Weekend roundup for 21 January
Featuring dodgy voting, vodka meatballs, and the Vorticists
Welcome to the weekend. This is your regular rundown of everything that’s happened in London over the last seven days, which this week included tube tantrums, rectangular pizza, the closure of yet another London institution, and (we’re sorry about this) prolapse pottery.
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News bits
🚨 At the start of the week, Met police armed officer David Carrick pleaded guilty to 85 offences across 49 charges, including 24 counts of rape and nine counts of sexual assault. Assistant Commissioner Barbara Gray, said, “We should have spotted his pattern of abusive behaviour and because we didn't, we missed opportunities to remove him from the organisation”.
… On Tuesday Carrick was sacked from the force following a ‘misconduct hearing’. Commissioner Mark Rowley told the BBC that “Through a combination of weak policies and weak decisions, over those 20 years we missed opportunities when he joined and subsequently, as behaviour came to the fore, we should have removed him from policing.”
.. Harriet Wistrich of the Centre for Women’s Justice, said that it was “truly shocking” that Carrick was not suspended following the report by a woman in July 2021, while the mayor said that “questions must be answered about how he was able to abuse his position as an officer in this horrendous manner.”
… And then, late on Friday afternoon, Mark Rowley unveiled his ‘plan’ to reform the Met. The plan has nine priorities (which is a lot of priorities) including building the “strongest ever neighbourhood policing”, improving public protection and safeguarding, giving victims a “compassionate” service, and showing communities “we care and respect them”. We haven’t had time to really digest it yet, so maybe we’ll come back to this next week.
📈 Well, we knew it was coming, but that doesn’t make it any easier to swallow. In March, tube and bus fares are going to go up by nearly 6% (the biggest rise in a decade). At the same time, the mayor’s council tax precept (the separate amount that’s added on to pay for GLA services) is going up too, meaning that average ‘Band D’ properties will pay £38.55 more per year, that’s an increase of 9.7%.
🙅 TfL has launched a new anti-sexual harassment campaign that calls for commuters to act if they witness inappropriate behaviour. The initiative was launched after TfL figures showed an 81% year-on-year increase in sexual harassment incidents reported by women to police.
🪩 After her controversial pay rise, Night Czar Amy Lamé was at the London at Night conference this week, calling on the Government to “extend the 50% business rate relief for retail, culture, leisure and hospitality sectors for a further year.”
👮 On Tuesday BBC’s File on Four ran a programme called Catastrophe at the Academy, which looked into how two people died in the crush at Brixton Academy earlier this month. As part of the investigation, the BBC spoke to a whistleblower who claimed that not only had there not been enough security on duty that night, but “that some security guards at the venue regularly took bribes to let in people without tickets”.
🕵 On Tuesday the Telegraph reported that the mayor has been accused of manipulating the public consultation on expanding the Ulez and making “false and dishonest statements” to the London Assembly. The manipulation claims center around 5,200 ‘votes’ (they weren’t votes, but the Telegraph really wants to call them votes) that were excluded because they were ‘copy and paste’ responses from the motoring group FairFuelUK. The ‘false statement’ charge arises from a claim that the mayor was “secretly briefed” on the interim results of the consultation on September 29, a fortnight before he told the Assembly he not been briefed in advance.
🚔 Some positive news out of City Hall: On Monday Khan announced that more than £7 million will be spent to “tackle drug gangs”. The new approach comes after evidence showed “that criminal gangs in London are exploiting the cost-of-living crisis to recruit young Londoners and expand their county lines networks across the UK.”
😶🌫️ Beech Street used to be one of the most polluted streets in the City, but an experiment to improve air quality on the road that ran from March 2020 to September 2021, saw nitrogen dioxide levels drop 61%. Since the experiment ended, traffic has returned to 85% of previous levels and “the air quality has worsened and the level of NO2 is near the legal limit,” so the City of London Corp is looking at making the traffic restrictions a permanent fixture.
🏠 In shock news, landlords in the build-to-rent sector have come out against rent caps. On Tuesday, The Times quoted Rick de Blaby from the firm Get Living as saying that “[Rent caps] would suffocate supply…. I’m afraid if someone says that we’re going to cut your revenue, it’s hard to make the case [to invest].” A reminder that ‘prime London’ rents went up by 11% over the course of 2022, and if you were in W7 or SW20 then you were probably paying 34% more than you were in 2021.
🛤️ In the week that a ‘landslip’ completely stopped train services between Basingstoke and Waterloo, new data has shown that two out of five trains in London were disrupted during 2022. The stats from OnTimeTrains, shows that just under a third of services from London’s 15 busiest stations were delayed or cancelled last year.
👶 In related news, Toby Anstis got so annoyed by his delayed Piccadilly Line train on Tuesday morning that he actually rang the police. Anstis missed the start of his radio show thanks to a suspension of the line between Acton Town and Hyde Park Corner eastbound, and tweeted that he was calling police “as there are now aggressive people causing problems” (which is no way to talk about Mick Lynch).
🏴☠️ Last month On London and The London Society hosted a discussion “exploring what would happen if the capital broke free from the rest of the UK” and became an independent city state. You can see the video of the discussion (which features past LiB interviewees Nick Bowes and Jenna Goldberg) here.
💵 Lewisham council won £19 million in levelling-up funding from the government this week. The money is going to go towards a rooftop bar on the library, a renovation of the Clock Tower, and “a facelift” for the market.
🗳 The GLA has partnered with the social enterprise Shout Out UK to launch a campaign “to help under-represented and under-registered Londoners access their right to vote”. It’s estimated that six out of ten Londoners eligible to vote are unaware of the new voter ID requirements, and only around one in ten Londoners possess one of the approved forms of ID.
👯 Soho’s Windmill club, which was forced to close in 2018 after an investigation showed that the club “regularly broke no-touching rules”, has submitted a licensing application to see if it can “bring back naked dancing”.
👎 The Fence has created another of its Davey Jones-illustrated maps of London. This time it depicts London’s (increasingly rare) 24-hour establishments, together with their worst online reviews.
Food and drink bits
🍺 Some good news to start things off: the Old Justice pub in Bermondsey is finally reopening. The Grade-II listed pub closed back in 2017, after its owners failed to get planning permission to turn it into flats and ripped out the historic interior without getting listed building consent. If the pub sounds familiar, that means you’ve watched the No More Lonely Nights video too many times.
🥪 Eater has an excellent report on how the planned changes to Clerkenwell Green (halving the road space and removing dozens of parking spaces) may threaten the legendary Scotti’s Snack Bar, because the “cabbies, builders, and window cleaners” that make up so much of Scotti’s business will no longer be able to just “park up and have something to eat” there.
🍜 Ivan Orkin is bringing his Netflix-famous ramen to the Neighbourhood food hall in Islington for a four-week residency. Starting on February 9, Ivan will be offering a menu of mazemen (“broth-less ramen made with a concentrated sauce and thick flat rye noodle”) that includes Triple Chicken Triple Garlic Mazemen and Katsu Curry Mazemen.
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