12/03/2014 BBC London News

Good evening. Electric cars, hired by the hour, are the latest idea to

get Londoners around the capital, in an environmentally friendly way. The

idea ` effectively a four wheel equivalent of the "Boris bike" ` has

proved popular in Paris and is being funded by a French billionaire. Nick

Beake reports. This is how they sell them in France

` clean, fast and flexible electric cars zipping around the capital.

Zero noise, zero order. `` zero smell. The trouble is, back in

London, there's been zero uptake in many places for these greenest of

cars. But this French billionaire says his new hire scheme can finally

make us love electric. Today's electric cars are only for VIPs, a

happy few, because it's very expensive car. Our proposal is to

offer to all the citizens a cheap formula which is complementary of

public transport. He's promised 100 of these will be on our streets by

this time next year. Like the Boris Bike, you find your vehicle online

and you're away. It works out at about ?10 an hour. There's also a

monthly subscription of ?5 to ?10 or an on`the`day fee, which has not yet

been revealed. Lots of people might like the idea of an electric car but

many are put off by the cost and, also, the way you're restricted by

the battery life. So, just how many Londoners will go for this Parisian

import? From this summer, the French investors will take over the running

of the charging points London already has and create thousands

more. They hope they can succeed where City Hall has stalled. In

2009, the mayor pledged 25,000 charging points in London. The

following year, that was dropped to 7,500. Today, just 1,400 have been

installed and latest figures show only 27% were actually being used.

The key question we have to ask ourselves is, "is the current Source

London system good enough?". In my opinion it is absolutely not. There

aren't enough charging points, the technology is second`rate, and it's

just not serving the needs of the consumer. And that's holding back

the development of electric cars on our streets. So this initiative, on

paper at least, looks very promising. So 100 of these may be

zooming to London over the next year but there's still a long road to

travel to arrive at Boris Johnson's vision of 100,000 electric cars in

the capital. Thames Water has apologised to

people living on the Thames whose homes were recently flooded `

admitting its infrastructure wasn't able to cope. Tonight, they met

flood victims together with officials from the Environment

Agency at a public meeting in Wraysbury. Alice Bhandhukravi has

been at the meeting. I understand the meeting has only just ended.

That's right. The last people are filing out of the room. It was

completely packed. No shortage of people attending, very keen to

listen to what the Environment Agency and Thames Water had to say.

The main bone of contention was around the Jubilee river and a

feeling that people here were sacrificed for the sake of people

living in Windsor and Maidenhead, further upstream. The Environment

Agency argued that Wraysbury would have flooded anyway, a point that

many people disagreed with. Further downstream it may be, but

the main channel cannot cope with the volume of water. But that is the

same volume of water as would have been progressing down the... No,

it's not! No, it's not! Order! Order! Order!

They were handing out leaflets like this to join a campaign group to

press for lasting reform to help prevent these kinds of floods.

Judging from this evening's meeting, there will be no shortage of people

signing up. A councillor in Tower Hamlets has

apologised after he likened some of his political opponents to Oswald

Mosley's 1930s Fascist party. The comment was made at a meeting, which

appeared to get out of control. Here's our political correspondent

Karl Mercer. Have a look, have a look, have a

look! There's not much escaping Naseem. This is what you call a

salesman. And everywhere you looked in Whitechapel Market this

afternoon, there was selling going on. For now, it's all about the

price of goods. But in two months, Tower Hamlets goes to the polls like

the rest of London in local borough elections. History tells us that

elections in Tower Hamlets can get... Well, just a little bit

messy. This time, it seems to have started early with accusations of

racism at a recent budget meeting. The white elite do not want talented

Bengalis to speak. The bad`tempered meeting got worse. And despite the

current chair of the Labour group, Councillor Jackson, dismissing the

people of Tower Hamlets as nothing more than curry people in an e`mail

in 2010... The borough is not about curry. It's about heritage, about

culture, about diversity. And there was more to follow. Let me say one

thing to you. Oswald Mosley had the Blackshirts in the '30s. John Biggs

has the black cardigans. Councillor Choudhury, that was more than

offensive. SHOUTING

Can you lot shut up? Councillor Choudhury later apologised for those

remarks after it emerged that Councillor Jackson was wearing black

because she was in mourning. Anwar Khan, though, says he stands by his

remarks. People want a debate and Labour, because of their might and

the numbers they have in council, want to stifle debate. Which is

quite unpopular, because people have elected you to go and speak. John

Biggs is Labour's candidate to be mayor of Tower Hamlets in May's

election. He is standing against the current mayor Lutfur Rahman, who

used to be a Labour Party member. It will be hard`fought, possibly

bitter, if past history is anything to go by. The way that you can offer

leadership in this borough, regardless of whether you're Labour,

Tory or wherever else, is by working to bring people together. Not by

throwing allegations of a personal nature and tearing people apart.

Please! Despite that, no`one expects this row to be the last before

election time. That's it from me. So let me hand

you over to Wendy for the weather forecast.

Thank you. I think we'll have a couple of mornings that are even

foggy than this one. Tonight's fog warrants a warning from the Met

Office. We could be down to 200 metres visibility through the night.

It's already forming and there will be dense patches into the early

hours of the morning. Where you don't get a fog, you'll have a

frost. Temperatures close to freezing. There could be disruption

to transport tomorrow morning before the fog lifts into cloud and breaks

away to give us sunshine into the afternoon and then the temperature

will cover very nicely `` recover nicely. The outlook is similar on

Friday but fog less of a problem over the

Friday but fog less of a problem over the weekend.

Good evening. Step outside in the morning and it feels a bit fresh.

Reassure yourself, it could be a lot worse. Exactly a year ago it was

extraordinarily cold and snowy. These were some of the scenes. This

march is very different. A very pleasant in the sunshine, once the

fog has cleared. The fog is re-forming again right now. Nasty

patches developing through the night, becoming widespread across

England and Wales. In the north-west, rain across Scotland.

Temperatures well below these values. We have a yellow warning in

force from the Met Office for fog. Could be very difficult patches

around and disruption is certainly possible. Check your BBC local radio

station in the morning. These are the areas we think will be worst

affected. The Thames Valley, the Somerset Levels, the Severn Valley,

the Trent Valley and up towards Merseyside. It went before the

everywhere but the risk is there. Fewer patches further north but more

cloud across Scotland, particularly in the West, where it will be a

dreary, damp