Despite intensive lobbying by your local Labour councillors and GLA representative Val Shawcross and thousands of signatures on a petition asking for the line that links Clapham directly to Victoria Boris is threatening to cut the service to Victoria instead of improving the service as Labour councillors have demanded from just two trains an hour to at least four.

Clapham residents know all too well the nightmare of travelling during peak hours, being unable to get on overcrowded tubes bound for the centre of London. 

The tragic loss of the South London Line will only make matters worse and it is madness that this Conservative Mayor refuses to listen to local concerns.

Boris has awarded TFL bosses 17 million pounds in bonuses which is an insult to ordinary Clapham commuters who are being forced to pay increased fares for a poorer service.

The council’s website has once again been updated with news on services across the borough – this link outlines the state of play yesterday, but is still fairly accurate. Keep monitoring the main page for further updates as well as TFL’s main site for news about the transport network across the captial – it also has a handy five day weather forecast. The BBC, as ever, is also running a pretty effective weather and news page on the big freeze, which alas is predicting some sharp icy winds and snow over the next 48 hours.

If you have any comment or views on how services are working – or any urgent issues – please contact your local Clapham Town Labour councillors:

Helen O’Malley – homalley@lambeth.gov.uk

Nigel Halesden – NHaselden@lambeth.gov.uk

Christopher Wellbelove – CWellbelove@lambeth.gov.uk

The mayor hiked up fares for those without season tickets – commonly people from low income backgrounds – late last year, with the hit being delivered from the start of this year.

A full run down of the prices, borrowed from a summary on Liberal Conspiracy, is below: 

 -A single bus journey by Oyster up 20% to £1.20

- A weekly oyster bus pass up 20% to £16.60

- Six-zone peak single Tube fare by Oyster up 10.5% to £4.20

- A five-zone off-peak single Tube fare (outside zone 1) up 18.2% to £1.30

- Most Oyster pay-as-you-go Tube fares up by 20p per trip.

- Overall tube fares will rise 3.9% and overall bus fares up by 12.7%.

This is obviously not good for anyone, especially as the mayor continues to take the approach of cutting key services, like policing, while jetting off to Europe to beg for super rich hedge fund bosses to be let off from more scrutiny. Or, as he has done today, whining about those poor old bankers and their desire to leave the country (dont suppose they need any help packing?)

Surprisingly, Clapham Tories haven’t uttered a word about these rises and their impact on residents – nothing on their Parliamentary candidate’s website for Vauxhall or on that of the Lambeth Tories.

How about helping to find out what they think by contacting them asking for their view on whether they back yet more of Boris’ far rises – you can contact their candidate here and your local Tory candidates here. Let us know your feedback by contacting your Labour councillors as well on this page.

We believe that hitting people hard, especially those on low incomes, is not what Clapham needs. These prices could have been avoided had the mayor not already mismanaged the capital’s budget. The question is, do Clapham Tories back their Mayor’s fare rises?

If you do have to venture out today then the council’s website has a service update with links to London Transport and the Met Office. You can also call the council on 020 7926 1000 for further info about local services.

UPDATE! – READ THIS PAGE FOR LATEST INFORMATION

And what a week he had. Disagreeing with Cameron on Europe, delivering one of those incomprehensible speeches that make your head hurt and putting in an entry for farcical interview of the year on Newsnight. It is hardly surprising that our mayor apparently received a fruity text from someone in Cameron’s inner circle that gave him some colourful advice on where he might want to put his opinions.

But beneath the fun of the Boris carnival, there was an incredibly serious announcement that could have ramifications for everyone in Clapham – sweeping transport cuts of up to £5 billion in the next three years. To be fair, Boris didn’t try and hide this, indeed he made a virtue of it, but what he didn’t do was outline real substantive ways in which this budget pole axing is going to be achieved.  He also didn’t feel the need to mention that he has already had a bonfire of transport commitments in the past year that has reduced the scope and employment capabilities of London transport to the tune of nearly £3.6 billion.

Apparently these new savings are going to come out of that mystical, catch all political solution of efficiency savings – as if restricting the number of pens employees are allowed to have on their desk is somehow going to conjure up a pile of fat readies.  The details that have crept out are scant, a pay freeze on some employees and cuts to IT and human resources departments.  Whether or not these figures will add up without the need for yet more sweeping cuts to transport infrastructure – despite Boris’ promises to the contrary – we will have to see, especially as this  mayor has a bit of a problem when it comes to marrying financial issues with the truth.

Earlier this year he went back on a pledge to fund rape support centres, shaving £500,000 off their promised budget, and this week reversed his policy on the low emission zone, blaming Europe, as if no one in the Mayor’s office had thought to have a bit of look at the law before Boris opened his substantial mouth on the subject.

What Boris also didn’t outline was the very real human cost of making these kind of cuts.  If programmes are cancelled, services slashed and departments binned it means less or no work for engineers, technicians, labourers, clerks, building firms, the haulage industry, as well as the IT and human resources employees who Boris already has his eyes on. There is a wave of unemployment that hits hard working people – and their families - in both the public and private sector. And perversely it also results in more costs for us, the taxpayer, as we have to shell out more unemployment benefits and pick up the inevitable costs of social breakdown, such as crime.

This is not to say Labour is blind to the tough financial problems facing the country. But we have to be clear and honest with everyone about where the axe is going to fall and who is going to be underneath it. It wasn’t easy for the Chancellor to freeze the pay of top level government employees this week, but at least he is asking people on big incomes – judges, senior civil servants – to take a bit less next year rather than hitting ordinary people. As we have proven in Lambeth, where we have turned a Liberal/Tory deficit into a surplus, it is possible to sort financial problems out without destroying public services – but only if you’re upfront and talk to people on the ground.

So if and when the Tories turn up on your doorstep in Clapham, how about asking them exactly what they want to cut and how many people will be getting their P45s as a result? You will almost certainly get a bit of a blank expression, because Lambeth Tories like all Tories don’t seem to get the real, practical cost of what they are proposing.

Mayor Boris Johnson (Chair of Transport for London) has agreed to cuts this vital transport line for South London and has ditched all plans to improve services.

If this goes ahead hundreds of local residents, patients and staff at the hospitals who had used the South London Line service to get to Victoria or London Bridge will have been robbed without consultation or warning. Journeys will be complicated by hitherto unnecessary changes en route.

South London badly needs more public transport services, Camberwell in particular. And has anyone mentioned climate change in all this ? Fewer cars should mean more trains!

We have until 2012 to fight off the loss of the South London Line so lets show Mayor Johnson, Transport for London, the Rail Industry and our Transport Ministers that we are not going to be robbed!

Please sign the petition to Mayor Boris Johnson as Chair of Transport for London

Several companies operate across London, Lambeth has four, Car Plus is an overarching organisation providing a single point of contact for car club provision.

26 recommendations came out of the seminar which council officers are currently developing into an action plan. Areas explored included expanding provision of car club bays to housing estates, increasing the speed at which car club bays are designated and parking provision.