Hammersmith fails disabled on Paralympic eve

Not welcome in Hammersmith

Boris once told me, to my face and in public, that it was just too expensive to make Shepherd's Bush tube station accessible for disabled Londoners.

And that was after having spent £39 million on consultants with nothing to show for it.

You might think lessons had been learned ahead of the biggest disability sporting event in the world, when first class facilities are being made available in our own borough for those athletes and local people, such as these in Ravenscourt Park.

But read this account by a wheelchair user who tried travelling to Hammersmith to use the wheelchair ramps that Transport for London had proudly announced would be there, and you find that the reality experienced by disabled people themselves is often very different to what the politicians and officials proclaim. Sorry guv, no ramps and no staff to use them.

I wonder if the pen pushers would be quite so relaxed about this issue if they were the ones in the wheelchairs.