Weekend roundup for 20 November
Includes museum marbles, mega basements and massive hair
The full version of our Weekend Roundup is available to paid subscribers. If you’re receiving the full issue then thank you very much for supporting independent writing about London.
If you’re not a subscriber already and you want to read the full thing (including square pizzas, curling, hair photos and female-led pubs), please subscribe using the button below which gets you 30% off the usual price:
News bits
👛 In the middle of this week, TfL’s finance committee published a thoroughly depressing assessment of the network. Because TfL is required by law to balance its budget and the government has not yet given any indication that it will give it the long-term investment it needs to close the £1.9bn funding gap, the next option is to take services away. Which is why the horrible phrase “managed decline” started popping up in headlines this week. How many services would need to get slashed in order to balance the books? According to TfL, we’d have to say goodbye to around 18% of bus services and 9% of tube services. TfL has until 11 December to agree the emergency funding to stop this happening. If you want to read more about this then ‘John Bull’ of London Reconnections has an excellent thread on it, click below to see the whole thing…
And, in case you missed it, Nick Rowe of the Center for London had some smart things to say about the importance of TfL in our interview with him a couple of weeks ago:
🌉 Something else we wrote about recently was bridges, in particular Hammersmith Bridge. A couple of days ago a new plan was proposed to reopen Hammersmith Bridge to traffic “by building attached structures beside the main span, for bikes and people” (thereby removing the need for expensive strengthening works to be made to the old structure).
🗽 Another update, this time on Monday’s ‘dead racist white men’ issue, specifically regarding the statue of Sir Robert Geffrye, which is still sitting above the entrance to The Museum of the Home… for now. Earlier this week the museum released a statement saying that they “believe there is potential to retain the statue on site but in an alternative and less prominent space, where we can better tell the full story of the history of the buildings and Robert Geffrye's life, including his involvement in transatlantic slavery.”
😶🌫️ A study by Imperial College London into the ULEZ has found that the impact was “marginal”. The study showed “an average reduction of less than 3% for nitrogen dioxide concentrations, and insignificant effects on ozone and particulate matter (PM2.5) concentrations.”
🏬 The House of Fraser store on Oxford Street is going to close. Apparently, the company is “being forced to exit the building after being served notice by its landlord”. That notice comes after planning permission was granted to redevelop the site “into six floors of offices with retail on the ground floor, a pool and gym in the basement, and a rooftop restaurant.”
🇷🇺 Irina Izmestieva, the ex-wife of the former Russian senator Igor Izmestiev (who is now serving a somewhat questionable life sentence in Russia) was found dead in her home in Kensington this week. Her PA, who discovered the body, said that the 52-year-old’s death was “likely something to do with the heart or with a blood clot” and any suggestion of foul play was “absolute nonsense”.
🛍️ New research from Barclaycard says that three in 10 London businesses “anticipate this Christmas will be their most successful in the past five years” (that’s more pessimistic than the UK average which is closer to five out of 10). The data also suggests that Londoners prefer shopping with small businesses, as “16% of London firms said consumers were favouring smaller businesses while just seven per cent in the East of England agreed.”
🛤️ London Overground has applied for permission to build a new(ish) station near Millwall football club. The ‘Surrey Canal’ station has been planned ever since the Overground extension was opened in 2012, but the recent arrival of a large housing development in the area seems to have increased the need. IanVisits has all the details.
🏢 Permission has been given for another office tower to be built in the Square Mile. The 24-storey office tower on Houndsditch will be the the Square Mile’s seventh tall building to be approved so far this year.
🏗️ Back in July we told you all about mega basements (and why Brian May isn’t a fan). Now Vox has produced a whole video on the subject, in which they speak to Roger Burrows, professor of cities at Newcastle university, about the phenomenon.
🐶 In May, the Advertising Standards Authority banned a campaign for the cryptocurrency exchange Luno that ran across the TfL network. That didn’t deter meme coin Floki Inu from wallpapering the Tube with adverts for most of October. And now the ASA has launched an investigation into that campaign as well. Earlier in the week Siân Berry tabled a question to Sadiq Khan about the ads and put pressure on TFL to ban adverts for unregulated financial products.
Art and culture bits
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.