Caroline Pidgeon, leader of the Liberal Democrat London Assembly Group and chair of the London Assembly Transport Committee, commenting on new proposals from Transport for London to allow Oyster card users to check their accounts online and to allow Oyster customers to submit refund applications online said:
Born in Farnborough Hospital in 1984, Sam Webber has lived in Bromley all his life apart from his 3 years away at university. Sam attended 14th Bromley Cubs at Bromley Methodist Church. He went to Bickley Park School and Dulwich College and has a degree in Politics from the University of East Anglia. Before university Sam spent a year working as an intern for Simon Hughes MP in Southwark & Bermondsey.
His family still live locally and his late mother was a popular teacher at Bullers Wood School. She was also a community activist and was Secretary of the Bickley Society. Sam has been a school governor for several years and is currently Chairman of Governors of a primary school in the Bromley & Chislehurst constituency. In 2010 he was the Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Candidate for Bromley & Chislehurst. As a commuter, working in central London, he is keen to see a better deal for passengers on both the trains and buses. He lives with his girlfriend Vicki who works in Bromley. Sam is the Media & Communications secretary for an Air Training Corps Squadron. He was on hand to welcome former Marks & Spencer Chairman Sir Stuart Rose on a recent visit to meet Cadets and Staff. This sort of youth work is vitally important and should be celebrated.
LibDem Leader of the Opposition on Bromley Council, Cllr Tom Papworth,has condemned the massive cuts in the Tory Council budget as "callous" and calledon the Tories to "get their priorities right."
The cuts in public services would affect the most vulnerable people in the borough, the elderly, children in care and the mentally ill.
London Liberal Democrat MEP Sarah Ludford has strongly welcomed the tax decisions Liberal Democrats have secured in Government, meaning benefits for ordinary Londoners while ensuring that the richest people in the country pay their fair share.
She commented:
"Liberal Democrats have ensured that this is a Budget for the millions not the millionaires. Thanks to our influence, nearly a quarter of a million Londoners are being lifted out of income tax altogether and three million will receive an income tax cut."
Over 20 million working people will be better off next year after Liberal Democrats in the Coalition Government delivered the biggest ever increase in the income tax personal allowance in the Budget.
The massive £3.5bn tax cut for working people delivers:
The biggest ever single uplift in the tax threshold
A personal allowance of £9,205 in April 2013
21 million working people getting an extra £220 tax cut
Brings the total tax cut for basic rate tax payers to £550
Brings the total number of people lifted out of tax to 2 million.
Criminals have been warned that 'if you break it, you fix it' as part of a new poster campaign launched by London Liberal Democrat Mayoral candidate Brian Paddick and his candidate for DeputyMayor, Lib Dem London Assembly Member, Caroline Pidgeon.
The London wide payback programme co-ordinated by the Mayor's office will be an alternative to short term prison sentences for convicted criminals so that they can give something back to society. The slogan for the proposal - 'You Break It, You Fix It' appears on posters at 176 sites around London.
Liberal Democrat European justice & human rights spokeswoman and London MEP Sarah Ludford has welcomed new proposals from the European Commission to tighten laws across Europe on seizing illegal assets from organised criminal gangs.
This will improve cross-border cooperation by establishing tougher common rules such as asset seizure even without a conviction or linkage to a particular crime, or when the suspect is dead or has transferred assets to a third person.
At the very last Mayor's Question Time before the Mayor and London Assembly face elections in May the Liberal Democrat London Assembly Group this week set out a series of examples of how Londoners are now worse off than was the case four years ago
Mike Tuffrey, the Liberal Democrat London Assembly housing spokesperson said:
The European Court of Human Rights has today ruled that police 'kettling' during a demonstration a decade ago did not constitute a deprivation of liberty and breach of human rights.
The case was brought to the Strasbourg court by a demonstrator and some London passers-by who were kettled at an anti-globalisation demo at Oxford Circus in May 2001 which became known as the May Day riots. They claimed they were deprived of liberty in breach of Article 5, the right to liberty, of the European Convention of Human Rights. Such a claim was rejected in British courts up to and including the House of Lords.
