Tooting's scooter pursuit disputed
Plus an impending homelessness crisis, and polished pachyderms
If you were in Tooting last Tuesday and ordered a pizza for lunch, then you have some explaining to do
Around 2pm on the 18th, the Met’s Road and Transport Policing unit tweeted this:
A few hours later Tooting’s MP, Dr Rosena Allin-Khan, picked up on the tweet and questioned why immigration officers were in attendance at what she assumed was a ‘Covid compliance’ operation.
In a series of tweets Allin-Khan said that she was worried that what the Met was doing looked like “racial profiling” and that this could “amount to indirect discrimination due to its disproportionate impact on ethnic minority groups. If it's not unlawful, then it's definitely immoral and I cannot defend it.”
On Thursday, the Home Office (the chants of Glasgow’s anti-immigration protestors still ringing in their ears) put out a statement in which they made sure to use the word ‘immigration’ a lot:
“The operation in Tooting was conducted in relation to suspected immigration offences and two individuals were arrested on suspicion of immigration offences.
“The Government continues to tackle illegal migration in all its forms and our New Plan for Immigration will speed up the removal of those who have entered the UK illegally.”
Unfortunately, the Met came out with a slightly different story, saying that “The objective of the operation was in response to community concerns about the dangerous and anti-social driving of mopeds,” and immigration enforcement just happened to be there at the same time:
“Immigration enforcement officers were also at the location carrying out their own intelligence lead operation, separate from the focus of roads and transport officers.”
What are the chances?!
The London Economic spoke to someone from The Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants who told them that “illegal working offences” are often used by the Met “to be able to do stop and search raids,” and that, “The Home Office knows where there will be a concentration of migrant workers, so it’s easy for them to do these quick stop raids. There is an amount of racial profiling in this stop and search.”
While, over in the Spectator, Patrick O'Flynn (who used to write for the Express before he represented UKIP in the European Parliament) took the whole thing as evidence that the entire Labour party actively opposes all border controls and welcomes illegal immigration.
Something to think about the next time you order a pizza.
Get ready for London’s worst ever year for homelessness
Back in January of this year it was reported that the number of people sleeping rough, either temporarily or permanently, on London’s streets had gone up from around 1,500 to over 1,650.
Then, earlier this month, we were told that that combined number was “more than 3,000” and that “1,587 people were placed in emergency accommodation between January and March, up 72% from the last quarter”.
In the past week, the cross-party group, London Councils put out a report which says that right now there are about 3,600 rough sleepers in the capital, as well as 60,680 households in emergency accommodation, and 165,000 Londoners living in “borough-provided temporary accommodation”.
That’s more than the population of Oxford.
According to the report we are “fast-approaching a summer wave of homelessness” which could lead to the “highest ever levels by Christmas.”
The reasoning behind the prediction is a thoroughly depressing mix of:
400,000 people being in rent arrears as a result of Covid-19;
130,000 Londoners becoming unemployed since the start of the pandemic;
The furlough scheme ending in September;
The government’s temporary ban on evictions ending this month;
Lack of clarity over what funding will be available for tackling the problem beyond June.
And tackling homelessness is an expensive job. Last year boroughs collectively spent more than £1.2billion on it. And that number is only going to need to go up.
Meanwhile, there are over 20,000 houses in London that are “either long-term empty homes without residents, or second homes.”
In his election manifesto Sadiq said that he “won’t rest for a minute” until he puts “an end to the scandal of people sleeping rough on our city’s streets”. To achieve that he promised to “provide at least 1,000 new homes to allow rough sleepers to move on to more settled accommodation” and to “lead efforts to substantially reduce numbers of rough sleepers discharged back to the streets from the NHS”.
He also pledged to be “a constant thorn in the side of the Tory Government,” and to “fight hard for the money London needs to help those who find themselves on the street.”
Talking of which, just last week the Government announced its Rough Sleeping Initiative funding for 2021/22, with £203 million allocated to councils across the country. If you want to see how much of that pot your borough got, there’s a handy alphabetical list here.
If you are concerned about someone you see who is sleeping rough, then you can let Streetlink London know their location and a few other details and they’ll send an outreach team to check on them.
And the rest…
Late yesterday evening the news came through that the woman fighting for her life after being shot on Consort Road in Peckham in the early hours of Sunday morning was the Black Lives Matter activist Sasha Johnson. The Met have said that, “at this stage there is no evidence to suggest it was a targeted shooting,” although the Taking the Initiative party, to which Johnson was affiliated, have said the attack followed “numerous death threats”.
⚠️CORRECTION⚠️ We linked to the wrong Bloomberg article in our Weekend Roundup. This is the “proper, nerdy look at why developers are still investing in huge office buildings…”. Sorry about that.
The inquest into the 2016 Croydon Tram crash began last week. Seven people were killed in the crash, and 50 were injured; eight of them seriously. The inquest is due to last thirteen weeks, but a few things have come out already including:
The tram was hit the bend at 45mph, but the speed limit on that part of the track was 12mph.
There was a very similar accident ten days before the crash when a driver hit the same bend at 27mph and almost overturned the tram, “but the incident was insufficiently investigated.”
The driver may have been in ‘microsleep’ at the time of the crash. A ‘microsleep’ apparently being when we “switch off” during “a period of low workload”.
The driver had a “perfect professional record.”
Ian Visits has an update on the 20 mile long “tube train sized tunnel” that is currently being dug between Wimbledon and Crayford as “part of the London Power Tunnels project to upgrade the electricity supply across London.”
If you’re a Parkrunner you might have to wait a little longer to run in a park with other Parkrunners. The events were due to return on June 5, but that date has been postponed until June 26 at the earliest “because not enough landowners and local councils had given the green light for events to take place on their patch.”
We’re not big fans of the Evening Standard, but every now and again they publish something good almost by accident, and this essay by Elizabeth Uviebinené on London’s potential to be a ‘15 minute city’ (i.e. a place where “residents are able to meet most of their needs within a 15-minute journey by foot, bike or public transport”) is a good example. We’ve linked to the Yahoo News version just save you from the Standard’s popup bombardment.
Donna Air led a herd of elephants past Buckingham Palace last week. If you want to know why, and where the (wooden) elephants are now then you can read all about it here.
