Weekend roundup for 12 February
Includes throuples, pork doughnuts and beautiful launderettes
Welcome to your weekly digest of (nearly) everything that’s going on in London. Along with all the important news updates our Arts & Culture section includes the history of one of London’s most “inimitable institutions” alongside an interview with one of our favourite London authors and the reviews for one of the most anticipated art shows of the year. Under Food & Drink we’ve got an ex-Fat Duck chef doing plant-based things in the back room of a Soho pub, plus the restaurant that is apparently “breaking down the taboos of non-monogamous love”.
Let’s get on with it.
News bits
🚨 Obviously the biggest news of the week came on Thursday evening when Cressida Dick quit as Commissioner of the Met. This came after Kristina O’Connor (the woman who was told she was “amazingly hot” by a detective during an investigation in 2011) announced she was taking legal action against the Met and on the same day that ITV reported that there were there were 2,556 occasions when force had been used “on women who said they were pregnant or possibly pregnant” between January 2018 and June 2021.
You can read Cressida Dick’s resignation statement in full here and watch Sadiq Khan’s statement announcing her departure here. The Guardian has a timeline of the controversies that have dogged Dick’s career since 1983.
👈 Yesterday, Labour suspended the MP for Bermondsey and Old Southwark, Neil Coyle “over alleged racist comments” he made to a British-Chinese journalist in a Commons bar.
💰 Somehow Harrow has become “the centre of tax avoidance in the UK”. It took the title from South West London after it was discovered that there more disclosures of tax avoidance there than there was in Leicester, Nottingham, and Manchester combined.
🏙️ There are now 1,149 buildings in London with “fire safety defects so severe” that they need 24-hour ‘waking watch’ fire patrols.
👛 Just when you’re starting to think that the whole ‘Tories hate London’ thing is a bit overblown, one of them goes and makes a point of saying that northerners should “accept lower wages” because “London is London”. Cheers mate.
🚇 Have you heard? Crossrail is nearly finished! The Guardian’s transport correspondent has been on a media trip to see the line in action and reports that flaws are “conspicuously absent”. Meanwhile, TfL commissioner Andy Byford has insisted that he is “not being coy” by refusing to give an exact opening date.
😶🌫️ As Uber comes out in support of Sadiq’s road-charging proposals (absolutely nothing to do with the fact that their London licence is up for renewal next month), Forbes reports that pollution spikes might be “inevitable” as we all return to the office.
🌍 On that note… Extinction Rebellion has published its 2022 strategy, which includes a Mass Resistance event in Hyde Park on April 9. MyLondon (‘pinch of salt’ alert) is reporting that there will then be a “prolonged period of action,” with “protests in the capital potentially extending for weeks.”
🏠 Related to what we were talking about in Wednesday’s issue, TfL has been given the green light to put up 351 new homes (40% of which will be “affordable tenures”) next to Cockfosters Underground Station.
🏊 Another derelict Victorian building is getting a facelift. Haggerston Baths (built in 1904 but closed in 2000) is going to be turned into an open-plan community space and cafe. Ian Visits has the details and some photos.
🧼 The Guardian has a rather beautiful essay on the decline of Britain’s launderettes. Worth looking at if only for the photos of the gorgeous Barbican Launderette.
💋 The award for the most puntastic Valentine’s stunt of the year goes to the PR people at the London Eye who have signed up Love Island’s Shaughna Phillips to broadcast “dating tips and romantic poetry” into the (wait for it) Love EYEland pods.
What you might have missed…
In Wednesday’s issue we tried to untangle the question of who runs London, and spoke to Jenna Goldberg from the London Communications Agency about why that’s such a tricky question to answer:
Arts and culture bits
⛰️ MVRDV, the architects behind the Marble Arch Mound, have published a blog post telling their side of the story. There’s a lot of interesting stuff there, but essentially it boils down to the budget being way too small and the the execution being “loveless”.
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