Weekend roundup for 15 January
Featuring doggy boroughs, stuffed ducks and pink-toed tarantulas
Welcome to your handy, one-size-fits-all rundown of everything that’s happened in London this week.
If you’re receiving the full version of this issue, which includes all the arts and culture updates as well as the latest food and drink news, then thank you very much for supporting independent writing about London. If you’re not a paid subscriber already and you want to read the full version of the roundup (and start receiving our mid-week issue as well), then you can make that happen right now:
News bits
👮As of Thursday the Met was still refusing to open an investigation into the Downing Street party business meeting. The Times reports that “the force appears to be determined to wait for the conclusion of a Cabinet Office inquiry before deciding whether a criminal investigation would be in the public interest.” Earlier in the week, the Guardian reported that the campaign group, The Good Law Project “had started legal proceedings over the Met’s refusal to investigate”.
🥂 Talking of Tory parties: Shaun Bailey has now resigned as chair of the assembly’s economy committee. Bailey resigned as the head of the police and crime committee last month but he’s still a member of both committees and an assembly member, which means he still gets his salary of £58,543, even though “he has not appeared in his capacity as an assembly member since a meeting of the transport committee on 14 December.”
🐦 The former Mayor of Lambeth, Philip Normal, probably wishes all he’d done was go to a Christmas party. Instead he’s been forced to apologise for “questionable tweets” dating back to 2011. Normal (who is currently campaigning for Labour ahead of May’s local elections) has since said that the tweets, which mock “hairy arabs, Muslim women and big black men,” don’t represent his views and values today.
😷 On Friday Londoners were told to “avoid strenuous physical activity” outdoors due to “very high” levels of pollution. Apparently an “intense area of high pressure” over western Europe means emissions from vehicles are not getting blown away as they normally would.
🏎️ Going back to the Met for a second… The chief superintendent at the roads and transport policing command has said that TfL is targeting one million speeding fines this year (there were 623,000 prosecutions between 2020 and 2021).
🚲 Sticking with transport: There was a record-breaking number of Santander Cycle rides recorded last year, with over 10.9 million hires across the year. And, for the first time, “one million individual customers used the cycle hire scheme”.
👎 The Standard has got hold of some “analysis of 49 of London’s local high streets” and published a list of “10 areas surrounding London’s hottest high streets” where they reckon you should consider buying a house this year (apparently Peckham is up and coming - who knew!). Also on the list is Croydon, which the Standard praises for its many “independent coffee shops, a theatre and lots of parks and open space.” Meanwhile over at iLiveHere.com they’ve just published their list of the top 50 worst places to live in the UK (as voted for by their readers). Coming in at number 17: Croydon.
🐶 If you want a different way to gauge which area of London you should move to, then Douglas & Gordon estate agents have “ranked the most dog-friendly boroughs in the capital” All this really means is they’ve ranked “the boroughs with the highest percentage of properties for sale and rent offering a garden” but if you’re still interested then we can tell you that Kingston tops the list and the City of Westminster, unsurprisingly, ranks bottom.
🔨 Lot of buildings being ‘harassed’ this week. First up, the man who attacked the statue outside of Broadcasting House On Wednesday. The statue is by Eric Gill (who also designed Gill Sans, if you know your fonts) who admitted in his diaries that he sexually abused his daughters, his sisters and his dog. There are Gill sculptures all over London, including this one at 55 Broadway and the Stations of the Cross at Westminster Cathedral.
🇨🇳 The other building being harassed hasn’t even been built yet. But that hasn’t stopped China “demanding” that the British government protect their “proposed £750 million embassy” in London from harassment “after warnings it will be targeted by human rights campaigners.”
🏗️ In other buildings news, the 51-storey Cuba Street tower was due to be granted planning permission this week. But in the end, the development near Canary Wharf was put on hold. The problem is that the 655 bedroom skyscraper, which is two-and-a-half times the height of Grenfell, has only one fire escape.
🏢 And on Friday it was announced that Google have laid out £871m to buy the Central Saint Giles offices (that’s the huge red, green, orange and yellow block just near Tottenham Court Road).
🚂 Turning to very old buildings now. Bromley Council has granted planning permission for a £3m restoration of the grade II listed Crystal Palace subway. When the Palace was still there, first class a passengers used this subway to get to it from the station, but after the fire the original station was destroyed and the subway was left to rot. If all goes well, work on the subway should be completed next year.
🚳 TfL’s controversial ‘See Their Side’ ad has officially been scrapped. The campaign was panned as soon as it was released “for suggesting that the driver’s fear of an angry cyclist from the relative safety of their car seat is equivalent to a cyclist's fear of almost being killed or seriously injured,” but there was a rumour that it was going to make a reappearance following a few tweaks. This week though it was confirmed that that £1m campaign had officially been stopped.
🕷️ ‘Cute’ animal story of the week: Someone abandoned a pink-toed Tarantula on a London Bridge train. Thankfully, it was in a box.
🕵 We now know what the toilets look like in the MI5 building.
Art and culture bits
🕺 Joy Orbison is starting his own club night at Stone Nest on Shaftesbury Avenue (where Limelight used to be). Called ‘Just For You’, it starts next Thursday, and the twist is that you wont know who’s on the bill until you get in.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to London in Bits to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.