Who says we don't need ticket offices?

This is a photo my Southfields campaign team took on Sunday morning of the queue waiting to buy tickets at Southfields station. Sundays are days the Tories think ticket offices should be closed longest, so if we get queues like this now - before their cuts bite - imagine how things will be when the office is closed 50 hours a week more than today.

Since I launched my campaign to save our ticket offices, the Liberal Democrat and Green parliamentary candidates have kindly given it their backing. The only party that has not is the Conservatives.

Given that the Conservatives were so vocal in opposing ticket office closures on Network Rail stations last year (as was I) - there are only two possible reasons for this deafening silence from the Conservatives.

Either the Tories believe rail stations deserve staffed ticket offices but tube stations don't.

Or they're simply incapable of standing up to their own party when they are in power, as in this case since the Tory Mayor of London runs Transport for London.

It's the easiest thing in the world to oppose another party. It's much tougher to tell your own side when they're wrong. I did on Network Rail ticket office closures, on Heathrow, on the 10p income tax changes and on Richmond Park parking charges. But there's no chance of that in the case of Putney's Tory candidate - she's never once criticised the Conservative council and never once voted against her party in a vote in the Commons - not once in the five years she was MP.

When it comes to election day you need to decide whether you want a local champion or a party-first politician. Vote Conservative if you want the latter - and you'll get ticket offices closed longer into the bargain.

Campaigning against themselves

This letter appeared in yesterday's Wandsworth Guardian.

Let me just add that Mr Hawkes is not a Labour Party member, I have never met him and we have corresponded once about an entirely separate issue.

Work starts on Southfields tube

I was at Southfields tube station today to mark the start of the long-overdue work on the station that will add a passenger lift and generally transform it into a station fit for the 2012 Olympics.

The work to Southfields is only being undertaken because Wimbledon's All England Club is hosting the Olympic tennis and, of course, Southfields is the nearest station.

While Putney's Conservative MP has tried desperately to claim credit for this work commencing today, only those who worked so hard to persuade the the International Olympic Committee that the games should come to London can actually do so.

My Southfields survey

I grew up around Southfields - I lived just the other side of the Wandle; my first summer job was in the Arndale where my mum worked for over 30 years; I won my first school football medal in King George's Park.

Southfields will be one of the first parts of London to benefit directly from the 2012 Olympics. Plans are in the advanced design stage to add a passenger lift, ticket hall and generally upgrade the tube station ready for Olympic tennis at the All England Club. A fully accessible station will benefit Southfields far beyond 2012 and I know how long the area has waited for this work.

But there remain challenges. I'm really concerned about plans for massive overdevelopment in the Southfields ward. A new tower block above King George's Park is nearly finished. Skyscrapers of up to 42 storeys are planned for the Ram Brewery. Hardwick's Way and the 16-floor Cockpen House plan in Buckhold Road will add hundreds of people to the area. These plans threaten the area's character and set a precedent for future overdevelopment.

Southfields can be even better. Are there ways we can improve road safety throughout the grid? Find a way to prevent overdevelopment and the loss of garden space while enabling families to expand their homes? Crime is low, but where do you think improvements can be made?

Tell me what you think. My new Southfields survey is live - click here to tell me about your concerns and priorities for Southfields.

May 01: The choice on transport

On Monday Labour launched our transport manifesto for London for the next four years.
Transport is the area that has been most transformed by Labour's eight years in charge of London:

• Buses have been transformed
• The Tube is slowly but surely beginning to benefit from the billions invested
• We've taken control of some of the worst performing train services to creat London Overground
• The number of cyclists in London has never been higher
• London's great town squares like Trafalgar Square are once again being returned to pedestrians
• We've revolutionised paying for public transport journeys by introducing the Oystercard
• The congestion charge has reduced traffic gridlock in the city without the dire displacement around the edges the Tories scaremongered would happen
• And the income from the congestion zone has made it possible for everything else listed above to be provided by Labour without crippling fare rises.

That's what we've already done - but we're nowhere near done. Here's what you'll get by re-electing Labour for another term of office on 01 May:

• A brand new London bike-hire scheme
• Free public transport travel for our service veterans
• Pensioners with Freedom Passes able to use them any time of the day
• More convenient ways of paying for Oyster and the congestion charge
• Cheaper fares than the Tories will saddle you with: each bus journey will be 15p cheaper with Labour
• The expansion of London Overground

Coupled with the campaigns I'm running for:

• Extensive improvements to Putney Station
• Setting up the AirTrack network connecting Waterloo with Heathrow
• More capacity on local train services by returning the six unused Waterloo platforms vacated by Eurostar
• And fully accessible East Putney and Southfields Stations

...these are bold, enterprising, ambitious and achievable plans to make London an Olympic City by 2012.

I don't like talking about what things were like under the Tories - it was such a long time ago that they messed things up so badly, after all. But on transport, even those barely old enough to remember the underfunded, run-down Conservative years have the scars of the dreadful mess they made of London Transport seared into their memories. Don't let the Tories take us back down that tunnel again.

Vote for Ken Livingstone as Mayor and give us a Labour voice on the Assembly for the first time ever by backing local Assembly candidate Leonie Cooper.

You can read Ken's Transport for London manifesto here.

Southfields' Olympic lift

One of the Conservatives' campaign pledges at the last general election was that, if they won Putney, Southfields station and the District Line in general would receive a massive overhaul: a longer platform to accommodate longer trains, air conditioned trains, more trains and a more accessible station.

Of these, the only one they have even tried to claim they have delivered on is the last: a more accessible station - because Southfields is going to get a passenger lift in the next few years. I believe in giving credit where it's due; even to Putney's Conservative MP if and when she is personally responsible for improvements to local facilities as she has claimed in respect of the Southfields Station lift.

So when I met recently with the Transport for London official responsible for District Line services I was really surprised to discover that, contrary to Tory claims, the reason Southfields is getting a lift is solely because it's an Olympic Station: the Tennis Olympics take place at the All England Club, just down the road. As I say, I'm more than happy to credit Justine Greening with winning the lift for Southfields Station - all she has to do is tell us about the decisive role she played in winning the 2012 Olympics for London!

Until then let's give credit where credit's due - to the team led by Tony Blair, Ken Livingstone and Lord Coe - without whom the Conservatives would not even be able to attempt to mislead residents they had delivered any improvements to Southfields Station.

New edition of The Putney Paper - hot off the presses

We've just taken delivery of the new edition of The Putney Paper - copies of which should start arriving through doors across the constituency in the next days and weeks.

Because it's such an important issue locally, we've devoted this edition to transport. Our headline story is the long-overdue revamp of Putney mainline station - something Labour has been campaigning on for years and years (it was one of the demands of my Save Putney High Street campaign, for example).

Inside, I set out my views on Heathrow expansion - the editorial I've written can be read here - and the paper goes on to ask important questions about just how opposed to Heathrow the Conservatives really are.

I also champion my Putney4AirTrack campaign: the proposal to provide a Waterloo to Heathrow service running through Putney: an infrastructure project that should go ahead regardless of the decision on Heathrow expansion.

And elsewhere in the paper I report on Southfields' station's Olympic lift - the fact that the station is finally getting a passenger lift because it is an Olympics Station for 2012 (and not, as some Conservatives are dishonestly claiming, a result of anything they've achieved!), and on the latest bus performance indicators.

Plus a round-up of all the local news from around the constituency and your chance to have a say.

You can read the online edition of The Putney Paper here.