Weekend roundup for 21 May

Featuring fried Oreos, foam islands and fascinating lunch breaks

The pointy end of Eros

Hello, hope your weekend is off to a good start and that you remembered to take your umbrella with you this week. Today we’ve got all the latest on the imminent arrival of the Liz line, a few immersive steampunks, some Stateside burgers making their way to Fitzrovia, and a beaver called Justin (geddit?).

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News bits

🚇 The Queen made a ‘surprise appearance’ at Paddington earlier this week to take a gander at the line which bears her name. Her Majesty was “shown how to use an Oyster payment card,” while the Prime Minster, not content with celebrating the much-awaited arrival of the line, was making claims that “it will drive investment throughout the UK.”

🚂 RMT workers at Euston and Green Park stations gave it 24 hours after the Queen’s visit before they announced that they would be striking on Jubilee weekend. The staff say that they “have suffered years of sustained bullying and intimidation by a manager who has created a toxic working environment” and they will walk out on June 3 to “cause significant disruption to people wishing to celebrate the Queen’s Jubilee.”

🗺️ Of course, the launch of a new ‘line’ (it’s not a Tube line of course, but let’s not get into that right now) means we get a new Tube map, and the one released this week that showed the new route in natty purple dashes, along with the new Barking Riverside station and… erm, five Ikeas (did we mention TfL is short of money?).

🏡 Meanwhile, research released Tuesday shows that homes in “postcodes due to benefit from the new rail line,” have gone up in price by 79%.

👛 Last bit of Crossrail news (for now): There’s still a £174m “funding gap” on the project that someone needs to plug. And, as far as the government is concerned, TfL should be the ones to plug it.

🚆 SWLondoner has created an ‘interactive article’ that looks into “the science behind our commute” and asks questions like “why do some Tubes stop at seemingly random moments?” and “What determines the speed limit on the tracks?”.

🚖 In other transport news, London’s black cab drivers are enjoying a “renaissance” with the return of tourists and Uber’s woes creating more business and pushing up the number of new drivers. Although Tom Hutley (who we interviewed a few months ago) tells Bloomberg, “It’s more sporadic than before the pandemic. Weekends are very busy [but] weekdays can feel like someone has turned a switch off by comparison.”

🏠 We’ve done transport, so let’s do property next. First up: new data shows that the number of number of London properties “owned by China-based individuals” has gone up by around 25% in the last year, mainly because their kids want somewhere to live while they study here. In related news, a ‘dubious study’ came out this week showing where the least and most affordable locations for students to live. We’ll leave you to guess which end of the spectrum London came in at.

🏢 Meanwhile, new research from Hamptons have found that almost a third of homes let in London this year “have gone to tenants from outside capital”. That’s a big shift from 2020, when “just 12% of London tenants came from outside the city.”

💸 Also this week, new research was published which predicts that, in the next 12 months, “Londoners’ annual rent charges will increase to more than £22,280”. That’s an increase of £1,140 per year.

🙉 Monkeypox update: As we write this, nine people have been diagnosed with the virus, nearly all of them based in London. On Wednesday London’s public health regional director said that “plans are in place to stock up on treatments for monkeypox in case infections rise.”

🏰 Michael Gove has reportedly ruled out the use of the Queen Elizabeth II Centre as a temporary home for the House of Lords while refurbishment work takes place at Westminster. Instead the Levelling Up Secretary has suggested locations including “Stoke-on-Trent, Burnley and Sunderland”.

💼 A “City recruitment veteran” told City AM this week that London is in the middle of a “catastrophic digital skills shortage disaster” and that employers need to “scrap the CV” if they want to solve it.

🚰 If you can’t find a job right now, take heart in the fact that in around 25 years having a job will be the least of your worries, because “London and the South East of England could run out of water” by then. This is according to a new report by Christian Aid called Scorched Earth: The impact of drought on 10 world cities.

🏹 The statue of (not) Eros in Piccadilly Circus has been fitted with a new aluminium bow, after the last one was stolen. We just removed the paywall on our April issue which featured the statue if you want to go take a read.

🚗 The Head of Data and Insight at the Center for London has taken a look at just how much impact the Low Traffic Neighbourhood furore had on the local election results as well as “what the future now holds for LTN schemes in the capital.”

🚶‍♂️ If you have an FT subscription then this article on ‘London’s most fascinating lunch-break walks’ is worth a look, especially if you work anywhere near the City, Canary Wharf or King’s Cross.

Art and culture bits

📻 Jarvis Cocker’s Good Pop Bad Pop – The Exhibition is on at the The Gallery of Everything in Chiltern Street until the end of the month. The five-room installation is an “investigation into the personal archive of this legendary musician, broadcaster and author” and “includes rare objects and keepsakes and one-off artworks” alongside a recreation of Cocker’s teenage bedroom.

🩰 Greenwich is getting an overdose of culture this summer. First up there’s Summer in the Park, a “series of free remarkable performances and high-quality dance experiences” including Out of the Blue which features “a large-scale Sea Giant Puppet” and Born to Protest, “a piece that celebrates Black excellence and challenges racial stereotypes.”

🎭 Then in August Greenwich + Docklands International Festival returns with “18 extraordinary days of free theatre, art, dance and circus” and… a lot of rainbow coloured foam: