- The test of 2020 is this.
We need to slash all TFL, that means bus and Tube fares
down to zero and that way, we can get people
coming to London for free
so they can come in and feel like they can go in
and spend, and come to work.
Those dollars and pounds, or those pounds
add up over time.
The next thing I propose us doing is removing
the congestion charge entirely, for the remainder of 2020.
Now that same taxi driver, last night, he said,
"Did you realise that the congestion charge now
"is 24 7 and on weekends?"
He said, "So now, nobody from outside London
"has any motivation to come in and spend money
"at restaurants or go out at night.
"Nobody has any motivation to come in on weekends
"and spend money in our retail establishments
"and promote business.
"This is ridiculous.
"This is a regressive way of taxing people."
It hurts the economy.
We need to remove all that, get people back in town,
and really, allow people to come to London for free.
That's what we need.
Get people to come to London for free and to start spending.
So again, let's get them on the transport
so they feel like they can get on these
transportation pieces, and again, not feel fear.
We also need to get these roads cleared.
There's no point in having these COVID barriers out there.
There's no science behind it.
But nobody wants to step up and make the decision.
We need to get to the science and say,
"Is there really a need to go from three metres of pavement
"to six metres of pavement for a city
"that's at 50% capacity?"
Does that make sense?
While it hurts the economy, hurts our taxi drivers,
hurts our retail establishments, hurts businesses
from going on in London, meetings taking places, as well.
So that's what I propose.
I think we should really look into this
and that's my thoughts on how we can stimulate the economy.
Again, some great questions coming in here, right now,
and I wanna move on to my final point which is this.
We need to get London back to school.
School is an incredibly important part
of the structure of a community.
I really is.
It's one of those basic, fundamental pillars
of a community, is school, and it's not just
for the children, and I'll get to that,
but it's for the parents.
It's so the parents can actually have the freedom
to be adults, and that means having the freedom
to go work, having the freedom to have their time
for their physical fitness, for their mental health,
and even for their recreation.
And look, you know, my wife can the the first one to tell ya
having kids at home and not having an option of daycare
over the past six months has been extremely challenging.
It's been really hard to do.
And we saw with the key workers here, in London,
it was a real question early on, that if you close schools,
it was gonna mean there weren't gonna be enough nurses
and doctors, and firemen and women, and police officers
to even make the city function.
So that's the first level.
The second level is the children.
You know, this has been a very, very
difficult time for children.
They are being told to not run up to strangers,
they're being asked to wear face masks.
You know, my four-year-old son was asked
by an airline stewardess to put a mask on.
You know, I can barely get him to eat his breakfast
or go go school.
That's the last thing he wants to do.
And they're traumatised by this lack of communication,
asking him to do strange things, and also isolating them.
You know, children need to be around social communities.
It's the fabric of what's happening.
It's so important to get these kids back to school.
And yet, there's so much fear out there
for why people aren't doing it.
And so just to let, you know, a little personal note,
I took my son, Kaden, for his first day of school
this week, on Monday.
It was a big moment.
It was a little scary.
And I think we got a picture here, of me an my wife
taking him to school.
He was really excited.
This was before we got to the school.
When he got in there, he freaked out a little bit
'cause there was so many new people.
And again, everybody was wearin' masks,
and gloves, and stuff, but actually on his second day,
we walked in there and we thought there was
gonna be a bunch of problems, and he said, "Bye,"
and he walked right in.
And I took him this morning and he forgot to even
say goodbye to me.
He's lovin' being a school, even though it's strangers
in a strange place, he just loves it because his brain
is working, he's got all this new vocabulary,
these new social habits, these new people.
And now mom, for the first time, ever, has got time
to spend with our second son and get some
quality time with him.
It's changed everything about our day
and it's really the way forward.
Unfortunately, the numbers tell us something
very, very different, right now.
I went in and looked at some of the statistics
and some of the numbers I found was shocking
about how parents feel about getting their kids
back to school.
And I brought a few of those numbers, here.
Again, because I'm a person that believes in data,
I believe in the science, and science determines policy.
No whims, not something to cover yourself, politically,
or to cover something you did in the past.
I look at the science, and when I looked into it,
I really looked at the confidence sentiment about parents
when they're asking about sending their kids back to school.
And these numbers are gonna shock you.
One in five parents in the UK are still unsure
if they should be sending their children back to school.
But it gets worse.
88% say that they would risk a fine to keep their kids
at home, they would risk losing money in one of the
hardest economic times, ever, because they're still scared
of putting their kids to school.
It gets more.
45% of the parents said it's too soon to think
about the children, and 25% are still worried
about the health risk of their children.
And again, it comes down to the fundamentals.
We overdid the campaign of fear and this has been
a disproportionate response to the health concerns,
the health crisis; that's what it is.
And again, there is no science based decision-making
happening, right now.
That's now what's happening, right now.
We are seeing decisions being made and fears
that aren't based on the science, and this comes down
to a complete lack of leadership
from our government, a lack of communication,
and inconsistent messaging, constantly.
That needs to stop.
And so again, my solution is this.
We need to educate the public on the actual science
that it is safe for these children to go back to school,
that it is safe and important to have them
back in school for the structure of this,
and I want to get London back to 100% attendance.
That's my goal.
All children back to school, which is gonna help London
get back to work.
This is what we need.
We need people to get comfortable with it,
we need to show leadership,
we need to show the science that backs this up,
and we need to make the parents really feel
that this is the best decision.
And I know it is.
And that's the decision I made as a parent this week.
My teen-aged daughter also went back to school this week,
and she's loving it, you know?
She really needed that structure, she really needed
that social ability.
Like I said, it's gonna be hard to get Kaden
not to go to school on Saturday
because he loves it so much.
Again, the parent structure is back,
the teachers are working.
You know, the teachers there are so happy to be there.
You can just tell.
They're like, "Wow, we didn't even know
"if we'd ever be back to school."
Everyone's bringin' their A-game,
they're functioning, they're getting paid now,
they're gonna spend money,
they're coming back into London.
This is all part of the process.
And again, I cannot emphasise this enough.
You have to get London back to work
which means the workers have to come back into the city.