Weekend roundup for 11 February
Featuring square croissants, lingering spirits and shiny buttocks
Welcome to your Weekend Roundup. If you're a longtime reader, you know how this goes: We have over thirty stories split across the news, arts & culture and food & drink. Plus, there’s a weekly London long read and something daft we’ve seen on social media.
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News bits
⚖️ You will have no doubt already seen that serial rapist and former Metropolitan police officer, David Carrick was sentenced to 36 life terms this week for committing “violent and degrading sexual offences against a dozen women over two decades” (hours after the sentencing a spokesman for the Attorney General’s Office confirmed that the case was being looked at under the Unduly Lenient Sentence scheme).
Since then, it’s been reported that two other Met officers sent one of Carrick’s victims “sexually suggestive messages,” and that the Centre for Women’s Justice is speaking with a number of Carrick’s victims “to explore potential legal action” against the Met. Elsewhere, the BBC spoke to the detective who ran the investigation to find out how Carrick was brought to justice.
🚘 The ULEZ wars continue…. At the end of last week, the mayor had an uncomfortable ‘clash’ with Martin Lewis over his ULEZ plans (and was called a ‘conman’ by an audience member). Then, on Monday, Sadiq called the plans by Tory boroughs to seek a judicial review of the expansion “wholly without merit” and “misconceived”. So far, Hillingdon, Harrow, Bexley and Bromley have threatened court action if the expansion goes ahead at the end of August.
🚇 This week we learned that a Metropolitan Line train that overran the platform at Ickenham by 50 meters in March last year, did so because the driver fell asleep. There were no injuries caused, but the Standard has reported that “seven London Tube drivers felt so tired at work last year that they filed reports with a specialist safety team within TfL,” and “in total, nearly 30 fatigue reports were filed across all London Underground staff since an online reporting system was launched in September 2021.”
🌃 A quick update following Monday’s ‘All the London we cannot see’ issue: The Telegraph recently spoke to “dark sky advocate” Kerem Asfuroglu who has been testing out his solar-powered, light-up umbrella in Piccadilly Circus (at night) where it had no problems “leeching off the lit surroundings to power itself”. The paper also spoke to Dr Hannah Dalgleish, a researcher in astronomy and society at the University of Oxford, who warned that LED lights are “altering the behaviour of everything alive”.
😶🌫️ Scientists from Kings College London, have analysed data from children attending 51 schools across London, and found that “exposure to tiny air pollution particles known as PM2.5 is linked with higher blood pressure in teenagers living in London,” and that “exposure to high levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) – a pollutant from diesel traffic in London – is associated with lower blood pressure.”
🏘️ It’s the iconic crossover we’ve all been waiting for: TfL and Network Rail have decided to team up and build 20,000 new homes in the next decade, using some of the 14,000 acres of land they own between them. To put that in context, around 66,000 new homes a year need to be built “to provide enough homes for current and future Londoners,” according the mayor.
🚉 The DLR is getting some new trains, and Ian Visits has (of course) been for a nose round in them. We know what you’re wondering and, don’t worry, the answer is “Yes, you can still sit at the front and ‘drive the train’”.
💸 Spare a thought for the residents of Croydon, who’ve not only had to watch their council go bankrupt twice in the space of three years, but who also are now facing a 15% hike in their council tax, after the government gave the council permission “to impose the rise without a referendum”. As you might expect, Inside Croydon is busy organising the revolution.
🚻 This week, entire articles were written about the new loos coming to Waterloo Station in the summer. The interest stems from the fact that the station is getting gender neutral toilets, alongside “a balanced number of female and male toilet facilities”.
👻 Our favourite weird London podcast returns next week. Season 6 of Subterraneans begins on Valentines Day, with an episode “about the Aberfeldy Estate in Poplar, and lingering spirits, and mould, and the housing crisis” (so romantic). If you haven’t been introduced to Subterraneans yet, you can catch up via our interview with its host from last September.
Food and drink bits
🥐 If your croissant doesn’t have right angles then who even are you? The square croissant has become the cronut of 2023 thanks mainly to Le Comptoir Robuchon near Green Park, but it will be making a real bid for immortality when TBC (The Butter Club) arrives in Notting Hill next week. Gabriël Verheij and Alexandre Scour are chefs from Amsterdam, they have tattoos, wear black and don’t smile in photos, plus they make pastries that fit nicely into your Instagram feed. Also on the menu at TBC: a starter of ‘fried chicken and caviar’, and a plate of dressed lettuce that will cost you seven quid.
🚲 Another sad closure this week: Cycling cafe Look Mum No Hands!, which has been on Old Street for 13 years, closed its doors last weekend. The statement on the website says that “the past three years have been very difficult for us and although we did our best to survive, we've come to the end of our time on Old Street.”
🍺 Diageoa are opening a 50,000 sq ft Guinness ‘brewhouse’ and ‘cultural centre’ in Covent Garden late this year and they are (without a trace of irony) calling it a ‘microbrewery’. Stretching over four different buildings and a central courtyard, the £73m development will include a restaurant, an “immersive visitor experience”, a bar serving “limited edition beers” and, of course, a Guinness store.
🍕 Peckham Levels has got two new arrivals in its food hall this month. Little Baobab began dishing out its ‘Senegalese soul food’ yesterday, and “sustainable sourdough pizzeria,” Well Kneaded fires up its oven today. Soft Launch has all the details about the half prize pizzas on offer through the weekend.
And that’s not the only pizza news coming out of Peckham…
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