Assembly in shambles

Paul Kelso's "Digger" column in today's Guardian shows just how badly we need more Greens on the London Assembly if we're going to get anything like a Green Olympics.

The London Assembly again demonstrated its inability to hold the Olympic project to account yesterday, blowing a chance to question the organising committee's top brass, Sebastian Coe and Paul Deighton, and its chief executive, David Higgins. Given the chance to check on the all-important issue of the rising costs assembly members instead engaged in self-indulgent grandstanding, bickered over time limits for asking questions and offered lengthy statements instead of inquiries. They then had the cheek to issue a statement claiming Londoners were still in the dark about costs. Lord Coe, Deighton and Higgins will have been glad to have got off so lightly from shambolic proceedings overseen by the assembly chairman, [Tory] Brian Coleman.