then be doubled.
Policing
The mayor should hold the Met Police to account to ensure that the force policing the world’s most ethnically diverse city fulfils its remit without fear or favour.
When a member of the public reports a crime, the person at the other end of the phone should sound interested and should always respond by sending out an actual police officer.
The Olympics
There must be a more open framework. At the click of a mouse, Londoners should be able to find out what’s going on.
Grass-roots organisations are losing out as funding is being diverted to the Olympics: we need a commitment to all of London’s sporting facilities.
Foreign policy
Let’s bring representatives of all the major world cities to London in a festival of music, politics, arts and discussion.
Social issues
Why can’t we get a drink in West End pubs after 11pm?
Time for a dog licence scheme with penalty points and charges for regular miscreants.
Stagger school leaving times.
Planning
There should be special planning designation for the Thames riverside from Tilbury
to Teddington.
Rapacious property developers are tearing down our pubs and closing music venues. The mayor has the power to overrule planning permission at borough level and should use it.
Existing homeowners should be forbidden to buy any new property built in London.
Welfare
We need a city income tax that uses wealth from the richest areas to fund opportunities and accommodation in the poorest.
Diversity
Day exchange trips across London for the under-16s.
Fewer mass parades in Trafalgar Square; more street fairs, markets and outdoor music.
London museums should be free to Londoners, with a nominal charge for tourists.
The Asbo should be replaced by community service, with kids working at cultural institutions.
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