{"id":47008,"date":"2012-03-01T09:00:10","date_gmt":"2012-03-01T09:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bigsmoke.org.uk\/?p=47008"},"modified":"2012-02-29T23:17:34","modified_gmt":"2012-02-29T23:17:34","slug":"do-we-have-answers-on-peoples-question-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bigsmoke.org.uk\/?p=47008","title":{"rendered":"Do we have answers on People&#8217;s Question Time?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong>Dave Mentiply wonders how open to questioning the Mayor really is.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>In his 2008 manifesto pledge to make London <a href=\"http:\/\/image.guardian.co.uk\/sys-files\/Guardian\/documents\/2009\/04\/27\/complete_accountability.pdf\">more accountable<\/a>\u00a0(pdf), Boris Johnson criticised Ken Livingstone\u2019s attitude towards the People\u2019s Question Time. He vowed to increase its frequency to a minimum of four each year thereby giving Londoners a better opportunity to engage with their elected Mayor.<\/p>\n<p>However, on the official website for London Mayor it states that meetings are held just twice a year. There is absolutely no mention of the pledge in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.london.gov.uk\/get-involved\/public-meetings\/peoples-question-time\/frequently-asked-questions\">his manifesto<\/a> to host a minimum of four per year. Since Boris Johnson was elected, meetings have been held in Bromley (2008), Bethnal Green and Brixton (2009), Harrow and Camden (2010), and Wandsworth and Havering (2011). That\u2019s eight People\u2019s Question Time events in four years when there should have been at least 16.<\/p>\n<p>The next People\u2019s Question Time is scheduled for March in Hammersmith. According to <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/#!\/GreenJennyJones\/status\/174459081178882048\">this tweet<\/a>\u00a0from Jenny Jones (h\/t <a href=\"http:\/\/londonist.com\">Londonist<\/a>), the event is undersubscribed. Curious, given the fact that Boris was going to \u2018ensure maximum participation\u2019 by advertising each session to as wide an audience as possible.<\/p>\n<p>Another gripe is that on the Mayor of London website assurances are made that after each People\u2019s Question Time event, a full transcript, audio recording and webcast will be available. As far as I can tell, only transcripts can be accessed. Not good enough for those who are unable to read the text.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s clear that Boris Johnson has failed to live up to his promises on the People\u2019s Question Time. He treats them as an unwelcome distraction and seems to avoid engaging with Londoners on issues that matter to them. Will he make reference to the People\u2019s Question Time in his 2012 manifesto? One suspects not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dave Mentiply wonders how open to questioning the Mayor really is. &nbsp; In his 2008 manifesto pledge to make London more accountable\u00a0(pdf), Boris Johnson criticised Ken Livingstone\u2019s attitude towards the People\u2019s Question Time. He vowed to increase its frequency to a minimum of four each year thereby giving Londoners a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27005,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[18,244,448],"class_list":["post-47008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-voices","tag-boris-johnson","tag-jenny-jones","tag-peoples-question"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.bigsmoke.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/assembly-banner1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p20Jsr-cec","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bigsmoke.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bigsmoke.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bigsmoke.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bigsmoke.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bigsmoke.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47008"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bigsmoke.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47008\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47010,"href":"https:\/\/www.bigsmoke.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47008\/revisions\/47010"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bigsmoke.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/27005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bigsmoke.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bigsmoke.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bigsmoke.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}