Weekend roundup for 5 February
Featuring questionable candy, dank playgrounds and smoky siblings
A quick note to let you that we are taking next week off. As we’re approaching the first birthday of LiB we’re taking a few days to plan for the future (plus, the world is a mess right now and we need a break). The next issue will be Monday 15th. See you then.
News bits
🇺🇦 More protests in support of Ukraine are planned for Trafalgar Square this weekend. With Saturday’s starting at midday and another starting at 2pm on Sunday (it looks like Sunday’s protest will include a flashmob of musicians performing Ravel’s The Great Gate of Kiev).
As well as putting Chelsea FC up for sale this week, Roman Abramovich is also reportedly trying to offload “some of his glitzy London real estate”. Abramovich has a 15-bedroom mansion on Kensington Palace Gardens (aka ‘Billionaires’ Row’) as well as a penthouse at Chelsea Waterfront. The FT has an article here outlining what they think “tough measures on Russia” will do to London’s property market.
Gazprom Marketing & Trading is being kicked out of its offices on Triton Street by its landlord, which “plans to end its rental contract for the offices as soon as possible,” and on Thursday the Kremlin was shut out of the London aviation insurance market, effectively grounding Russian planes.
Earlier in the week, the Russian billionaire Petr Aven stepped down as a trustee of the Royal Academy, and the donation he made towards the current Francis Bacon exhibition was returned.
Bloomberg reported this week that most of London’s big law firms “are staying quiet” about the invasion and some are even “privately lobbying the government against imposing sanctions on their clients”. The Telegraph has a (paywalled) article here explaining “how London’s top lawyers ushered a flood of Russian cash into Britain.”
On Wednesday, the day after the first Tube strike, the Telegraph (paywall alert) ran an article outlining the ‘connections’ between the RMT union and “Vladimir Putin’s Russia” (essentially, the RMT’s assistant general secretary is a long term supporter of the pro-Putin separatists in eastern Ukraine).
🚨 Thursday was the first anniversary of the murder of Sarah Everard by the police officer Wayne Couzens. Sarah’s family released a statement saying they had been “overwhelmed with the kindness shown to us, not just by family and friends, but by the wider public.” On the same day the Guardian reported that the Independent Office for Police Conduct investigation is expected to say that the Met “made errors after receiving claims that Wayne Couzens had indecently exposed himself days before he attacked Sarah Everard.”
🚂 TfL has secured another short-term funding deal. This one is not as short-term as some of the recent agreements, but it still only gets us to 24th June. The basic details of the deal are that TfL gets “an Extraordinary Support Grant” of £200m and the Government agrees to“top up” any revenues if they are lower than expected.
🏆 The mayor went to the NME awards on Wednesday night to present the prize for Best Solo Act From the UK… and got booed by the crowd, apparently because of the Tube strikes. During an interview backstage, Sadiq called Boris Johnson a “piss-taker” over partygate and then, a couple of days later, he announced plans to extend the Ultra Low Emission Zone across the whole of London by 2023.
🍭 Westminster City Council has said it wants to get rid of “questionable candy and tat shops” as a part of a £150m facelift of Oxford Street. The problem is they have no power to do anything about that right now, so they are calling for powers to be devolved to allow them to “curb irresponsible behaviour by people using short-term let properties”.
😶🌫️ New research from Imperial College London has shown that there were over 1,700 hospital admissions for asthma and serious lung conditions “due to toxic air” in London between 2017 and 2019. On the bright side, “improvements in air pollution levels between 2014 and 2019 reduced the number of hospital admissions for asthma and serious lung conditions by 30%.”
🚇 Talking of pollution… Newham Council has voted unanimously to oppose the Silvertown Tunnel, the road tunnel that would link Newham to Greenwich. The Mayor of Newham said “Recent estimates show at least 115 people die prematurely each year in our borough because of life threatening vehicle fumes; and that we have the highest rate of child hospitalisation for asthma related conditions in the country.”
🏊 London is getting a new lido. Last week, Redbridge Council confirmed that it will be building an outdoor pool in Valentines Park, on the site of the original 1920s Valentines Lido, which closed in the 90s.
Arts & Culture bits
🇺🇦 The “Radical protest and music collective” R3 Soundsystem, is putting on a fundraising rave in aid of Ukraine. On Friday 11 March there will be “9 hours of back-to back music across two rooms at venue MOT, on a South London industrial estate”. Also, Space 289 in Hackney is hosting a fundraiser party next Friday with proceeds going to two Ukrainian charity groups focusing on humanitarian aid.
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