Weekend roundup for 30 October

Includes untreated effluent, naff shepherds and prize-winning kebabs

🚨 A 28-year-old serving Met officer has been charged with rape. PC Adam Zaman, appeared at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday afternoon in connection with an incident “that is alleged to have taken place in the City of London on Sunday, when Zaman was off-duty”. He has been remanded in custody until his next hearing on 24 November.

🚂 Loads of travel and transport news this week, so let’s try and whiz through it. The big one of course is that the driver of the train that crashed through the barriers at Enfield station last month was “under the influence of cocaine”. He’s been arrested “on suspicion of endangering railway safety and being unfit to work through drink or drugs”.

🚇 The other big train-based news this week is that the Waterloo and City Line will go back to a full weekday service before the end of December.

🚆 Crossrail update: While the last stage of testing is on target to start next month, a report by the Commons’ Public Accounts Committee has found that the project is facing a “serious” funding gap of £150 million, “and there is uncertainty over how loans will be repaid”. The most up-to-date estimate of the cost of finishing Crossrail is £18.9 billion.

😷 The mayor has (again) “urged the Government to make face coverings mandatory on public transport”. This time the urging comes in response to the double threat of Covid and flu, but that doesn’t mean the government are any more likely to listen.

🙅 TfL has launched a ‘zero-tolerance’ poster campaign to stop sexual harassment on public transport. The campaign is urging anyone who witnesses or is a victim of things like cat-calling, staring, upskirting, cyber-flashing or “rubbing against someone on purpose , and touching someone inappropriately,” to report incidents “so that action can be taken against offenders ”.

🇪🇸 In international rail news: Spain’s state rail company has announced plans to go up against Eurostar by operating a high-speed Channel tunnel line between Paris and London.

🏢 Permission for a ‘controversial’ stepped, 21-storey office block on Fleet Street (above) has been granted. The building will surround the Grade II-listed Daily Express building on Fleet Street, which will also get a revamp including a new gallery and rooftop bar, and for the very first time it’s bling, art deco interior will be open to the public.

🏡 Research by the flatshare site SpareRoom suggests that “49% of London renters would quit the capital if they could still keep their job.” According to the poll, 22% of them would choose to move to the countryside, “while 19% would opt for a new city and 11% would prefer a new town.”

💷 London’s gender pay gap got worse over the past year. The ONS just published their Annual Survey For Hours And Earnings, and it shows “that while pay for both men and women had decreased in April 2021” male pay dropped by 0.1% but female pay dropped by 2.9%. The Standard ran the numbers to find out which were the highest and lowest earning boroughs. Kensington & Chelsea came out on top with an average salary of £73,917, while Barking & Dagenham came bottom with an average pay of £29,128.

🏬 There’s a lot going on in Brixton this week. First up, the company that’s been bankrolling Pop Brixton has gone into administration, putting the future of the “social enterprise” into doubt. Brixton Buzz has all the details. In other news, a GoFundMe has been set up to try and save Brixton Wholefoods on Atlantic Road, which is in danger of closing due to “Covid lockdowns and a substantial rent increase”; while the El Rancho Columbian restaurant in the market has been forced to relocate to “a unit behind the town hall,” again because of rent rises.

💩 Have you had your breakfast yet? Because the Rivers Trust has made an interactive map (above) that shows “where the sewerage network discharges treated effluent and overflows of untreated effluent and storm water into rivers” and there are many, many large brown circles hovering over London, and they’re not all on the Thames either.

🚕 We’ve linked to Tom the Taxi Driver’s YouTube channel before, and this time he’s explaining how picking up a drunk bloke in Mayfair who wanted to find a kebab shop ended with him having a broken window in his cab.

🐝 We’ve written about the mosquitoes of the Tube before as well, but what we didn‘t know was that different Tube lines have slightly different types of vampiric insects. That weird bit of trivia comes from the Naked Scientists podcast:

“The fascinating thing is that different lines on the tube in London will have slightly different kinds of genetic variation between them, which really highlights this amazing ability of this group to really change and adapt, and to kind of fill all these amazing, different niches, which is why I think they're great.”

🧑‍🦰 In an article that treads perilously close to the kind of guff you would normally find on MyLondon, the BBC has a chat with “the redhead living in the Tower of London”.

🧟 To promote the release of Call of Duty Vanguard, a PR company “zombified a street” in Covent Garden to “play a gruesome prank scare on the general public.”

Art and culture bits

🛢️ In the week that the UK Student Climate Network camped out in the lobby of the Science Museum to protest on behalf of the victims of fossil fuel companies, the chair of the Science Museum Group wrote an editorial for the Telegraph (paywall alert) to say that activists who “rage against private enterprise get us nowhere” because “the huge change our planet is crying out for is going to require difficult decisions and uncomfortable coalitions, and the demonisation of the energy sector will hinder, not help, that difficult journey.”

⛰️ The report into the the Marble Arch Mound debacle was “discussed” at a council scrutiny meeting on Wednesday evening. Labour said the report “did not go far enough in scrutinising the role of senior elected council leaders,” and that it showed a “culture of complacency in the council and a lack of political leadership” (which everyone kind of knew anyway). While the council said “the review found no evidence the problems associated with the mound ‘have occurred or are occurring’ elsewhere in the council”. Neither the present leader of the council or the previous leader (who resigned over the costs of the Mound) attended the meeting.

⚾️ It looks like baseball will be coming back to London next year. In an interview with TalkSport, Sadiq talks about “Major League Baseball coming back to London next year.” The Cubs and Cardinals were supposed to play in London in June of 2020, but those games were cancelled for the obvious reasons.

talkSPORT 2 @talkSPORT2

😠 "I'm disappointed at what happened" 🏆 "But over the whole month, the best games of any host city were in London" 🌍 "I want us to be the sporting capital of the world" @MayorofLondon tells @talkSPORT the trouble at the Euros final won't hamper London hosting major events

🖼️ Dazed magazine has teamed up with global image makers and artists for Art for Homeless Youth, a charity print sale to raise money for Centrepoint UK. We’ve got our eye on Martin Parr’s Untitled, London, 1990, as well as Johnny Crumbie and Pat Smith, Vauxhall, 1987 by Rob Bremner, and Heygate Estate, 2011 by Alastair Strong.

🎭 The Royal Shakespeare Company has cancelled the extension of their production of Hilary Mantel’s novel The Mirror and the Light at the Gielgud theatre, due to Covid worries. That means the play will close on 28 November instead of running until 23 January as had been planned.

👻 And we’re assuming that’s why 2:22 – A Ghost Story (the well-reviewed spooky play that was also Lily Allen’s West End debut), is coming to the Gielgud for a limited run next month. Director Matthew Dunster is returning for the second run, but there’ll be a completely new cast. Tickets are on sale.

🦇IMMERSIVE EXPERIENCE KLAXON! The Arkham Asylum Immersive Live Experience doesn’t arrive in London until September of next year, but tickets went on sale yesterday. The experience invites audiences “to lose themselves in the infamous asylum, crossing paths with some of Gotham City’s most iconic DC characters: Batman, Scarecrow, Catwoman, Poison Ivy and many more…”.

🍿 Last Night in Soho director, Edgar Wright wants to take you on a tour of his favourite cinema, the BFI Southbank:

🏮 Sadie Frost has just directed a documentary about the fashion designer Mary Quant and to help promote it she’s reminisced about “her whirlwind life in Soho” for the Standard. Some of it might set your teeth on edge (“When Soho House came along, I was a founder member. They gave me, Jude, Jonny, Ewan and Sean lunch in a fine dining room and asked us to become the first members”), but some of it is interesting.

👨‍🎨️ The Late Constable exhibition opens today at the Royal Academy and it’s getting four and five stars from pretty much everyone. The Guardian gives it five and calls it a “sublime” and “ground-shifting show”, and there’s another five from the Telegraph who pull out adjectives like “tremendous” and “invigorating”. There’s four stars from the Times for this “triumphant showcase” and another four from the Standard. Time Out meanwhile, gives the exhibition two measly stars thanks to presence of too many “naff paintings of shepherds in a field”.

Food and drink bits

🪑 As everyone knows already, Ikea have officially bought the old Topshop building on Oxford Street. But well done to London Eater, who headlined their article ‘Furniture Company Will Open Swedish Meatball Destination Restaurant on Oxford Street’.

🍒 The Handbook profiles London’s “hottest” (and most ‘Instagrammable’) new restaurant opening, Tattu (nothing to do with these two) which will bring its “cherry blossom illuminated trees, moody atmospheric lighting and stunning traditional Chinese dishes” to Denmark Street later this year.

🍺 Brewdog are opening a cavernous “global flagship venue” in Waterloo Station next summer, in the space that was supposed to have been Time Out Market. The “craft beer destination” will have a bar (good start), brewery, cocktail bar, coffee shop, workspaces and “gaming area” spread across two giant floors. Oh, and there’s a “duckpin bowling alley, shuffle boards and…” (God help us) “…a slide to get between the floors”.]

🍻 In other beer news, the London Christmas Beer Market comes to the Old Truman Brewery on 19-20 November (way too early to call itself a Christmas market, but who’s counting?). They’re cramming in more than “100 bars and stalls of your favourite festive treats” including over 70 of the “UK’s finest breweries and producers”.

🍖As we’re sure you already know, it was the British Kebab Awards this week and London did pretty well. The Chef of the Year award went to Yaz Restaurant in Highams Park, and EV Restaurant on the South Bank took the title of Best Value Restaurant. The Best Takeaway in London prize went to the Pizza King Kebab House in Edmonton.

👨‍🍳️ The Hoxton in Southwark has introduced a residency series called New Kids On The Stove. Over the next three months there’ll be a series of one night only events that will feature brand new menus from “some of the freshest London-based chefs” including people like “Whyte Rushen, Spasia Dinkovski aka Mystic Borek, and Ixta Belfrage, with matching beers from Camden Town Brewery”. Tickets for the first event are available here.

🐷 The Pig’s Head is a new “pro-planet” pub that’s opening in Clapham Old Town next month, where the Rectory used to be. Opening on November 8, the Pig’s Head will be taking “a different sustainability-led approach” which means “all animals will be butchered on-site, and they'll work with farmers practising regenerative methods.”

🍝Back in July we told you about Manteca, the Soho “nose-to-tail British-Italian restaurant” that was maybe moving to Curtain Road in Shoreditch. Well it’s definitely happening. The doors will officially open on November 16 and bookings went live a couple of day ago.

🔊Art and design mag, We Heart has been to visit the new basement venue at Morito’s on Hackney Road. The new space is hosting music nights every Tuesday “showcasing East London’s musical diversity” as well as feeding people “the North African, Southern Spain, and East Mediterranean fare that they’re renowned for.”

Long read of the week

Bloomberg asks Can a Map Rekindle London’s Love of Walking?

Tweet of the week

Mat Osman @matosman

London is like that ‘turtles all the way down’ model of the universe except instead of turtles it’s Prets