Weekend roundup for 17 June
Featuring meat stairs, mosaics and miniature Barbicans
This is your final reminder that next week will be LiB-free, as we’re taking our annual summer break. Normal service resumes on Monday 26th.
Before we go we’ve got a bumper Weekend Roundup that includes all the latest on the Tory mayoral candidate infighting; the attempts to make the city cooler using roofs; why MyLondon’s use of AI ‘journalists’ might not be turning out how they intended; our weekly rundown of the new restaurant reviews; and the crucial information of where you can see an old packet of Hula Hoops on display in London right now.
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News bits
🏗 The row over the plan to turn Haringey’s Omega Works warehouses into luxury flats (making around 100 people homeless into the bargain) has now reached the BBC. So far, 6,000 people have signed the petition opposing the plan, and the campaign’s organiser told the BBC that the development was tantamount to “social cleansing”. The council said that their “planning policy seeks to secure a long-term sustainable future for warehouse and creative living and to ensure the unique characteristics of this type of accommodation are provided in new warehouse living developments.”
🏙 In related news, and with thudding inevitability, the developers of the Canada Water Masterplan have announced that they need “to slash plans for 120 affordable homes” at the site, and put in 86 private units instead. British Land are blaming the move on the mayor’s new fire safety regulations; claiming that, because all residential buildings over 30 metres must now have two staircases, they have no choice but to get rid of hundreds of affordable homes.
🏚 Staying on this topic: The Housing Ombudsman wrote a piece for City AM this week, revealing this his office now undertakes 10,000 investigations a year, and half of those are in London. “This crisis is limiting social mobility, disrupting communities and holding back the economy,” writes Richard Blakeway, and “London is the epicentre of this national crisis.”
🗳 Housing policies will be up there in the list of priorities for the eventual Tory mayoral candidate, and this week we got a bit closer to finding out who that will be, as the party whittled down the names to a shortlist of three. The big surprise was Paul Scully, not making the list. According to Wes Streeting, the reason the Minister for London (and the only MP on the longlist) didn’t make it through to the next round was because Rishi Sunak’s administration is “toxic” to voters. Ouch. The three that did make it were barrister Mozammel Hossain (who wasted no time in telling The Sun that he had no shoes growing up and he hates the ULEZ and “drill music knife crime”); London Assembly Susan Hall (who once called Gemma Collins a “stupid fat blonde woman” on Twitter); and Daniel Korski, who was David Cameron’s deputy head of policy about a decade ago but prefers to talk about how he is the son of Polish refugees and his time as a “war correspondent” (he was writing for The Spectator from Libya in 2011 when the civil war kicked off). On Tuesday, things got even uglier when Politico reported that Paul Scully was planning to launch a defamation suit against fellow longlister Samuel Kasumu, “after Kasumu accused Scully of scuppering his chances to clinch the Conservative nomination”.
💰 Unsurprisingly Sadiq doesn’t seem to be quaking in his boots at the thought of taking any of that lot on next year. Instead he was busy announcing £750,000 in funding to support migrant workers, after a report he’d commissioned revealed “shocking levels of bullying, racially motivated harassment, and exploitation of migrant workers consistent with modern slavery across London.” A few days later Khan also announced £10m to “enable 100,000 young Londoners to have a mentor by the end of 2024, as part of a drive to reduce youth violence in the city.” We sincerely hope none of these mentors are into drill music.
😶🌫️ No amount of mentoring will stop London getting more polluted though, and that was the main thing on people’s minds this week as the hot weather forced City Hall to issue a high pollution alert on both Tuesday and Wednesday. Somewhat ironically, all this happened while the mayor was at London Tech Week to announce the London Climate Resilience Review to “gain independent insight into what more needs to be done to make us a climate resilient city as we harness the power of our thriving tech industry.”
🌦 On the same day, City Hall released its Roofs Designed to Cool report, which explains how retrofitting schools, homes and businesses with “reflective and solar photovoltaic (PV) roofs” could lower temperatures inside and outside buildings. And the mayor wasn’t done yet. While he was at the conference, Sadiq also told MyLondon that he is going to “install a new network of flood detection devices across the capital in order to protect the city’s transport infrastructure.”
🙄 Despite all that coming out of City Hall this week, the only thing the tabloids wanted to focus on was the “leaked” City Hall inclusivity guide, which advises employees to “avoid using ‘men and women’ - say ‘people’ or ‘Londoners’” and not to refer to “asylum seekers” but instead say “people seeking asylum”. An “absurd” corruption of language by “elites” according to Tory MP Miriam Cates (who once linked trans people to predators in a Commons speech).
🌳 A man has been arrested on suspicion of cutting down 131 trees next to Cator Park in Bromley last weekend. The trees were in a privately-owned field adjacent to the park, but it’s still illegal to cut them down without permission, and they were under a tree protection order when the damage happened last Saturday.
🏺 Last year, the largest area of Roman mosaics in London to be uncovered in over 50 was excavated at The Liberty of Southwark development site near London Bridge. This week it was announced that they’ve hit the jackpot again, with the discovery of an “extremely rare” and “completely unique” Roman mausoleum on the site.
🚂 CityMonitor has ranked London’s railway stations. As well as questioning why Cannon Street even exists at all, they claim that Moorgate is going through “an awkward goth phase” and put Victoria right at the bottom of the list.
🤖 And while we’re talking about railway stations… MyLondon ran an article this week headlined ‘The most random and surprising things you'll find at one of London's biggest National Rail stations’. Don’t bother clicking on that link though, the article has been deleted now. Probably because it was jam full of lies and inaccuracies that can only have come from an AI chatbot. Platform 9 3/4? To be found at London Bridge. The Vaults? Under London bridge of course! We posted a few screenshots via SubstackNotes before it got wiped.
Food and drink bits
🏆 The National Restaurant Awards happened on Monday, which means that their list of the 100 best restaurants in the UK was also published. Welsh restaurant Ynyshir was crowned the winner for the second year running, but over half the remaining list are in London. Top ranked was Da Terra in Bethnal Green at number 3, followed closely by The Ledbury in Notting Hill at number 4, and then Cowcross Street bistro, Bouchon Racine at number 5.
👃 Guests dining at Sushi Kanesaka, the restaurant that sits in the 45 Park Lane hotel, have reportedly been told “that they should not wear perfume as it would overpower the scent of vinegar”. According to the Telegraph, there is a code provided to guests that says “We kindly ask that you refrain from wearing sportswear, caps or trainers in our restaurant [and] that you refrain from wearing perfume.”
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