Being the Mayor

Ken LivingstoneWhen I wake up, I have two small children, so the first hour of the day is revolved around getting them dressed and fed and then I get off to work and I come in on the tube and so I get that 40 minutes time reading papers.
　　Jackie:  Ken goes to work on London's underground public transport system – the tube and on the way, he reads newspapers. He spoke quite quickly there, so don't worry if you didn't get those answers. We'll listen to that clip again.
　　Ken LivingstoneWhen I wake up, I have two small children and so the first hour of the day is revolved around getting them dressed and fed and then I get off to work and I come in on the tube and so I get that 40 minutes time reading papers.
　　Jackie:  So that's the journey to work. What about once he's in the office, what does he spend most of his time doing?
　　Ken LivingstoneOnce I get in the building, it's just wall-to-wall meetings, the meetings just go on endlessly. I get very little time to read or do anything, just people come through the door, one after the other with problems. And I only ever know what's going wrong, no- one comes to me and says 'This is all going right.'
　　 Jackie:  Ken says he has wall-to-wall meetings, which means lots and lots of meetings one after another all day. He says people only ever come to see him with problems; no-one comes to tell him if everything is going well. Listen again.
　　Ken LivingstoneOnce I get in the building, it's just wall-to-wall meetings, the meetings just go on endlessly. I get very little time to read or do anything, just people come through the door, one after the other with problems. And I only ever know what's going wrong, no- one comes to me and says 'This is all going right.'
　　Jackie:  Despite the wall-to-wall meetings where he has to listen to people's problems, Ken Livingstone still thinks he's got a pretty good job. He says it’s more fun to be the mayor of a city than the leader of a country. Why is that?
　　Ken LivingstoneTo be the mayor of a great world city is one of the best jobs in the world. When I met Mayor Giuliani when he was mayor of New York, he was loving it, even when things were going wrong, it's still an amazing job. 'Cos if you're a president or prime ministerof a country, you live in a bubble, security protects you and you don't get out and about much, except in organised visits. If you're the mayor a city, you actually live in the city, you travel in the city, you understand it.
　　Jackie:  Ken Livingstone certainly does like his job! He says he thinks it's good to be the mayor of a city because you can really live in it. If you're apresident or prime minister, you're surrounded by security all the time and, Ken says, you live in a bubble, which means you don’t have real contact with the outside world. Listen again:
　　Ken LivingstoneTo be the mayor of a great world city is one of the best jobs in the world. When I met Mayor Giuliani when he was mayor of New York, he was loving it, even when things were going wrong, it's still an amazing job. 'Cos if you're a president or prime minister of a country, you live in a bubble, security protects you and you don't get out and about much, except in organised visits. If you're the mayor a city, you actually live in the city, you travel in the city, you understand it.
　　BBC Learning EnglishJackie:  What does Ken like least about his job? Listen to find out.
　　Ken LivingstoneI suppose I like least the generally negative drip, drip, drip of hostility from the British media. Quite unlike the media in Europe or America or China, everything's wrong, things are only ever getting worse.