Mark Pack

London’s Metropolitan Policy Authority had £30m deposited with Landsbanki, the Icelandic bank which collapsed in late 2008. Combing through some of the latest financial information from the MPA, it’s clear that the MPA is now expecting (at best) to get 83% of that back, leaving the police with a £5.1m loss. Ouch. Though not so [...] »

The news that Lembit is interested in running for Mayor has produced a flurry of comment online from Liberal Democrats (such as Andrew Reeves’s piece) so over to you: what do you think?  »

Lembit Opik is interested in becoming Mayor of London, while The Guardian has a round-up of comments from backbenchers about the Budget. Although all are anxious about one aspect or another, notably they all overall support is as with Annette Brooke: I don’t like the budget but I dislike the economic situation we find ourselves [...] »

I blogged recently about the welcome moves being made to open up London’s transport data to wider use. A great example of what opening up data can produce is the map showing the locations of tube trains on the network in real time – available for free and produced thanks to the enthusiasm and civic-mindedness [...] »

As Wired reports: Transport for London has announced that it’s lifting all restrictions on the commercial use of its data. The move could fuel an explosion in mobile apps that need access to the datasets, making them more attractive to developers who want to charge for their apps. Currently, TfL offers up a selection of [...] »

The use of stop and search by the police, particularly in London, has often come under criticism. Most often it’s been about ridiculous cases where someone has been stopped or, more seriously, the deeply held suspicion amongst many communities that their members are irrationally singled out by the police for far more searches than their [...] »

Transport for London is running a consultation on Mayor of London Boris Johnson’s plans to axe the western extension to the congestion charge zone, increase the daily charge, change the exemptions and introduce a discount for automated payments. At heart this is the sort of consultation which gives the word a bad name: the big political [...] »

Following Labour’s trouble in Redbridge, where a Labour candidate was elected and has then had to resign because they were a council employee and so barred from standing, the same again has happened in Barking. This time it is Goresbrok ward, where Labour’s victory was particularly notable because it involved ousting BNP councillor and GLA member [...] »

The prophets of doom had an off day this week with Camden Liberal Democrats winning the delayed Haverstock election. They held all three seats against a Labour challenge and even scored a small swing from Labour compared to the last Camden council elections. The next election test in London will be south of the river in Lambeth [...] »

From a party news release: Caroline Pidgeon, the Liberal Democrat London Assembly Transport spokesperson, has become the new leader of the Liberal Democrat London Assembly Group. She takes over from Mike Tuffrey, who has led the group since 2006. Commenting on future plans for the Liberal Democrat London Assembly Group Caroline Pidgeon said: “The concerns of Londoners are the [...] »