London News Review 2014: In Other News

BethPH
By BethPH Last edited 111 months ago
London News Review 2014: In Other News

Photo by Matt Lowe in the Londonist Flickr pool

In the final part of our round-up of London news in 2014, we've gathered some of the other stories we've covered, from Ritzy redundancies to mystery planes.

Etiquette and public spaces were on the agenda in 2014, with the sudden prominence of 'stranger shaming' — where someone takes a photo of a person supposedly breaking some unwritten rule and posts it on social media for ridicule. A commuter found herself on one of the most idiotic of these in April for eating a salad on the tube which prompted numerous articles and a couple of protests. It also seems that some men appear unable to stop themselves doing other inappropriate stuff on public transport, like taking upskirt pictures and sexually harassing female passengers. We even found what appears to be a Crossrail worker filming up skirts of female passengers.

Angry London

We also asked what Londonist readers thought about three other London annoyances, umbrellas, walking while looking at phones and armrests, and discovered that, wow, being in the city can make some of us really angry at trivial stuff.

Back in March, London Live, a new TV channel just for us, was launched. Unfortunately, it didn't fare too well and by October had reduced its output in a bid to cut costs. In the world of cinema, a row erupted after staff at the Ritzy and Curzon chains demanded the London Living Wage (LLW). Both won their battle, then some Ritzy staff were to be made redundant before management made a dramatic U-turn.

One of London's biggest and most tragic stories of 2014 was the disappearance of Hanwell schoolgirl Alice Gross. Her body was later discovered in the River Brent while the body of the prime suspect, Arnis Zalkalns, was found hanging in Boston Manor Park in October. The inquest into her death has been adjourned until 29 January 2015.

For the first time, people wanting to watch London's famous New Year's Eve fireworks display will be charged £10 for the privilege. London Mayor Boris Johnson decided to introduce ticketing in an attempt to manage crowds. In news that will come as surprise to precisely no-one, tickets were soon changing hands for upwards of £200 on resale sites. Which, as we pointed out, is pretty bloody stupid because tickets aren’t transferable and the main ticket holder will be expected to have ID that matches the ticket.

Poppies, protests and bookish lock-ins

Unusual things we learned would come to London in 2014 include (in no particular order) a Shrek theme park, Elvis Presley's fake tooth, the zombie apocalypse and a mass pillow fight.

To commemorate the outbreak of the First World War, nearly 900,000 ceramic poppies were planted in the moat at the Tower of London. Blood Swept Land And Seas Of Red captured the country's imagination and thousands of people visited the installation ahead of 11 November. The poppies have since been removed and sent to their new owners, with the money raised from their sale donated to charities helping ex-armed forces.

We love books at Londonist, but one tourist found his love of browsing got him locked in at Waterstones in Trafalgar Square. Twitter came to the rescue and police liberated the unlucky reader. The chain later launched an event for people to win an overnight stay in their shop with refreshments. In other book news, we were quite excited to learn that Foyles would open its new flagship store in June. Have you been yet?

London saw another year of protests, including October's Pay Rise Protest, Focus E15, November's protest against the closure of Madame JoJo's, Free Education march and the Million Mask March. Black cabbies protested against TfL's handling of Uber in June and Ukrainians protested against Russia's occupation of Crimea. Someone also spent a night on top of Winston Churchill.

Oh, and those mystery planes? It was speculated that the Metropolitan police were using them to intercept mobile phone signals. The Met (of course) denied it.

Read more:

London News Review 2014: Housing

London News Review 2014: Transport and Environment

London News Review 2014: Infrastructure

London News Review 2014: Politics

Last Updated 30 December 2014