Weekend roundup for 25 March
Featuring musical cowboys, window cleaners and a Kardashian
We make no excuses for taking up a hefty chunk of this week’s news section to look at the fallout from Baroness Casey’s report into the Met. It’s nobody’s idea of a fun, weekend read, but it feels like the culmination of something and (if we’re being optimistic) the beginning of something too. It’s not all doom and gloom though, there’s also West London dog walking diatribes, beer-flavoured ice cream, and goths to enjoy.
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News bits
🚨 Even if, like us, you’ve spent the past two years writing about the Met’s numerous and frankly terrifying failures, this week still felt like an especially shit week to be a Londoner. Don’t get us wrong, we weren’t in any way ‘surprised’ by Baroness Casey’s findings (unlike, say, Robert Peston), but to hear account after account from those who’ve been directly affected by the Met’s racism, misogyny and homophobia and then watch Commissioner Mark Rowley quibble over the use of the word ‘institutional’… Well, it’s enough to make you cry. How about this Sir Rowley: if you’re so keen on arguing semantics, why don’t you go back to writing airport thrillers and let someone else dismantle the diseased organisation you have been part of for the past 37 years?
In the wake of the report’s release there was a lot of talking. A lot. But amongst all the prepared statements and contrite interviews it was hard to find any genuine evidence of impending action that could lead anywhere close to the “complete overhaul and a new approach” that Baroness Casey has called for. The only two people outside of the force who get to decide how that might happen are Sadiq Khan and Suella Braverman. The mayor’s response to the report included his expectation that “all the recommendations [should] be implemented quickly and in full,” but Khan has been mayor for seven years now and was happily extending Cressida Dick’s term in office as recently as September 2021. But Khan’s response was practically zealous compared to the Home Secretary’s statement, which seemed to be reaching for the tone of a particularly bland homebuyer’s report, as it called the findings “very concerning” and suggested that “improvements must be made as swiftly as possible”. Braverman then asked Londoners to judge Rowley and Khan (but not the government) “on their actions” before stressing that “primary and political accountability sits with the Mayor of London” (she also made sure to state that ‘institutional’ “is not a helpful term to use”).
As for what actually happens next, the Met has said that the Casey report will “play a crucial role” in the “ongoing conversations” as part of the “programme of meaningful engagement” around the pathetically-named Turnaround Plan, a final version of which we are promised will be published “in late Spring”. That plan, we are assured, will “meet the scope and scale of the challenge” the Met is facing.
In related news, these posters appeared in Tube stations this week:
📹 Last year, the Open Rights Group and Sian Berry launched a legal challenge against the mayor after he granted the Met access to the ANPR camera network across the whole of inner London. The ORG knew then that the ULEZ was soon going to be expanded across Greater London and that such a vast and “dangerously unregulated” network of cameras could cause huge privacy issues. This week, papers from the GLA showed that the mayor has indeed given TfL permission to share information from the new ULEZ cameras, and that “The Met Police are currently working to complete their assessment of which additional cameras they want access to”. Hilariously, papers like the Telegraph and the Times, who have previously shown zero interest in the privacy issues f Londoners, are now earnestly interviewing representatives from the ORG and Big Brother Watch, presumably because it gives them more fuel for their anti-ULEZ fire.
💷 New research from TfL has shown that the Tube has the most expensive fares of any metro in the world, and that was before the 5.9% fare rise that kicked in earlier this month. Also this week, it was reported that Tube and bus fares will probably go up by an average of 4% next year.
🚉 That news came after TfL released its 2023/24 budget which predicts a 7% increase in ridership over the next year, which would give them “a cash boost of £800m” and move them into ‘profit’ for the very first time. MyLondon, however, preferred to focus on the £4m that’s been ringfenced for naming the six, individual London Overground lines (something that was 'pledged’ by the mayor back in 2021).
✨ At the start of the week the mayor switched on “London’s first ever celebratory Ramadan lights,” in Piccadilly. The display contains 30,000 sustainable lights that read ‘Happy Ramadan’ along with “glittering moons and stars”.
🏗️ The controversial plan to build a 32-storey office tower above Leadenhall Market was approved this week. It’s controversial because the market is grade II*-listed and because of the expected carbon impact that will come from replacing the existing 1930s building. The Victorian Society said that “the sheer scale and bulk of the proposed tower will comically dominate Leadenhall Market” and that the decision seems to be “contrary to the City’s new guidance promoting refurbishing existing buildings rather than knocking them down and replacing them.”
🏡 The Times has bestowed the title of ‘Best Place to Live in London’ on Crouch End thanks to its “green spaces galore” and “a friendliness that’s often absent in the capital”.
🏠 This week’s property porn is a studio flat in a “Grade-II listed Georgian terrace in Claremont Square” that also happens to be “the ancestral home of Sirius Black”. A snip at £385,000.
🏘️ In related news, this is what happens when a two-bedroom home in Romford is advertised for £1,200 a month:
🛍️ Retail Gazette has been to have a look at the “cut-price fashion retailers” that have been appearing Oxford Street, and asks “Are these the new Amercian candy stores?”.
🐶 There’s a (thankfully?) paywalled article in The Times this week explaining Why Notting Hill’s rich can’t walk their dog where they like. According to the article, the reason seems to be that “Notting Hill’s rich” all seem to be thoroughly horrible people.
🧽 Sweaty palms alert: The London Eye’s pods got a wipe down this week, with cleaners “suspended in the air while cleaning the wheel’s capsules”.
🤖 Congratulations to Vice who are the first publication (we think) to publish he inevitable ‘I let an AI decide what I should do for an entire day’ article (didn’t we get enough of these after The Dice Man was published?). At least he got to have breakfast in E Pellicci’s.
💿 London’s last remaining DVD store, For Your Eyes Only in Forest Hill, is trying to raise £5k to stay alive. The shop just made it through lockdown but then suffered another setback after it reopened, when a ‘parked’ car to rolled down a hill opposite and smashed “through the shop front, narrowly missing the customers inside”.
Food and drink bits
☘️ If you read our Wednesday issue (or went online at all last week) then you’ll already know that Kim Kardashian was ‘spotted’ drinking Guinness during a ‘pub crawl’ around London on St Patrick’s Day. It will come as a surprise to absolutely no one that Kardashian’s boozy session was actually a staged performance for her reality show (in fact the TV crew seems to have outnumbered the normal punters). But that wasn’t the only celebrity-in-the-pub-on-Paddy’s-Day story doing the rounds last week. According to the Extra.ie website, Orlando Bloom was to be found leading a completely impromptu and genuine “singalong at a London pub” on March 17. And where was this ‘London pub’? Windsor.
⭐️ Michelin awards its Bib Gourmands (or ‘Bibs’) to those restaurants it feels offer “good quality, good value cooking”, and this year it has given out four Bibs to London spots. They are Plaza Khao Gaeng in the Arcade Food Hall, Evernight in Nine Elms, West Hampstead’s Hām and Notting Hill ‘pub’, The Pelican.
P.S. The new Michelin stars for London are announced on Monday.
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