Weekend roundup for 19 February

Includes microflats, Michelin stars and mood-boosting booze

One of the images on show at the Leica Gallery’s Jocelyn Bain Hogg exhibition

Welcome to your roundup of London news from the week that saw most of Twitter tune in to a live feed of Heathrow airport and a large chunk of the O2 arena sail off down the Thames.

Along with all the news headlines we've got an update on the Tate’s racist mural in our Arts & Culture section, while in Food & Drink there’s a broadsheet mauling of a new Italian restaurant and a lovely video essay from Chinatown.

If you want to read the whole thing (and get access to all our paywalled articles) please subscribe for £5/month below:

News bits

👶 The number of 18-29 year-olds coming into London is going back up again according to new research, but the city’s population is still lower than it was pre-pandemic because births “are now significantly below their 2012 peak, while deaths have risen sharply, at around 20,000.” And despite some UK towns reaching higher football in January than they did pre-pandemic, London “is stuck with just 50% of its old level”.

💂 The number of tourists arriving is still way down, so on Wednesday Sadiq announced he was putting an extra £10m into attracting visitors. £3m of that is going into the ‘Let’s do London’ campaign and £7m is going into a “marketing campaign attracting international visitors to London”.

👮 The war of words between the Met and the mayor managed to get even worse this week. On Thursday the Met Police Taskforce tweeted that Khan did not understand the rules for disciplining officers and then The Times reported that he had “demanded that Dame Cressida Dick sack rogue officers at a toxic police station or face suspension.” Yesterday the Met admitted it was “unacceptable” to tweet criticism of the mayor and Sadiq denied he’d ever issued an ultimatum to the commissioner:

Greatest Hits Radio London News @GHRLondonNews

London Mayor @SadiqKhan has given an update on his conversations with @pritipatel over the selection of the next Met Police commissioner… Earlier he denied reports he issued an ultimatum to Dame Cressida Dick over firing the officers involved in the Charing Cross case.

🏚️ Sadiq’s week has not been great. The move to the new City Hall building was due to happen next week but it has been postponed (again) because “some last-minute delays to the new City Hall’s building systems have delayed handover from our contractors.”

🚌 The all-electric, “ultra-modern” buses hit the streets (well, Route 63) this week, complete with skylights, “wood-effect floors,” phone holders and USB chargers. They do look very nice but there is absolutely no way we’re plugging our phone into a USB socket on a bus.

🚕 In other transport news, an Uber passenger was charged £71 for a two mile trip from Shoreditch to Finsbury Park and two women were charged £180 for a three-minute pedicab ride through Soho.

🏢 In July of last year we told you about the fight over the redevelopment of the Holloway prison site. This week it was announced that the development “has been deferred over concerns about the mix of housing and facilities and the future of a women’s centre.”

🏰 The 13th-century moat around the Tower of London is currently being turned into a wildflower meadow for the Jubilee celebrations and as you might expect they are digging up all sorts of interesting things in there. Finds so far include a First World War training round, a 15th century French jetton, a “late medieval or Tudor buckle, likely to have come from a dagger belt”, and a 17th-century half penny trade token.

🏈 In what seems like an incredibly ambitious move, Tottenham Hotspur is “eyeing a bid to host the Super Bowl in its new stadium as early as 2026” and apparently the NFL is ‘open’ to the idea.

⛺ This week’s ridiculous property news comes courtesy of the seven-square-metre ‘microflat’ in Clapton that’s going on the market next week. Opening bids will start at £50,000.

Art and culture bits

🖼️ After a “rigorous” review, Tate Britain has decided it is going to keep the Rex Whistler mural that currently adorns the walls of its café. You can read our Nov 15 issue for the background on this but the latest is that ‘The Expedition in Pursuit of Rare Meats’ will go back on public view later this year with “a new commission that will critically engage the work’s racist imagery”.