At Full Chat

I've lost count of the number of interview requests I've put in that have been ignored, swept under the carpet, 'lost' or simply turned down on the grounds that the politician I want to quiz is too busy. Not too busy, you understand, to talk to their faithful media poodles who'll give them an easy ride and never dare to ask awkward questions. Simply too busy to talk to me and other journos who have the temerity to challenge the wisdom of bus lanes; the speed camera epidemic; rip-off motoring taxes; poor traffic management; lack of investment in roads; driver, rider and pedestrian education and safety; discrimination against motorists and preferential treatment for public transport users.

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01st June 2004

The thing is, politicians have a civil obligation to explain themselves to the taxpayers who stump up their wages. Yet many of those in office choose to run away from journalists like me. The revolutionary London Congestion Charge system is another thorny issue that needs to be seriously questioned. It's something that affects countless millions who visit the capital for work or pleasure purposes. Its main victims are the wealth-creating business people and their employees who have to travel into the congestion zone, but because they're not residents they have no say in who's voted into political office - and that can't be right can it?

I've repeatedly tried to put these legitimate questions to the architect of the congestion charge, Mayor Ken Livingstone. I appreciate he's busy and can't just drop everything to talk to everybody who comes along. But since I write or speak to millions of concerned motorists on a weekly basis via this column, national newspapers plus TV and radio, you might think he'd give me the time of day. But instead he runs - from interview requests and from questions put to him in writing, which he could answer at leisure.

Livingstone's press conferences are also a waste of time, because he gets to choose which journalists and broadcasters can ask questions and which can't. If you do manage to get one in, as I have done on the odd occasion, he can always pretend not to hear it, laugh it off with a joke, call the press conference to a close or engage in inane, time-wasting banter with media people who will give him an easier time.

If only Professor Ivor Gaber of Goldsmith College's Unit for Journalism Research was aware of this before he recently concluded "the reporting of congestion charging was seriously biased; most newspapers did a grave disservice to their readers who, on an important issue such as this, had a right to expect to receive information in a relatively straightforward manner. In this modest task, the majority of the press failed themselves and, more importantly, their readers, too."

And how was I meant to tell my readers and listeners about the pros and cons of congestion charging when the godfather of the scheme was running away from interview requests? Who is biased here? True independents such as me? Or academics such as Prof. Gaber, whose press-bashing report was commissioned by - wait for it - the office of Mayor Ken Livingstone?