In keeping with its selfless and very grown-up public service mission this blog intends to bring you closer to members of the London Assembly, whose often thankless tasks include scrutinising the mayor's policies and holding him to account. To that end I have approached four AMs, each from different parties, to submit themselves to a 20-minute interview.
Three have agreed so far, and Labour's member for Lambeth and Southwark and transport committee chair was the first whose diary windows coincided with mine. Be warned that this was the first audio interview I have ever conducted all by myself - using one of these and a hand-held microphone - and it will probably show.
It's quite a gentle interview, partly because one of the aims of these initial efforts is to allow AMs to introduce themselves without harassment by me and partly because it's harder to be beastly when half your mind is fretting about things like recording levels and if you've got the bloody machine switched on at all. Please make an effort to find my amateurism endearing: I promise to improve with experience.
All that said I think you'll find the interview interesting, especially Val's angles on Boris's plan to scrap the WEZ, his "New Routemaster" policy (the interview was recorded before the announcement about the first bendy route replacements, by the way) and longer-term implications of his mothballing of infrastructure projects such as the Thames Gateway Bridge and the Cross River Tram. Now listen on.
