Weekend roundup for 12 November

Featuring roller boogie, Britney's books and black swans

Tube trains having a bit of a lie in at Neasden on Thursday. Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images.

Watership Down is 50 years old this week. What’s that got to do with London? Well, Richard Adams wrote the book from his home in Islington while working as a civil servant and yesterday an ‘Islington People’s Plaque’ went up at the house (Derek Jarman’s got one as well, although Douglas Adams has yet to receive one).

There aren’t any rabbits in today’s roundup; but there are swans, lemons, tequila and roller skates. To read the full roundup you’ll need to be a paying subscriber. That costs costs £5 a month or £50 a year and it gets you 12 issues a week, including our mid-week issue (which this week was a brilliant column by Paul Wood on Bermondsey, Garibaldi biscuits, Lenin and ‘Trees of Hell’).

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News bits

💚 As you’ve no doubt seen, the public inquiry into the Grenfell fire has been hearing closing statements this week. This entire inquiry warrants an issue all of its own, but for now we can tell you that Kensington and Chelsea council has “apologised unreservedly for the ways in which it failed residents” and followed up by saying that the current national fire and building safety system is “too broken to be fixed by minor changes”. Elsewhere, a barrister representing one of the community groups has said that Studio E Architects should bear “primary responsibility” along with cladding manufacturer Arconic and fire engineer Exova. While, in its final speech, Arconic attempted to “deflect responsibility for the 72 deaths” by saying that more heat was released by the burning contents of victims’ flats than by their combustible cladding.

🟪 The Elizabeth Line has gone from being a torturously slow and expensive laughing stock, to the darling of London’s transport network in just a matter of weeks. That means that talk of Crossrail 2 has started up again. If you want to know what Crossrail 2 is and what the chances of it happening are, then have a read of this.

🏠 After a recent survey by City Hall has showed that more than a quarter of homeowners in London will “struggle to meet mortgage payments this winter”, the mayor put out a statement this week calling for the reintroduction of lockdown-style ‘mortgage payment holidays’. He also called for the return of the Mortgage Rescue Scheme, which allows those struggling to repay their mortgage to sell their homes to social landlords so they can continue to to live there as tenants (depressing isn’t it?).

👨‍🎓️ Also out of City Hall this week was a new ‘education toolkit’, for all secondary schools in London, “to help pupils recognise and call out sexist and misogynistic behaviour.” Here’s Sadiq talking about the project and other ways he’s trying to end “the epidemic of violence against women and girls” on BBC London.

👮 A report from the London Assembly Police and Crime Committee has called on the mayor to push for rule changes which would allow for the “immediate removal” of Met Police officers who are “clearly displaying behaviours at odds with Metropolitan Police Service values.” This is needed because, right now, “they are not subject to normal employment rules and cannot be immediately dismissed – even where a serious offence has been committed.”

🚨 Also this week, Met Commissioner, Mark Rowley said that he wants to start “pushing back” on dealing with non-police issues such as mental health callouts. Rowley says that “only 22% of calls the Metropolitan Police receives are about crime” and that he wants to stop “police stepping in to health and social work because of an absence of other service provision”.

🥒 It’s come to this: A charity has launched a ‘Fruit and Veg on Prescription’ pilot in Tower Hamlets and Lambeth to test whether they can “tackle diet-related illness and food security in the long-term”. Tower Hamlets has been chosen because it has the “highest poverty rate, child poverty rate and income inequality in London” while Lambeth has a high rate of chronic disease and health inequality.

🔋 In August we reported on the fact that property developers in west London were facing a ban on building new houses, because all the data centres built nearby in recent years had meant that the electricity grid couldn’t take any more demand. This week we heard that “Europe’s largest datacentre” is going to be built on a 499 acre site… in East Havering. So at least the ban on new houses will be equally distributed across both sides of the city.

🦢 A black swan called Bruce, a resident of Hollow Ponds in Wanstead, died from avian flu this week. The disease, which has never really been seen in the wild inside the M25 before, has reportedly killed a number of swans and cygnets in the past few weeks.

🫣 Sadiq Khan went on record this week as saying that it “beggars belief” that failed mayoral candidate and Covid party attendee, Shaun Bailey, might get a peerage.

🚇 How many metro lines does London have? Jon Elledge tried to find out.

Art and culture bits

🏢 At the start of this year we talked to Helen Barret (of the

Sounds and Visions

newsletter) about her plans to launch the London Modern cultural festival. Well, that festival is happening next month and it looks great (especially as the host is another former LiB interviewee: John Grindrod). Early bird tickets are on sale now.

👩‍🎤️ Born To make You Happy, which opened at the Residence Gallery (near Victoria Park) this week, is an exhibition which explores issues of “agency, construction of persona and self-coding, freedom and submission” through the work of Britney Spears. The exhibition includes “a library of books recommended by Britney Spears on her personal Instagram” and there’s an accompanying catalogue featuring essays by the artists involved. More details here.

🛋 BILLY.forsale is a “London based IKEA archive project” which aims to “preserve IKEA’s boldest designs from the past five decades, with a particular focus on postmodern designs from the late 1980s and early 1990s”. They normally only sell online, but this weekend they’re taking over the Dinner Party Gallery in Clerkenwell to sell 100 vintage IKEA pieces and host an exhibition of images by Dexter Lander.