"Paul Scott" wrote in message

"Boris Johnson will not renew anwith which provides cheap fuel for
London's buses once the agreement ends later this year. The mayor of
London said half-price bus and tram fares for 250,000 Londoners on
income support, which was also funded by the deal, would still be
honoured. Mr Johnson said he thought many Londoners were
uncomfortable with how the scheme was funded."

I've been following this thread, but no-one has explained how this
scheme actually worked. For example, I very much doubt that Chavez
shipped special cargos of cheap oil directly to London. Presumably the
buses still get fuelled in their depots using diesel distributed in the
usual way, from the usual sources (probably not Venezuela). So, did
Chavez remit the subsidy as cash, directly to Ken? And did any actually
arrive, anyway?

It's also unclear what concrete help TfL has actually provided to deal
with Caracas's traffic problem. Does it now have shiny new Citaro
bendy-buses (or second-hand RMs) clogging up the streets, bus lanes with
unpredictable timing, speed and red light cameras, red routes, a
congestion charge, a fiendishly complex smart card ticketing scheme and
traffic lights that are much more likely to be red than green? Or has
nothing actually changed (which is what pieces in the Guardian diary
suggest) -- http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/may/23/venezuela:
The Diary's queries about what the Livingstonians ever did for Caracas
in return for $15m-worth of Venezuelan oil finally elicit a response: "A
party of 12 Caracas planners came to London earlier this year to look at
traffic enforcement, bus priority and planning of interchange, ie rail
to bus to tube." And? "They came for a week." Anything else? "Er, TfL
remains available to give expert advice to Caracas." Phew. For a while
there we feared Venezuela's capital had been ripped off.

So, if Chavez really has been sending millions of dollars in cash to
London in return for nothing much, you have to ask if his motivation was
similar to his offer of free oil to FARC?