Weekend roundup for 27 November

Featuring control rooms, iconic closets and the Oscars of curry

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News bits

👮 The two Met officers who shared photos of murdered sisters Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman have been found guilty of gross misconduct at a Met discipline tribunal. One officer will be instantly dismissed from the force, while the other has already resigned. Meanwhile, David Carrick, the Met officer who was previously charged with rape, is “now being accused of another 13 charges relating to the rape and sexual assault of three more women”.

🚨 Official figures from the Met show that domestic abuse now accounts for one in eight crimes reported to the force. There were nearly 260 offences reported every day across the capital, that’s a 9% increase on the previous year.

🚖 Apparently a recent study showed that London “has one of the lowest costing Uber services in the world, placing 24th on a list of 38 major cities.” Not yesterday though. As the Tube strike started, Uber was expected to put prices up by around 150%, which is great for all those frontline workers who are unable work from home.

🚇 The prognosis for TfL keeps getting worse. Their finance chief told the TfL finance committee on Wednesday that the network could be forced into the “full closure of a line or part of a line or smaller reductions across the whole [Underground] network” if cash for long-term repairs and upgrades isn’t secured.

😷 Mask-wearing is now being “openly ignored on a large scale,” on the Tube. The “decline in the number of Tube users wearing face masks despite messages saying it is a requirement” has occurred despite “500 uniformed enforcement officers continuing to ask customers to comply”. TfL has said it has refused entry to 408 people and asked 126 to leave services since July.

🛤️ Waterloo has lost the title of Britain's busiest station for the first time in 17 years. The new champion is Stratford. Waterloo actually had the biggest decrease in passenger usage in the past year (12.2 million “entries and exits” compared to 86.9 million the year before). Stratford recorded 14 million entries and exits.

😃 Richmond has been crowned Britain's second happiest place to live by something called the “happy at home” index (compiled by Rightmove). As Hexham in Northumberland came in at number one, that makes Richmond the happiest place to live in London. The ranking is based on things like “friendliness and community spirit, nature and green spaces… and amenities including schools, restaurants, shops and sports facilities.” They also made it look lovely on Ted Lasso.

💠 The GLA’s move to the ‘new’ City Hall (which was due to happen this week) has been officially postponed until the New Year. The Crystal building in Docklands is apparently “still a building site following the discovery of flood damage”.

🎆 This year’s New Year’s Eve celebrations are going to take the form of a ‘ticketed celebration event’ in Traflagar Square that “will include live music, some of London’s best stage performers, food stalls and a large screen showing the live broadcast to thousands of Londoners.” Tickets are going to be awarded through a lottery system, there’s no more information than that right now.

🚔 The Met’s new handcuffing policy (designed to “further increase the confidence of the public”) has no fewer than 40 questions officers should ask themselves before cuffing someone. The guidance admits that this might not be practical in real life, so their main priority should be “to act with integrity to protect and serve the public”.

🎬 The Guardian has a profile of ‘Tinseltown UK’ (aka Dagenham), the “industrial hinterland” that is benefiting from the film industry’s “insatiable demand” for content.

⏰ Reuters takes a look at the restoration work that’s been done on ‘Big Ben’ (they’re calling it that, so I guess we’re going to), a lot of which will be visible when it comes time to ring in the new year (someone even calls the clock’s new look ‘striking’ with no hint of irony).

🌲 And if you want to know where the Christmas tree that sits at the foot of Big Ben has come from, here’s the story of the journey the 42ft Sitka spruce has taken from Kielder Forest in Northumberland.

🌻 The Tower of London’s moat will be filled by a “Superbloom” display of millions of flowers next summer, to mark the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. This is more than a one off though, the display is “the first stage of a permanent transformation of the moat into a new natural landscape in the heart of the London.”

🇧🇩 The Christian Science Monitor has a pretty in-depth report on the fight to save ‘Banglatown’ from the forces of “gentrification and hipsterfication”.

Art and culture bits

🌊 If you’re a subscriber to LiB you will have received Wednesday’s ‘London book gift guide’ in which we recommended Tom Chiver’s lovely book, London Clay. Next Thursday, Tom is discussing that book at the Wanstead Tap pub and he’ll be joined by Gemma Seltzer, whose book Ways of Living explores “what it means to be a modern woman inhabiting the urban landscape” of London. You can get tickets here.