Weekend roundup for 8 April
Featuring the Coach & Horses, Dick & Dom and bread & jam
We had an extraordinary response to Monday’s issue about Bradley’s Spanish Bar. We especially enjoyed everyone sharing their personal Bradley’s/Hanway Street anecdotes, including those involving running into rock stars, filming for sitcoms, strange encounters and the odd regret. If you haven’t read it yet, then take a few minutes out of your long weekend to get to know one of London’s best bars a little better.
In today’s roundup we have more pub news, including not one, but two ‘best pub’ lists (does Bradley’s appear on either of them? you’ll have to wait and find out) as well as a couple of Hollywood stars turning up at Tayyabs, the full rundown of A Little Life reviews, and rumours of an unexpected addition to the Coronation celebrations.
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One last thing before we get on with it: As it’s a bank holiday on Monday there will be no LiB until we return on Wednesday with a literary-themed edition of Where Do You Go?. To make up for the loss of Monday’s issue, today’s paywall is a little further down than it normally is. Have a great long weekend.
News bits
👮 On Wednesday night Met commissioner Mark Rowley published an open letter saying that, of the 1,000+ inquiries into claims of sexual and domestic abuse by serving officers, four out of five “did not result in the correct action and should be reassessed”. On Thursday morning Rowley went on the Today programme where he said that, of the 1,131 individuals investigated, “689 will undergo a new assessment to pursue new or missed lines of inquiry”. He also said that “the force is building a new ‘re-vetting’ system, to deal with issues” and “there hasn't been enough clarity in this area”. As for the ability to sack officers from the force more easily, Rowley said that “a consultation is being conducted by [Suella] Braverman now, which he and other Met officials are feeding into.”
Rowley’s letter also said that around 90 officers have been moved away from fighting serious and organised crime and into the Met’s professional standards team, where they will “investigate wrongdoing in the force”.
Meanwhile, a new poll commissioned by the BBC has found nearly three-quarters of Londoners “felt officers treated some parts of society differently to others” and “almost half of female respondents said they ‘totally distrusted’ the Met”.
🎥 New research into live facial recognition released by The National Physical Laboratory (which was commissioned by the Met and South Wales police) has found there is “minimal discrepancies for race and sex when the technology was used at certain settings” and that the “true positive identification rate” of live facial recognition is 89%. The Met has said that it believes the chance of a false match was 1 in 6,000 people. In response, Big Brother Watch has said that “Live facial recognition is suspicionless mass surveillance that turns us into walking ID cards, subjecting innocent people to biometric police identity checks,” and that, “given repeated findings of institutional racism and sexism within the police, forces should not be using such discriminatory technology at all”.
🪧 On Tuesday, hundreds of Google employees walked out of the London offices, following the company’s decision to lay off around 12,000 employees worldwide. a Unite spokesperson told Reuters “Our members are clear: Google needs to listen to its own advice of not being evil.”
🏡 In response to new data from Rightmove “that shows the average asking rent in London leapt by 15% over the year to reach £2,480” and that “the rents for homes in inner London have passed £3,000 for the first time” the mayor has again said that “the Govt must allow me to freeze rents in the capital.” Unfortunately, Sadiq published his plea on Twitter where it appeared under a Doge logo, dampening its impact somewhat.
🎟 Figures provided by the Mayor’s office have shown that 54,156 TfL ‘nominee passes’ were in use last month, offering free travel on all Tube, bus and Overground services. That number includes “more than 19,000 people nominated by TfL members of staff, more than 21,000 nominated by bus drivers, more than 10,000 friends or relatives of retired TfL and staff and 3,300 people who know ‘third party’ workers at TfL.”
🚲 TfL published its first “cargo bike action plan” at the end of last week, setting out how it will work with borough councils and the freight sector to “promote and enable the growth of cargo bikes to make them London’s leading option for last-mile freight and servicing trips”. The plan is to have a sixth of deliveries in central London be done by cargo bike by 2030.
🚇 Megan Kenyon has written a great piece for The Fence’s newsletter about the Tube challenge, i.e. the “attempt to visit every single station on the London Underground network in the fastest time.”
🚫 And talking of fences… Andrew Smith (who is the Professor of Urban Experiences at Westminster University) has published a new paper on whether the installation of temporary fencing in public parks to secure ticketed festivals is now “beyond the pale” (‘pale’ being the old English word for a fence). P.S. We interviewed Andrew for this issue on festivals in parks at the end of last year.
💡 If you’ve walked down the Thames Path after dark recently, you might have noticed that the spire on Rotherhithe Church tower is now illuminated. The project was made possible by the US Embassy at Nine Elms (Rotherhithe being the spot where the Mayflower set out from).
🎙 For his Guardian column last Sunday, David Mitchell wrote about “London’s cultural toxicity” as exemplified by the BBC’s decision to broadcast Radio 4’s Saturday Live from Cardiff. The problem, as Mitchell sees it, is that London has historically pulled in “new people, with hopes, dreams, ambitions and ideas,” but right now “it’s stagnant with oligarchs and people are starting to hate it as a result. A case of too many dicks and not enough Whittington.”
⌚️ The Standard ran an article this week reporting that “more than 6,000 luxury watches” were stolen in London last year, with “£139 million worth” of watches being taken since 2018. However, this information was obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by a company that buys and sells luxury watches, and the same data also claims that “four in 10 Britons have been victims” of the crime. That would mean that almost 27m people have had their watch stolen at some point. Does that sound right to you?
🍿 Ian Visits reports on the restoration of a cinema near to Harrow on the Hill, where a magnificent art deco frontage has been covered over with “a ghastly metal facade since the 1960s”.
🚗 Maybe the real reason the ULEZ debate wasn’t getting resolved was because Dick & Dom hadn’t got involved yet.
Food and drink bits
🧑⚖️ Some good news in the battle to keep Simpsons Tavern alive: The ‘winding up order’ requested by the landlord’s was reheard last week and Simpsons’ won’ as the order was refused. That means they can now get on with trying to reopen the restaurant, and also with suing the landlords for “the unlawful forfeiture of Simpson’s and associated costs and damages.” You can donate to the ‘Save our Simpson’s’ crowdfunder here.
🍸 The Cocktail Club in Cabot Square in Canary Wharf, is having its licence reviewed “amid accusations of underage drinking and claims of sexual harassment”. According to police reports “clearly underage girls who were drunk and vulnerable” were spotted by staff but not given any support and were not asked for ID during six hours of drinking that left them “so drunk and intoxicated, one girl vomited inside the bar.”
🇪🇸 There are a few more details on the new restaurant from chef Tomos Parry and the team behind Brat that’s coming to the spot where Byron Burger used to be on Beak Street. Mountain will be opening in June as a “wood grill and wine bar” inspired by “Parry’s favourite meals from his travels across Spain” (that means “vermouth on tap” as well as dishes like lobster caldereta) and a wine list “created in collaboration with the Noble Rot team.” Follow them on Instagram for more updates.
🧑🍳️ Joe Laker, who was head chef at Fenn in Fulham, is opening a new restaurant in Hackney, called Counter 71. As the name implies this is a ‘chef’s table’ restaurant, that will serve “16 guests each night from our earthy green marble countertop, which takes centre stage in the room.” There’s also going to be a bar downstairs called Low Country with a bunch of American whiskey cocktails including a “Blueberry Manhattan, made with blueberry-infused whiskey”.
🍻 There were two ‘best pub’ lists published this week. First, Pub & Bar magazine gave out its National Pub & Bar Awards, with The Oyster Shed near London Bridge and The Barley Mow in Mayfair named as the two best in London. Then, on Tuesday, Time Out published its list of the 50 Best Pubs in London, which somehow managed to not include Bradley’s, but did include the Coach & Horses (on Greek Street) and LiB favourite The Duke in the top ten (Skehans in Nunhead took the top spot).
🌯 West Norwood Feast returns this this Sunday (and the first Sunday of the month until the end of the year), but according to Brixton Buzz, the street festival could be under threat thanks to a “huge jump in the street licence fee being levied by Lambeth Council”.
🏭 While everyone else is opening up restaurants and bars in Battersea, Gordon Ramsay has just closed down his London House restaurant on Battersea Square, presumably so he can focus on the Bread Street Kitchen & Bar and Street Pizza that are in the Power Station.
🍝 The latest ‘made more for Instagram than eating’ restaurant is the pop-up Prada Caffè, which you can find in Harrods until next January. The whole thing is painted in Prada’s “signature pastel mint” and a serving of “bread and jam” will cost you eight quid (the spaghetti with cheese and tomatoes is closer to £30).
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