He says that even at the age of six he undertook the two-mile bus journey alone from Streatham to school in Brixton - the implication being that, more than 50 years later, today's parents should allow their children to do the same.

Householders will have to pay more for home repairs and improvements in central London as tradesmen struggle to offset the cost of the congestion charge, it has emerged. Plumbers, electricians, painters and decorators today revealed that the £5-a-day fee would mark the end of free estimates for customers inside the zone.

Some warned that they would charge as much as £15 just to visit to give quotes. Others plan to stop working in the charging zone altogether.

The Royal Mail is locked in a bitter dispute with Mayor Ken Livingstone over the crippling cost of his congestion charges on its delivery fleets. The charges could cost the Royal Mail £2 million a year and will plunge it even deeper into the red - raising the spectre of more lost letters and delivery delays for Londoners.

Seven of the capital's 10 worst bus routes are not to be improved despite Ken Livingstone's promise to make buses better before congestion charging includes 322, 185, 3, 77a.

The Samaritans are facing a shortage of night shift workers at the charity's Soho centre following a decision to refuse them exemption from the charge.