Weekend roundup for 22 July

Featuring strike steaks, Susan snaps and self-indulgent rambling

Spare a thought for the good people of Uxbridge who’ve had to deal with both Piers Corbyn and Laurence Fox stalking their streets this week. Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images.

There was a lot going on in London this week, what with the by-elections and the results of the Tory mayoral candidate competition. So, we’re going to save our analysis of what’s been going on over at Oxford Street and the Met for Monday’s issue. There’s plenty to be going on with though, including some major news for Brixton, the launch of a brand new food destination, and one new play that’s getting all the stars and another new play that’s getting… well, far fewer stars.

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This week we sent out the latest in our ‘Before You Go’ series, where we invite someone we like to pick one spot that they absolutely adore but that might be at greater risk at disappearing than it was a few years ago. This time author and lecturer Matthew Turner told us about the bar that made him fall in love with London again:

Before You Go #3: Estrela Bar

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News bits

🙌 Let’s start with the good news: next week’s tube strikes have been cancelled after the Aslef and the RMT unions reached a last-minute deal with TfL. The mayor said it was ‘great news’ that “despite the onerous funding deal conditions imposed by the Government we have managed to avoid industrial action”.

🗳 About a week ago, new research by “global polling and strategic consulting firm” Redfield & Wilton, seemed to show that “Londoners generally support the Ulez expansion” with “47% coming out in support of expanding the zone and 32% opposed to the idea.” After Thursday night’s by-election result in Uxbridge they might want to go back and check those numbers, with the victorious Tory MP Steve Tuckwell putting his win down entirely to the “damaging and costly Ulez policy” and even Labour’s justice secretary Steve Reed insisting that the people of Uxbridge didn’t like the fact that “the Ulez was going to cost people more to drive around at a time when there’s a cost-of-living crisis going on”.

P.S. Count Binface beat both UKIP and Piers Corbyn in Uxbridge on a platform which mainly focused on” affordable croissants and for a revolution in hand dryer placement in northwest London pub toilets”.

🚗 Whether it was Ulez ‘wot won it’ or something more complex than that, this wedgiest of wedge issues will undoubtedly be weaponised even more than it already has in the run up to next year’s mayoral election. And this week we were told that the mayoral battle would be a fight between Sadiq and Susan, as Susan Hall was announced as the Conservative Party’s Mayoral candidate, beating Moz Hossain by 57% to 43%. The latest polling (done before the Uxbridge by-election) puts Sadiq ahead of the Tories by 12 points; so the question now is can the Trump-supporting “former Harrow council leader, hair salon owner and once garage worker” do anything to bridge that gap?

😕 Following the announcement, Downing Street was quick to put out a statement declaring that Hall had the Prime Minister’s “full support”, but when he was asked if he agreed with Hall’s comments that Suella Braverman was right to call refugees coming across the Channel an “invasion” Rishi Sunak’s spokesperson told journalists that “he would not characterise it in those terms,” and he was similarly reticent when asked if he would endorse Hall’s opinion that Boris Johnson was an “awesome” Prime Minister.

🗞 The strangest bit of Hall-related news though concerned The Standard’s front page following the announcement. The firmly Tory-supporting paper published a full-page image of Hall looking, frankly, deranged, which prompted the Conservatives to complain to the paper’s new editor, Dylan Jones, branding the choice of photo “a clear mockery” and “contemptible, especially as the first female candidate for London mayor from either of the two main parties” (although Susan seems to be doing a grand job of damaging her reputation all on her own).

🏬 Also, if you were in charge of The Standard’s budget (which is increasingly diminishing) would you spend a big chunk of it projecting “an exclusive animated version” of your front page on to the “23,000 square feet of wrap-around, floor-to-ceiling 16k-enabled screens” of the Outernet? Unless (and this is pure speculation) the Standard got some kind of deal in return for favourable coverage of what it has just described as “London’s version of Times Square”. In related news: The Standard has not yet submitted its accounts to HMRC (they were due at the end of June).

🧔 Amongst all the election news this week, Jeremy Corbyn was asked by LBC if he was considering a mayoral bid. Corbyn replied that he is “ruling nothing out”, a move that prompted former mayor Ken Livingstone, to say he would “do everything he can to help” get Corbyn elected.

👴 And talking of Ken… We don’t normally link to MyLondon, but we have to give them some credit for taking the opportunity to interview Livingstone after they spotted him “stepping off the 316 bus outside Kilburn Tube station,” and for capturing his admission that he now spends a lot of his time “down the local pub talking to other old men who are also out of work”.

🏢 Away from the world of politics, there was big news for Brixton this week as the planning application for the controversial ‘Hondo Tower’ was withdrawn just a few days ahead of the Public Representation Hearing that was due to take place yesterday. A letter written on behalf of Hondo Enterprises to City Hall, said that “the applicant needs to reconsider its position and can only do this by withdrawing the application,” but that a “revised approach” would be delivered soon that would “deliver lasting benefits for Brixton’s businesses and residents”. Brixton Buzz has more on the story and you can read Save Nour’s victory statement here.

🏙 Helen Barrett has written a pretty in depth article for the Telegraph on the “£1.3 billion mission to save London’s white elephant” (also known as “the dilapidated Olympia exhibition hall”) in which she interviews Thomas Heatherwick, whose studio is co-leading the redevelopment.

🚲 TfL has opened ten new “low-traffic cycleways” which means that “the number of Londoners within 400m of a high-quality cycle route” is now over 550,000. The routes include a 10km path in Enfield, the new cycleway between Battersea Power Station and Nine Elms, and a new route between Finsbury Park and Angel.

🚴 Meanwhile, plans for shuttle buses that will take cyclists through the Silvertown Tunnel were published by TfL this week as part of a consultation on what the scheme should look like. But, as the Greenwich Wire points out, a shuttle bus isn’t much use if access to the pick-up points are pretty ‘inhospitable’ to those on two wheels.

🏡 The mayor has called on the government to introduce greater regulation of ‘Airbnb-style holiday lets’ to try and ease the housing crisis. Sadiq says the growth in short-term lets (there were 81,792 Airbnb listings in London last month) is helping to fuel the crisis and wants local authorities to be given powers to limit the number of Airbnb properties in their area.

📞 Four tube station phone boxes have been given Grade II-listed status for their “architectural and historic interest”. You can find the rare boxes (none of which are painted red) at High Street Kensington and Chorleywood (blue), Chalfont and Latimer (maroon), and Northwick Park (white).

🏅 According to the BWC 2023 Ranking, London is the third best ‘sports city’ in the world. We were beaten only by Paris and Los Angeles and came just ahead of New York and Manchester.

🏗 A (paywalled) column in The Times this week by Richard Morrison worries that the “cluster-mess of architectural monstrosities” that is the south bank of the Thames is at risk of causing the “area around the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey” to lose its status as a Unesco world heritage site.

🕌 Westminster City Council has approved plans for parts of The Trocadero building to become an Islamic community centre. The plans come from The Aziz Foundation, founded by Asif Aziz, who is also the chief executive of Criterion Capital and has previously been called “the meanest landlord in Britain”. (If you fancy a bit of nostalgia, the Mail took advantage of this news to publish a bunch of old photos of the Trocadero, including the much-missed ‘Alien War’ game).

🔪 In case you missed the news, apparently Jack the Ripper was an alcoholic cigar maker called Hyam Hyams.

🚕 Massive YouTube channel Yes Theory paid East London cab driver ‘Cockney Reg’ $10,000 to see how far it would get them:

Food and drink bits

🧑‍🍳️ According to The Independent when “Lily Allen tweeted that she’s noticed ‘standards have slipped’ in many of London’s restaurants, people began asking themselves whether she was right.” Whether that’s entirely true or not, the paper has been to interview some chefs and restaurateurs to see how “vibrant” London’s food scene actually is.

🥩 In related news, Bloomberg reports that this month’s strikes (pre-cancellation) “will cost bars and restaurants in the UK capital some £210 million”, while The Caterer reports on the restaurants offering various discounts to lure people in despite the strikes (including the £15 steak frites at Hawksmoor, which they’re calling “strike steaks”).

🥻 Dishoom has launched a range of merch, teaming up with illustrator Manjit Thapp, to create three exclusive T-shirt designs, that feature images of inspirational and underrepresented women from Indian history.