Weekend roundup for 10 April
Protests, strikes, military coups... and The Flintstones.
How a ‘military coup’ was the least dramatic thing to happen in London this week
This week has been a week of protests in London.
First off, Extinction Rebellion struck again, this time at Barclays HQ, where seven members of the group were arrested after they used (rather glam) hammers to break windows before pasting the message “In Case of Climate Emergency Break Glass” on the front of the building.
Then, on Wednesday, hundreds of Deliveroo riders went on strike (it was the first day of unconditional share trading for the company), letting off flares outside the company’s offices to call for better pay and conditions.
And finally, on Wednesday night, things escalated to ‘coup’ level… kind of, when Myanmar's ambassador to the UK was forced to sleep in his car after being locked out of the country’s London embassy.
It seems as if Kyaw Zwar Minn (who had previously has criticised the actual coup in Myanmar) was dismissed as the country's representative after their military attaché in London “took control” of the building (i.e. he changed the locks).
Apparently, an ambassador's job officially ends once the host country (that’s us in this case) has been informed. So although Dominic Raab has come out and said he condemns “the bullying actions of the Myanmar military regime in London” he doesn’t have much choice but to go along with the change. As James Landale explains over on the BBC:
This presents a dilemma for the government. By accepting the ambassador has been sacked, it will face accusations that it is tacitly accepting the authority of the regime in Myanmar. And this is something it does not want to do. So the question may turn to whether the UK will also recognise the now ex-ambassador as some kind of representative of the deposed administration.
Labour Party and BBC now both pissed off with Boris Johnson
The Sadiq v Boris spat has moved up a notch in the past day or so, with Labour’s deputy leader, Angela Raynor penning a Strongly Worded Letter to the cabinet secretary in which she accuses the PM of breaching the ministerial code by using a Covid press briefing to launch a “political attack” on the mayor. Of course, she doesn’t miss the opportunity to mention the “£2.6m taxpayer funded media room”:
Note also the lovely dig at Priti Patel in the fifth paragraph. Zing!
Johnson’s remarks have also upset a few people at the BBC, who are quite big on impartiality and not so keen on public health briefings being used to make party political attacks. A ‘BBC Insider’ has apparently told Politico that the Beeb has “held internal talks” over what to do with the PM's political attacks, and while “a one-off can probably be forgotten… if it becomes a regular and deliberate theme then the issues are obvious.”
Okorogheye investigation
The Independent Office for Police Conduct is deciding whether the Met needs to be investigated over its handling of the disappearance of Richard Okorogheye, after it was confirmed that the body found in Essex was that of the missing 19-year-old.
Meanwhile, 13-year-old twins Poppy and Lily Myers, who went missing from their home in west London nearly a week ago, have been found “safe and well”.
Short Bits:
🛫 Remember when we thought we might need a third runway at Heathrow? You know the one we’re talking about. It was going to cost £14bn and it got approved by Theresa May in 2018? Then it got unapproved by the Court of Appeal on environmental grounds? And then it got approved again by the Supreme Court last December? Well, get ready for another reversal, because Heathrow’s neighbour Gatwick have come out and said (to absolutely no one’s surprise) that extra capacity “will not be needed for many years following a near-total collapse in passenger travel triggered by Covid restrictions.”
🗳 Have you had a Shaun Bailey leaflet through your door in recent days? One that claims that voting from him will save you “£307 by reversing Sadiq Khan’s 10% council tax hike”? Channel 4 has run the maths on that claim and found it to be total bollocks.
🚲 For some calculations that stand up to scrutiny look to specialist insurer Bikmo who have launched a bike theft heatmap which shows that Greater London had the highest rate of bike theft in the country, with 492 thefts per 100,000 residents, that’s twice the rate of the next worst region. Depressing, but at least it’s accurate.
🎬 The Hollywood Reporter informs us that WarnerMedia is renaming it’s London-based Cartoon Network Studios to ‘Hanna-Barbera Studios’, meaning that anyone reading this who is of a certain age will now have the Flintstones or Scooby Doo theme tune in their head for the rest of the day.
📰 Long read of the week: The Guardian goes behind the scenes of a new documentary that examine Met Police corruption in the 70s that led to setting up of unit on which Line of Duty’s AC-12 is based.
Tweet of the week
(Yes, they nicked the idea from here.)
