Weekend roundup for 29 July
Featuring pedicab crime, pig's trotters and spanking paddles
We got a bunch of new subscribers this week because someone said something nice about us on Reddit. So, if this is your first LiB, welcome to our regular roundup of everything that’s happened in London over the last seven days. This week we’ve got striking parking wardens, a hot new hotdog offering, and an exhibition about skateboarding,
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This week we interviewed artist Max Colson about trying to not get arrested while scanning oligarch’s mansion houses with a laser:
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News bits
🚗 You know what they say: A week is along time in Ulez arguments. Since last week’s by-election defeat, there’s been a bit of a Sadiq pile-on with shadow attorney general, Emily Thornberry, saying that they mayor should “look again” at the policy, shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves insisting that now is not the right time to “clobber” Londoners with the charge, and Keir Starmer going on Radio 5 Live to say Khan should “reflect” on the expansion due to the “impact it’s having on people”. City Hall responded by saying that the mayor is “committed” to the expansion but is “listening”. That listening seems to have led to Khan’s request to the government for more funding in order to finance a more generous scrappage scheme. That move came a day after some of the papers picked up on a TfL response to an FOI request, which stated that “the Marketing and Campaign budget allocated for the ULEZ expansion into outer London boroughs is £9m.” And we’re not done yet…. Just as we were finishing this issue on Friday, the news came through that the legal challenge to the scheme by five Conservative councils had been dismissed by the high court.
🙋At the end of last week, the Mayor launched a campaign “empowering men to challenge misogyny by saying ‘maaate’ to their mates when they cross the line” (a follow up to the recent #HaveAWord campaign). The campaign, created by Ogilvy and launched with the support of Romesh Ranganathan and LadBible, has not a had a great reaction. The Times called it “grating and patronising”, The Critic dismissed it as “patronising and silly” and in The Standard, Melanie McDonagh wrote “the obvious riposte to the campaign is that the real problem for women in London is way bigger”. Meanwhile, in the New Statesman, Josiah Gogarty branded it “strange and awful,” said that the campaign doesn’t understand the male psyche, and that it is Khan’s “relative powerlessness” that leads to him focusing “on loud public-awareness campaigns.”
⚖️ Seven months on from the awful events at Brixton Academy, The Face has gone through official documents and pieced together eye-witness accounts “to stitch together a (still incomplete) timeline of what happened” that night.
🚓 The police watchdog has launched an investigation into last week’s incident in Croydon where a Black woman was arrested in front of her young son because officers wrongly believed she hadn’t paid her bus fare.
🏠 Last week we told you that the mayor had called on the government to introduce greater regulation of ‘Airbnb-style holiday lets’ in London in an effort to try and ease the housing crisis. This week AirBnB came out fighting, issuing a statement that said “Airbnb was built to help people afford to stay in their homes” and that “as living costs continue to rise, hosting is a vital source of income that helps people pay their rent, mortgages, food and energy costs.”
🛺 The latest pedicab overcharging incident saw Belgian tourist April Argenau charged £464 for a seven-minute ride from Oxford Street to the Royal Lancaster hotel. Unlike some of the previous incidents, Argenau did look at the amount she was being charged before she paid, but “the driver refused to back down and was intimidating towards her, demanding immediate payment”.
🚙 Parking wardens working in Camden began “indefinite strike action” this week. 100% of the wardens balloted by Camden Unison voted to go on strike until a pay dispute was resolved. The wardens are currently paid £12.70 an hour and are looking for £15.90.
💻 City Hall has announced the winners of the ‘Poverty Prevention Challenge’ which aims “to find innovative solutions to tackle the impact of the cost-of-living crisis”. The seven London tech companies who will receive up to £50,000 include an app that uses AI technology “to help families at risk of falling into food poverty maximise their budget” and a ‘Refugee Next Step Guide’ which uses OpenAI to “help provide new refugees in London with information about study and work opportunities”.
🏗 Dylan Jones has written another editorial for the Standard. This time it’s about the regeneration of Olympia and why he thinks it’s going to be better than Battersea Power Station, which Jones describes as “a load of old shops”.
💰 Writer and ‘communicator’ Ben Cope, has penned a column for City AM about why we shouldn’t resist gentrification. Headlined ‘Don’t fight the gentrification of areas like Brixton, it’s time to give in to the local Gail’s’ the piece argues that it was Nimby’s who “thwarted” the development of the Hondo Tower, and that “well-connected, central locations like Brixton” need to “cater to more monied residents” who should have the “opportunity to remake the area as they wish”.
📰 Talking of City AM… The paper is now owned by an online beauty retailer. “Multimillionaire businessman Matthew Moulding” saved the freesheet from administration by buying it “for an undisclosed sum” earlier this week. If this is Moulding getting his own back on the FT for a story they ran a couple of months ago, it’s a move of almost Muskian proportions.
🛋 If you’re a fan of art deco furniture, or you just need a few extra wine glasses then you might want to have a look at this huge auction of items that are being sold off by The Maybourne Group, owners of Claridge’s, The Berkeley and The Connaught.
Food and drink bits
🍽 Jeremy King only just announced that he’s planning to open a new “grand café and brasserie” on the corner of Bayswater and Queensway next year. Now he’s told the FT (paywall alert) that he’s also considering another West End opening and might be eyeing up “the Grade II-listed former NatWest bank on Piccadilly - just across the road from The Wolseley”. Sweet, sweet revenge.
🐟 Michelin has made a few new additions to its eponymous guide, and just one London restaurant had made the cut… And it’s a ‘tinned fish restaurant’. Saltie Girl opened on North Audley Street in Mayfair at the end of last year, where it offered £18 shrimp cocktails, £16 anchovies and £36 ‘lobster on waffle’. Grace Dent called it ‘slapdash’ and Kate Ng said she’d probably stick chippy next door. Maybe it’s got better since then?
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