Before we get into this week’s roundup we should mention Wednesday’s issue which looked at the state of London’s local newspapers. If you’re not already a paying subscriber and you want to go read that (and get access to the full version of this roundup) then there’s no better time, as we’ve got an offer that gives you 25% off a year’s subscription:
We’ve also got out reader’s survey running right now. Tell us what you think of LiB and we’ll put your name in the hat to win a full set of ‘opinionated guides to London’ from Hoxton Mini Press:
As for what’s coming up next week: Some of the feedback we’ve been getting has been calling for more south London content, so Monday’s issue is going to be a South London special, and on Wednesday we’ve got an interview with John Davis, the man behind the brilliant new book Waterloo Sunrise: London from the Sixties to Thatcher.
News bits
💡 That major power cut which happened on Tuesday afternoon hit 42 postcodes across the city and around 28,000 people. Caused by a fire at an electrical substation in Poplar, the outage took out the DLR, traffic lights, internet, water supplies and lifts (including in some of the major banks, which are supposed to have emergency backups if this kind of thing happens).
⛵ A £38m superyacht called Phi (after the mathematical golden ratio) has become the first yacht to be detained in UK waters as part of the sanctions against Russia. Phi (pictured in our banner image, above) is owned by an unnamed ‘Russian businessman’ and has been detained in Canary Wharf where it had come for the World Superyacht Awards (because that’s a thing).
💼 Law firms are driving the demand for “super-prime” office space in Central London. According to Knight Frank, the “intense competition between law firms to recruit and keep hold of staff” saw them buy up 658,000 square foot of office space in central London last year.
⛰️ Westminster Council has confirmed what it cost to dismantle the Marble Arch Mound: £660,000. Although the council has stressed that this cost was already included in the £6 million overall spend.
🏗️ The plans to build a huge office complex on the South Bank, where ITV’s London Studios once stood, have been given the go ahead by Lambeth council following a “tense three-hour debate”. ‘72 Upper Ground’ will cost somewhere between £300m and £400m and will consist of a “26-storey tower and a 13-storey block connected by a six-storey podium”. The project has met quite a bit of resistance from locals, mainly because of concerns about it blocking daylight from nearby properties.
🅿️ Meanwhile the row over that car park in Cockfosters has reached fresh heights. Remember we told you that Grant Shapps has stepped in to veto the the plan to build the block on the Tube station car park (overruling Enfield Council in the process)? Well now Sadiq Khan has written to Shapps, saying that “London is facing a serious housing crisis,” and he “cannot understand why you would prioritise keeping a car park over building desperately needed new homes.”
🚇 Writing in the Independent, Jon Stone thinks he has the answer to the TfL funding problem: tax employers. It’s how the Paris tube gets a lot of its funding; they tax companies with more than 11 employees so that “businesses that benefit from public transport end up contributing to it.” Of course , Sadiq would have to ask the Government to do that and we can’t see Rishi agreeing to it anytime soon.
🏢 The price of a flat in the Barbican Estate has gone above the £1 million mark for the first time. The reason? All those ‘remorseful’ city workers who “fled” London during lockdown and now need a bolt hole near their office that their boss has made them come back to. P.S. The price of a flat in the Barbican ten years ago was £550,000.
🌇 The Spectator has a half-baked column this week about how Covid has changed London for the better, because… something about the Blitz and the London Stock Exchange starting life in a Coffee House? Honestly, we’re not really sure.
🌱 A much better read is this Ian Visits post about how TfL is killing Japanese Knotweed using a wand that basically electrocutes them, causing “the water in the plant to boil, damaging the plant’s cellular structure”. Brutal.
Art and culture bits
📷 Simon Wheatley’s new book, Lost Dreams is a collection of his photographs from his time documenting the grime scene in the early 2000s. Dazed has an interview with him along with a selection of the images that include Skepta in a chicken shop near White Hart Lane and Ms Dynamite under a bridge in Stratford.
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.