With just over a week to go until the election, I am out every day pounding the pavements, listening to Londoners and telling them why they should vote for me. What I invariably say is this: that on 1st May they should forget all the over-analysis from Westminster’s media pundits and concentrate on the simple choice that is before them.

That choice is between four more years of arrogance, waste and cronyism from Ken Livingstone, or a new era of fresh thinking from a Conservative administration at City Hall. If I am elected, I will chair the Metropolitan Police Authority to start driving down crime in the capital and will work to cut red tape and get more police officers on our streets, buses and station platforms.

I will reform the Congestion Charge and make it fairer and more flexible. I will protect our precious green spaces and provide more funding for parks. I will axe Ken Livingstone’s planned closures of ticket offices in outer London train stations. Every decision I make will have the concerns of ordinary Londoners at its core.

But I can only make these changes with the support of Londoners from across the capital. On 1st May you have the opportunity to have your say on how London is run, and you won’t have another chance to do so for four years. So please, if you want a change for the better in London, come out and back me and the Conservatives on 1st May.

I’ve been out campaigning in your neck of the woods this week... I’ve been to Ealing, Hillingdon, Brent, Barnet and Uxbridge in the course of a few days, and want to thank everyone I met for their fantastic welcome. The subject that came up time and time again was knife and gun crime. The people of North West London have suffered a series of terrible tragedies over the last couple of years, and stories of stabbings or other attacks are sadly pretty common in the pages of local papers. I was appalled to learn that last year Brent’s hospitals admitted a patient with a knife wound every fortnight, and that in Hillingdon, violent crime has increased by nearly 20% in the last five years.

It is time we had a serious strategy to deal with this epidemic. I believe that London needs a Mayor who will take charge of the Metropolitan Police Authority and work to beef up the police presence on the streets. We should provide the police with more hand-held scanners to root out the guns and the knives, and we should work with the boroughs to tackle anti-social behaviour, which can lead to more serious crime. I am determined to win this election to take these steps towards greater safety for Londoners, and I will be campaigning relentlessly over the next three weeks to achieve a victory. Every vote counts, so if you haven’t yet registered to vote please remember to contact your local council and secure your say on the issues that matter. If you want to see the changes I am proposing, you must vote for them.

As I visit boroughs across London there is one thing that continues to stand out in every area – whether Hillingdon or Harrow, Edmonton or Enfield – and that is the abuse of free bus travel by some young people. It is not right that commuters must endure ten types of irritation on their way to work or home, which is why I’ve just announced ‘Payback London’, a scheme designed to address anti-social behaviour on buses.

Under a Johnson Mayoralty, young people who break the Behaviour Code will have their free bus passes withdrawn, and will only be able to earn the privilege back by engaging in community service. This might take the form of graffiti removal, or volunteering for a local charity – anything that encourages these young people to care for the spaces we all share, and reconsider their behaviour.

Speaking of buses, I want to make it clear here that if elected as Mayor I will protect the Freedom Pass as an untouchable right for London’s pensioners. The suggestions that I will scrap it are absolute rubbish – in fact, I want to extend its use to 24 hours a day so that older Londoners enjoy more freedom and flexibility.

I’ll bring you more news from the campaign trail next week...

Thank you for all your comments last week. It’s great that so many of you are taking a keen interest in the election that will determine the course of London’s future – and even more fantastic that lots of you have pledged your support to my campaign! The race really hotted up this week. A couple of days ago Ken Livingstone and I both gave evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee on crime, and our respective approaches to the problems facing London couldn’t have been more different. Predictably, the Mayor blamed parents, the media and even Margaret Thatcher for the rise in violent crime - anyone but himself or the Labour Government. His regressive perspective never ceases to irritate me. Londoners don’t want a leader who moans about yesterday’s issues or sticks his head in the sand, they want someone to tackle crime head-on.

At the Select Committee I asserted my belief that the Mayor can play a fundamental part in ridding our communities of senseless violence. We must put more police on our streets, we must introduce handheld weapon scanners and we must invest in community groups who have a track record of dealing with young people to turn them away from a life of crime. Clearly the Mayor has run out of ideas, and I am relishing the opportunity to expose the emptiness at the heart of his operation. I’ll check back in next week with more news from the campaign trail…

My Mayoral campaign has reached an exciting stage. After months of intensive research and policy work I can now start telling Londoners exactly how I will make the city safer, cleaner, greener, more efficient and more pleasant to live in.