Weekend roundup for 1 October
Featuring conkers, concrete cones and caffs
Well here we are in the the last quarter of the month. Is it still too soon to put the heating on do you think?
To distract you from the skip fire that is the world right now, this week’s roundup has a liberal sprinkling of good news across it; from saved libraries to cancelled strikes and the potential return of Printworks.
The full roundup (which includes all the food and drink news as well as a bunch of arts and culture stuff) is only available to paying subscribers. A subscription costs £5 a month or £50 a year and there’s a week’s free trial if you want to see what you’re signing up for:
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News bits
🚌 Let’s start with some good news: next week’s bus strike has been called off after 2,000 Arriva drivers were offered a new pay deal “the details of which have yet to be revealed”.
🇮🇷 Twelve people were arrested outside the Iranian Embassy in Princes Gate earlier this week. The Met said that at least five officers had been injured during the protests, which were sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini who had been detained by Iranian ‘morality police’.
🎥 Ofcom has launched an investigation into Sky News after they received nearly 600 complaints about presenter Sarah-Jane Mee incorrectly describing protests against the death of Chris Kaba as crowds paying tribute to the Queen.
👮♂️ New Met commissioner, Mark Rowley, gave an interview to the Today Programme earlier this week (listen here). In it he reiterated his promise that the Met will “attend all London burglary reports” and his aim to get the force out of special measures within 12 to 18 months. Rowley also said that the Met needed “to be ruthless in rooting out those who are corrupting the integrity of the organisation; the racists, the misogynists”.
🚇 Couple of Elizabeth Line updates this week. First, Bond Street station finally has an opening date. It is 24 October (“subject to final approvals”). Second, the line has actually carried more passengers than expected since it opened. 14 million more to be exact, which means a “£20 million fares bonus” for TfL.
🛤️ Sticking with TfL for a second: New Civil Engineer has a rundown for the contenders who might take over from Andy Byford as commissioner. The list includes Sarah Feinberg, who succeeded Byford as president of the New York Transit Authority, and “fans’ favourite,” former chief of Crossrail, Mark Wild (fans?).
🧹 This week the mayor announced he was extending free travel on public transport to TfL’s cleaners catering and security staff. That means there will be around 5,000 more workers who will now be eligible for free travel.
📚 More good news: South Norwood Library (aka ‘the Brutalist library’) has been saved from demolition. The new Mayor of Croydon Council has promised to spend the £800,000 that had been earmarked for bringing the library’s proposed new home “up to the required standard” on improving the existing building instead.
🎧 How the hell does Sadiq have the time to host a weekly podcast? Clean Air with Sadiq Khan is a new show from LBC in which the mayor “speaks exclusively to public leaders, politicians, environmental activists and celebrities from around the world who are helping lead the fight against climate change.” Confirmed guests so far include Richard Curtis, Ed Miliband and Lily Cole.
🗺️ In a very nerdy but interesting blog post, Steph Gray explains how he built the queue tracker for the Department of Culture, aka ‘the most British bit of Internet ever made’.
🏠 The rumour is that the new owner of a “double-fronted Georgian villa on Navarino Road, London Fields” is none other than Drake. But, as Sophie Heawood points out in her Rightmove Roundup, “is he willing to pay 10 mil for a double-fronted Georgian that has been violated restored by a bloke who launched various boozy bars and diners and venues in the area, after first removing refurbing those venues’ souls?”.
🌰 If you want to know how bad the cost of living crisis is getting in London, look no further than this guy who is attempting to sell bags of conkers online (via reddit/London).
Art and culture bits
🇲🇼 Samson Kambalu’s statue of the Malawian Baptist preacher John Chilembwe and European missionary John Chorley was unveiled in Trafalgar Square this week. In The Guardian, Adrian Searle gives ‘Antelope’ a five star review, calling it “a reckoning with history”. Meanwhile the mayor’s office has said that “there are no current plans to scrap the Fourth Plinth scheme,” to make way for a statue of Queen Elizabeth II.
⚡This week Battersea Power Station announced that it would be hosting a five-day (slightly fascistic-sounding) ‘Festival of Power’ to celebrate its opening. From Friday 14 to Sunday 16 October and Saturday 22 to Sunday 23 there will be “free family friendly activities and performances” including ‘Arcadia’s Lords of Lightning’, described as “a duelling spectacle involving multi-million volt bolts being fired between the two ‘Lords’”. What could go wrong?
🏭 Meanwhile, The Times has a (paywalled) look into the transformed Power Station, which marvels in its “industrial aesthetic combined with sleek, beautifully detailed modernism” and the “shimmering art deco splendour” of Turbine Hall A.
🪩 In other ‘big old industrial building’ news, it looks like Printworks might not be gone after all. Even though the venue is still due to close in 2023 “for a number of years during a period of modernisation,” the events company Broadwick Live is currently in “detailed talks” with developers about “continuing to operate Printworks following the development”.
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