Green Party London Assembly Member Darren Johnson recently commissioned the report on road pricing over concerns about congestion levels, air pollution and health and economic efficiency. The scheme would cover the whole of the greater London area and replace the existing congestion charge.The report, drawn up by sustainable transport planning company Eco-Logica, claims that road pricing could raise a daily revenue total of £3.9m or annual revenue of £1.4bn.

Green Party mayoral candidate Jenny Jones outlined this week how road pricing plays a part in their plans to save Londoners £1500 over four years.

It’s far from the first time that road pricing has been examined as a congestion-reducing measure; last year the Transport Committee revealed that government ruled it out. But could it work for London? One of the biggest issues any road pricing scheme faces is the type of vehicles it targets. TfL data showed that although there was a reduction in privately-owned cars following the introduction of the congestion charge, the numbers of commercial vehicles, taxis and motorbikes stayed around the same.

It’s entirely likely that a car driver considering driving into central London would be deterred by having to fork out more cash, but less likely that a business owner who needs to make deliveries will be put off. Any charges would simply be passed on to customers as it’s pretty hard to deliver several tons of concrete, office furniture or whatever to a site in the Strand by any other means. And according to the Green Party report, it’s commercial vehicles which are the most polluting and congestion-making.

Not that there isn’t a case for road pricing; it’s basically relatively equitable in the sense that you pay for what you use. But implementing it at a regional level is fraught with difficulty. Motorists already pay very high taxes in the form of Vehicle Excise Duty (VED) and more importantly, duty on fuel which arguably is already a road pricing scheme — you pay tax for what you use. The only real difference is that the revenue goes to central rather than regional government. A successful road pricing scheme would be rolled out nationally and accompany significant reductions in fuel tax and VED.

The report does note that concerns over the social groups potentially impacted by road pricing, limitations of technology and fears that road pricing could be used to the exclusion of other alternative transport initiatives. It touches on the exemptions of certain vehicles such as motorbikes, taxis and the increase in alternatively-fuelled cars. It also doesn’t really provide any viable alternative for commercial vehicles apart from higher charges at which point, like the congestion charge, it stops being a preventative of congestion and becomes another tax on driving.

Boris Johnson has repeatedly come under fire over the capital’s air quality by everyone from the International Olympic Committee to campaign groups for cleaner air. Other cities, faced with the same problem, have opted for different approaches; Milan trialled a ban on all cars on Sundays. Beijing restricted driving through the city to cars with even or odd number plates on alternating days which was also tried in Athens. TfL, however, told the Guardian that there are ‘no plans’ to introduce a London-wide road pricing scheme:

“The proposal has been included in the mayor’s transport strategy so that if the raft of other measures to address congestion, including a huge investment in London’s transport network, the lane rental scheme and other measures to increase transport capacity across the capital, are unsuccessful then a larger-scale system of road-user charging could at that time be considered. However, this would be very much the last resort, and very much in the long term.”

Photo by Gaz-zee-boh from the Londonist Flickr Pool

• London’s pet population is being hit hard by the recession.
• How the all-new Heygate might look if they ever get around to starting work therein.
• Police are looking for some incredibly stupid teens who stabbed a pregnant woman in Kilburn.
• Interesting statistic of the day: 2/3 of London’s babies have a foreign parent.
• Huge Leyton cannabis factory ‘shut down’ following police raid.
• On how childcare costs are deterring London parents from working
• Finally, some more London Fashion Week footage. Just in case you needed it.

Passing fashion, by Analog Photos via the ever fashionable Londonist Flickr pool.

Ken Livingstone’s promise to cut fares by 7% if he’s re-elected and resign if he doesn’t might have helped the former mayor gain in the polls against Johnson. And not content with that, Ken has also pledged to make the Barclays Cycle Hire scheme free for older people. The mayor’s announcement that fares would increase at the start of this year probably haven’t done him a lot of favours in the popularity stakes, but Boris is insistent that higher fares are necessary to invest in the system and has committed to increasing them by 2% above inflation every year to fund that investment.

So where does Ken plan to find the money to cut fares in such a dramatic fashion? We’ve all heard his claim that TfL has a £729m surplus in its operating budget, a claim which TfL staunchly refute. TfL’s chief finance officer Stephen Critchley told C4′s FactCheck blog:

“The £729 figure from the 2010/11 accounts is the difference between the operating margin (the difference between operating income, mainly fares revenue, and operating expenditure) that was originally budgeted and the actual outturn for the year.

The reason for the big difference was that TfL had to change its plans to cope with the grant reduction of £108m and prepare for the impact of the October 2010 Spending Review, which reduced the grant by £2.2bn over 4 years. This underspend – which did result from higher operating income and lower operating expenditure than budgeted – was used to offset the loss of £2.2bn funding in an effort to balance the business plan.”

But 7% off our fares — that would be pretty helpful at a time when everything else is so expensive, right? But what could it actually mean for London? According to Boris Johnson’s answers from Mayor’s Question Time last December, a cut of 5% would mean:

…to meet the scale of the financial reduction outlined above, the following key projects which are not yet contractually committed would need to be looked at first to be cut:

• Delaying the Deep Tube Upgrade Programme (Piccadilly/Bakerloo Line upgrades) by at least four years
• Delaying Bank Congestion Relief by at least four years
• Cancel six Cycle Superhighway routes

The following projects already underway would also need to be looked at:

• Slowing the SSR (Circle, Hammersmith and City, Metropolitan and District lines) upgrade so it takes much longer to complete.
• Slowing other major congestion relief projects(Victoria, Tottenham Court Road and Bond Street) so they take longer to complete.

It should also be noted that all the projects above (except Cycle Superhighways) have explicit agreed milestones in the Secretary of State’s Spending Review letter. Any change away from the milestones may result in a reduction in Government Grant, meaning further savings would be needed to fill the financial gap.

Professor Tony Travers of the London School of Economics (LSE) also spelled out the impact on loss of revenue caused by fare cuts both to FactCheck and in the Evening Standard, stating that “every pound taken off fares is a pound not available for investment”.

The Green Party thinks we can have both investment and low fares though. In Mayor’s Question Time in January, Darren Johnson said:

“On this issue of fares we have had a fairly sterile debate over the past few months basically being about a choice between increasing fares or reducing fares and increasing investment or reducing investment. Would you accept that there is another way forward and that we could maintain investment in new public transport infrastructure and reduce fares if we were to look at a more sophisticated form of road pricing which academics have suggested could raise £1bn a year which could provide investment for new public transport and provide a significant reduction in fares to make life easier for Londoners?”

The road pricing in question, which Londonist will look at later this week, is the subject of a report commissioned by Darren Johnson which suggests that around £1.4bn could be raised from road pricing. Meanwhile, Brian Paddick also outlined his fares policy recently, which again concentrated on reducing fares.

Like Boris, Ken is also no stranger to increasing tube fares, even after making pre-election promises to hold them down which later turned out to be misleading. So while a short-term cut at the ticket gates would be good for our wallets, it may turn out to be something of a pyrrhic victory for the former mayor should he be successful in his re-election bid.

The long and short of it is that having low fares at the same time as maintaining and upgrading infrastructure seems pretty much impossible, especially if the transport system in question is ‘creaking and suffering from decades of under-investment’ (we note that Boris has picked up on Bob Crow’s favourite adjective for the tube). As an aside to this, Richard Trench and Ellis Hillman’s London Under London notes that in the 1970s, the Paris Métro received three times as much investment as the London Underground.

Photo by Matt from London

The free concert, which will be conducted by the LSO’s Russian Principal Conductor, Valery Gergiev, was made possible by a new sponsorship deal with BMW. Muscling in on pop territory, the orchestra will perform flanked by giant screens.

Perhaps surprisingly for an open-air concert that will need to attract an audience of many thousands to be judged a success, the LSO will perform full works by Igor Stravinsky rather than a Last Night of the Proms-style populist programme of shorter pieces.

The Russian composer’s masterpieces The Rite of Spring and the Firebird Suite make up the core of the performance, which will also feature 150 children as part of the orchestra’s ‘LSO Discovery’ education progamme.

The Trafalgar Square concert is slated for repeat in 2013 and 2014 with details for these future events still to be announced.

Image courtesy of leftbrokeneye3 via the Londonist Flickr pool.

• Boris, Ken and Brian take questions from London’s elderly: read the lowdown here.
• The Met will be ‘exercising’ in the City this week.
• Victim of crime? Now you can register it online.
• On how London’s parks are being threatened by staffing issues.
• Different chemicals, same problem: drug-taking in the City is still rife, it seems.
• Hmm. The DfE remove, replace an anti-academy board of governors. Very Nineteen Eighty Four.

Abstract, by Scarycrow via the Londonist Flickr pool

The plans will see two prime viewing areas flagged for charging. The first is along 2km of Box Hill, comprising the tough zigzag road component of the race. The second is at the summit on Donkey’s Road, likely to be a good place to see breakaways, attacking manoeuvres and potential pile-ups.

LOGOC had been applauded for negotiating with the National Trust and increasing capacity at Box Hill from 3,500 to 15,000 after protests from spectators and cyclists, the current Sports Personality of the Year Mark Cavendish among them. Yet there is much anger at the proposal to charge spectators for the first time to view the critical hilly sections. It’s particularly disappointing that the event was offered as a consolation for those who missed out on tickets in the ballot last year. When the race route was launched, cyclist Bradley Wiggins himself said of the summer’s course: “It’s free for spectators so they can come along and poke their heads over the barriers.” Such head pokers can now look forward to being escorted away by security.

LOGOC stresses that 120km of the 140km of the race is still free to view for spectators. British Cycling President Brian Cookson said that while he understood “You can’t have an unrestricted free-for-all like the Tour de France”, he lamented LOGOC’s plans, musing: “It would be absolutely better if it was free of charge because cycling is a sport that is traditionally free to watch.” London Assembly Chair of the economic, culture and sport committee Dee Doocey called the proposals “Dreadful and most regrettable”, adding, “it is totally against what LOGOC has been saying all along.”

LOGOC has yet to announce prices for tickets, but claim they will reflect the cost of erecting grandstand seating, toilets and the all important refreshment areas. The announcement follows reports this week that tickets will be required for those entering the Olympic Park without  a specific event ticket. Those thinking of avoiding the hassle entirely and watching it at home should be warned that they’ll incur the company of celebrity crisp merchant Gary Lineker.

Photo from David Merrigan in the Londonist Flickr Pool.

Streetviolence.org lets victims or witnesses of a street crime to map the incident and give more details than are available on the police crime maps, like whether the victim knew their attacker and the time. The idea is to provide context to crime – if most of the muggings in an area are happening at, say 3am by people the victims know, there’s little point in pensioners getting frightened about nipping to the shop at lunchtime.

Sadly, that’s as far as we think its use goes. The charity behind the site, Witness Confident, says that it can be used by anyone who doesn’t want to formally report a crime to the police. Putting aside that sound of a can of worms opening, part of the terms and conditions of adding a crime to the map is that you allow the police to contact you. There’s the option to contact Crimestoppers if you want to report something anonymously, but the police crime maps also have that option. No wonder the Met, who worked alongside Witness Confident during streetviolence.org’s creation, are withholding their endorsement for the time being.

Tokyo

The notoriously-crowded metro system has a PASMO card which appears pretty similar to London’s Oyster card. We especially like the FAQ page for PASMO, which is illustrated with a nifty pink robot, something TfL’s website is sadly lacking. A ¥500 (£4) deposit is required upon purchase of the card and it can be topped up at ticket machines or station offices.

Fares are calculated by distance rather than zoned and range between ¥160 (£1.30) for a short trip of 1-6km to ¥300 (£2.40) for 28-40km. A Metro All-line Pass appears to work like a travelcard allowing unlimited travel on any line and costs ¥16,820 (£133.55) for one month.

Courtesy of a Japanese colleague, we can advise that travelling from Ikebukuro to Ginza on the Marunouchi Line (which is apparently like going from Shoreditch to Liverpool Street) costs ¥190 (£1.50) whereas travelling from Wakoshi to Ginza (more like Ealing to Liverpool Street) costs ¥270 (£2.15).

Paris

Paris uses a zonal system similar to London’s with six circular zones radiating out from the centre. A single adult ticket which allows you to travel on the Metro, the bus or the RER (Réseau Express Régional) costs €1.70 (£1.40) but if you buy a carnet (a book of 10 tickets) the cost drops to €1.25 (£1.00). A Carte Mobilis is a day ticket again like a travelcard giving unlimited travel within certain zones. Zone 1-2 is €6.30 (£5.20) and zone 1-5 is €14.00 (£11.60).

The Paris Métro also has a pre-pay system, the Navigo, which covers weekly and monthly travel. It requires a €5.00 deposit and a zone 1-2 fare is €62.00 (£51.50) for a month while zone 1-5 is €109.90 (£91.20).

A former Paris resident tells us that people live everywhere and commute in all directions but travelling from La Motte-Picquet Grenelle to La Défense is roughly equal to Wood Green to the City in London.

New York

The New York subway equivalent of Oyster is MetroCard which travellers appear to be strongly encouraged to use. In fact, a single ticket is only available from a vending machine and costs $2.50 (£1.55). An adult single using the MetroCard is $2.25 (£1.42). There are no fare zones as with many other systems so the amount you top your MetroCard up by gives you a fixed number of rides on the subway. Using express buses costs more, as does the dedicated train service to JFK airport though the latter is only $5.00 as opposed to the woundingly large £18.00 charged by the Heathrow Express. A 30 day unlimited ride card costs $104.00 (£65.00).

They also have a version of auto top-up; the hideously concatenated EasyPayXpress MetroCard, which requires $30.00 to open the account but you get a 7% bonus every time you top up over $10.00, which is nice. Oh, and there are no child fares on the subway if your offspring are shorter than 44 inches. Any taller and they pay the adult fare.

Berlin

The Berlin U-Bahn (from ‘Untergrundbahn’, which means ‘underground railway’, fact fans) has three fare zones, known as A, B, and C, with zone A being the centre of the city. A single fare is valid across buses, trams and rail across the relevant zone and costs €3.00 (£2.50) for zones A-C. Interestingly, unlike London, dogs don’t travel for free unless you have a day ticket and the fares even specify differences between large and small dogs. A day ticket in zones A-B is €6.30 (£5.20) and one for zones A-C is €6.80 (£5.65).

The monthly equivalent is a VBB Eco Ticket which can be valid for either a calendar month or for a month from the date of purchase. One of these for zone A-B is €74.00 (£61.00) and for zone A-C it’s €91.00 (£75.50). On the prepay front, Berlin is apparently being introduced to the Metrocard but we struggled to find any reliable information on this. If any Londonist readers can shed some light on it, do let us know in the comments. There’s a kind of short-term version of one called the WelcomeCard but this is aimed at tourists rather than commuters.

Newcastle

Consisting of three zones and just two lines it’s the baby of our list but as one of only four underground networks in the UK and one of two outside London we thought we’d include the Tyne & Wear Metro for comparison’s sake. It has a dizzying array of ticketing options but a single fare in one zone is £1.60 while travelling across zones A-C is £3.10. A DaySaver ticket, which allows unlimited travel on the Metro, rail and ferry is £2.70 for single zone and £5.00 for all three. As with the London underground, travelling after 9am is cheaper but we’ve gone for a commuting angle across all our comparisons.

A Network One Travel Ticket, which gives access to local buses too, costs £58.80 for a month (single zone) and £80.90 for all zones. There’s also a special ticket for the Toon Army to travel to matches which costs £10 but it’s limited to Newcastle United season ticket holders only. The Tyne & Wear Metro doesn’t have a pre-pay card option.

So, here’s a handy table showing the above transport networks all in GBP. We’ve shown Oyster single fares for London because the walk-up cash fares are so insanely overpriced that it would ruin any decent comparison.

*Disclaimer: if anyone has better information on fares on these underground networks, please feel free to tell us in the comments. Likewise, we’d be interested to hear about your experiences on them.

Photo by P. Pearson

Somerset House, in less droughty times.

• Much of the region is already in drought, says panel.
• Armed forces reservists will get the call-up for the Olympics. (For security purposes, before anyone makes gags about the rifle competition.)
• Oxford Street advert can tell if you’re a man or a woman. It’s a slippery slope from here to Minority Report.
• The Tottenham unemployed will get training in firefighting.
• Top Shop boss has a five-point plan to cement London as the world’s fashion capital.
• Eton in the East End: posh school helps launch sixth form college in Newham.
• Twickenham Film Studios to close.
• (A pared-down) Blur debut new song ‘Under the Westway‘.
• Transport sponsorship needs more clarity, says Assembly.

Image by Mark Ramsay in the Londonist Flickr pool.

Neighbours say the man has built a microlight aeroplane, complete with cockpit, in the flat and is now putting the finishing touches to a 12ft by 10ft motor boat.

How the unnamed resident hoped to disgorge his creations is not discussed, but he’s since been warned not to use his flat as a workshop. The Ham & High has more.

A few days ahead of the previously-advertised date (albeit months later than originally planned) Blackfriars Tube station re-opened to passengers this morning. Click through the gallery above for photos from our pre-rush hour visit.

Fresh from a closure that lasted three years, Blackfriars has been completely rebuilt. The station now sports cream tiling throughout, replacing the Seventies-looking brown and orange pattern of its previous incarnation (see Homemade’s pictures for an idea of how it used to look). There are new lifts between the ticket hall and platform level, four escalators, and a greatly enlarged ticket hall, part of a new entrance to the station complex.

With the new Bankside entrance to Blackfriars rail station opening last year, the three-year rebuilding project is slowly coming to a close. The new Thames-spanning platforms should be finished in the first half of 2012, bringing the project to a close.

Transport is the major area where the mayor has direct power and control over what happens in London. He or she is directly responsible for the buses, tubes, trams, DLR, cycle hire and London Overground trains. The mayor also runs London’s major roads, sets public transport fares, licenses taxis and minicabs, funds road safety schemes and has some influence over the rail network.

The mayor is Chair of Transport for London (TfL) and sets its fares, its budget and its policies. The mayor sets out his or her vision for transport policies in London in their transport strategy.

Transport is probably the biggest single challenge that the mayor faces, balancing the competing demands of high costs, fares, congestion, air pollution, service failures and the need to relieve overcrowding.

Some major infrastructure projects are currently taking place in London, which all involve the mayor/TfL to varying degrees:

• Crossrail is a major joint venture with central government, while Thameslink involves the rebuilding of several rail interchanges with London Underground.
• Upgrades to the tube network have taken a long time to carry out and have been difficult to deliver without disrupting existing users. They have also been costly because of the time taken and the financial models used.
• The extension of the East London Line to Clapham Junction completes the orbital rail network across south London – although controversially it reduces some links to central London.
• The Bounds Green A406 scheme is just reaching completion and the mayor faces new challenges to combat growing congestion in the development areas of east London that have led to proposals for new roads, ferries and tunnels.

The bus network has consolidated in recent years, but needs to be made more reliable and attractive to people who use other more congested modes at present.

Cycling and walking equally are politically challenging areas of policy, especially as there has been a massive growth in cycling in recent years and in the political voice of the cycling community with particular emphasis on safety.

The mayor will also want to have his or her say on major national infrastructure requirements such as airport capacity and location, and on the proposed high speed rail link (HS2) to the midlands and the north, which will involve substantial rebuilding of Euston station and could require the building of another Crossrail.

The mayor has however, been dealt a difficult hand in relation to funding both existing transport operations and providing the additional infrastructure that the growing city and rising user expectations demand. Central government funding has reduced as have contributions from developers as building projects have slowed down. At the same time, fares have been rising to cover the shortfall between costs and funds available and not many passengers are happy to pay for jam tomorrow today.

A measure of the scale of the transport task can be found in statutory consumer watchdog London TravelWatch’s ‘10 policies to keep Londoners moving’. The watchdog has already sought to use the document to influence the prospective candidates from the main parties in the lead up to May’s mayoral election and hopes that Londoners take the opportunity to ask their representatives on the doorsteps this spring about the priorities included in the publication that affect them most.

Further information about London TravelWatch is available at www.londontravelwatch.org.uk.

Read more of Londonist’s election coverage

Photo by MeDwayBoY

• Hogan Howe and Lee Jasper clash live on air.
• Slightly mad prof lives in plant filled box for two days.
• Goodness: Lord Lucan is still making headlines after all these years.
• Man decapitated by a lorry in Tooting.
• Five men injured in Homerton shooting.
• The Lambeth Show will go ahead after all.
• Thames Clipper fan? Sign here to stop the closure of Greenland Pier.
• Council evicts pensioners in Kingston.

On display by Darren Lehane via the Londonist Flickr pool.

Barking and Dagenham’s head of children’s services says there’s been an influx of new families to the area which, combined with the borough’s rising birth rate, mean they expect to have to find space for an extra 200 reception class places this September. Gateway primary school in Marylebone estimates that 50 of its 700 pupils are affected by cuts and may have to move, while in the wider Westminster area the council reckons around 2,000 families won’t be able to afford their rent.

A Westminster council press officer told the Guardian:

To live in Westminster is a privilege, not a right, because so many people want to live here

While that might be a good slogan for Westminster to adopt for many of its policies (“Westminster: parking here is a privilege, not a right”) it does beg the question of whether it’s fair that the outer boroughs should have to cope with increases of people on low incomes, rather than spreading them evenly around the capital. Westminster may not be as wealthy as it has been (its reserves were badly hit by the Icelandic banking collapse) but it’s still in a better financial position than many other London councils.

The housing benefit cap is based on the “30th percentile of rents” in an area with absolute limits per different types of property (for example, the maximum payable for a two bedroom property is £290 a week). As rents increase and more people become reliant on housing benefit because of the pesky economy, plus the ‘affordable rent‘ system leading to ‘affordable’ housing being let at up to 80% of market rates, people who were previously fine are getting caught out, living in places they can suddenly no longer afford. It’s worth taking a look at Shelter’s prediction of where in London will be considered affordable by 2016.

Last week the Evening Standard reported a construction boom in central and inner London, but around 50% of these (bloody pricey) homes are bought off-plan by foreign investors. Meanwhile, outer London is having to deal with the effects of inner boroughs becoming too expensive to live in.

Photo by Simon Crubellier from the Londonist Flickr pool

• The east end is unhealthy
• Work starts on cooling Green Park and Oxford Circus tube stations
• London Met University fined for over-recruiting students
• Heathrow Express strike dates set

Blue Angel photo by swift100 taken in East Sheen cemetery yesterday and shared in the Londonist Flickrpool.

Even before the candidates’ manifestos are published, both Jenny Jones and Ken Livingstone are pushing for stronger protection for private tenants. In her capacity as Assembly Member, Jenny Jones is on the Planning & Housing Committee and has been looking at the Mayor’s Housing Strategy (PDF). She’s published her own thoughts on the private rented sector, which include her assessment that both tenants and landlords want and would benefit from reform and regulation.

Ken Livingstone sets out a similar stall. If elected, he says he would establish a London-wide non-profit lettings agency to improve standards and matchmake good landlords with good tenants, offering more security (and so reducing costs associated with frequent moves). His most eyecatching policy is the London Living Rent. The Mayor has no power over market rents but, as with the London Living Wage, the idea is that City Hall would lobby for affordable rents – defined by his campaign as no more than a third of income.

Photo by Greything from the Londonist Flickr pool

Further images of the proposal by Terry Farrell to remodel Battersea Power Station, which we first learned of late last year, have emerged, as reported by Building Design (registration required).

The plan would demolish the side walls of the grade II*-listed building, replacing them with a colonnade that opens up into a park in the building’s central space. Much of the building’s signature details, including the chimneys, the turbine halls and the control rooms, would be retained.

However, the Farrell plan is only one of many, and not all are so reverent towards the iconic building. A report earlier this week concluded that nearly £500 million could be shaved off any redevelopment project if the chimneys, already in a terrible state, were demolished entirely. The most recent attempt at revamping the area failed last year after the company behind it fell into financial difficulty.  Chelsea are also known to be interested in building a new football stadium the site.

Thirty years after it was operational, one might wonder whether it’s possible or desirable to even keep the building standing at all. Advocates for its destruction have come from some unlikely sources, including design commentator Stephen Bayley, who thinks keeping it is “mindless nostalgia” for Britain’s industrial past. Yet its demolition is unlikely: the building has an emotional hold on the city, English Heritage isn’t likely to alter its listed status, and the success of Giles Gilbert Scott’s other riverside power station at Bankside since it was redeveloped into Tate Modern suggests that redevelopment could work, albeit perhaps not on the same scale. The question is: have we already run out of time?

The Guardian highlighted the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) work experience scheme last year — young people on Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA) are allegedly being pushed to take on unpaid work in the retail sector or risk losing their benefits.

Youth Fight For Jobs describes the scheme as ‘nothing more than attempting to introduce slave-labour for the young unemployed’. Despite government claims that the work experience will make young people more employable, the fact that there is no guaranteed job at the end of the eight-week period means there is little incentive for employers to recruit paid staff under standard employment terms.

Tesco in particular has aroused their ire after the supermarket giant advertised vacancies as ‘JSA plus expenses’. The company have hit back, saying that the advert was an ‘IT mistake’ though according to reports, said, ‘the position was not permanent but offered three night shifts of valuable work experience in exchange for Job Seeker’s Allowance, with a guaranteed interview at the end.’ As many others pointed out, a guaranteed interview isn’t the same as a guaranteed job. The Tesco advert has now been removed from the Jobcentre Plus website.

Although forcing benefits claimants to undertake work experience or risk losing their benefits is obviously a handy way to reduce unemployment figures in the short-term, its long-term viability is questionable. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that two months of free labour is great for companies’ profits but not so great for the job market.

The protest will take place from 6pm on 20 February with a follow-up protest at 6pm on Tuesday 21 February at Waltham Forest Town Hall. Email anti.cuts.wf@gmail.com for further information.

Photo by Benn G in the Londonist Flickr pool.

Chaplin memorabilia in the Garden Museum's local history collection

An MI5 file that casts doubts on Charlie Chaplin’s Lambeth boy credentials has been released to the National Archives today.

British intelligence services probed Chaplin’s background during the 1950s when the US authorities suspected the actor of communist sympathies. The file reveals MI5′s conclusion that he was “no more than a ‘progressive’, or radical” but also that there is no proof that he was born in London. No record of his birth was found at Somerset House, even under the presumed alias, ‘Israel Thornstein’.

Tragically for Walworth, as the Guardian reports, their local boy done good might even be — by birthplace — a Brummie.

• 2012 merchandise is, predictably, being sold at silly prices.
• An awful lot of wannabe gangstas have been rounded up in police raids.
• TOWIE actress’ beauty parlour gets petrol bombed. This is, frankly, bizarre.
• Cleaners at St. Pancras are on strike.
• (Probably) off to prison: teenager found guilty of beating up that Malaysian student during the riots last year.
• Here’s one for athletic Python fans: Michael Palin is organsing a Hop-athon on the Heath.
• Nude Bacon goes for £21m at Christie’s.

Half term, by andrew off-road via the Londonist Flickr pool.

TfL are doing a huge amount of work to prepare London for the inevitable delays on public transport around the various Olympic events and have produced a series of rather pretty maps showing road, tube, rail and bus hotspots which were launched on the Get Ahead of the Games website last month.

The hotspot data, now available in the developer’s area of the TfL website, is free to use and TfL hope that developers will grab the opportunity to create apps which will help make travelling around the capital less arduous. Reduce, reroute, retime and remode is TfL’s mantra for the Olympics weeks. Director of Games Transport Mark Evers said:

“TfL’s open data policy means that our regular live travel information feeds are already available online, leading to the develoment of some fantastic apps to help Londoners move around. Making this hotspot data freely accessible to developers will ensure that this information is widely available to customers in the form that best suits them”

An additional £6.5bn has been invested to upgrade travel services and ensure an Olympics legacy once the extra 3m visitors have departed. In the words of TfL themselves; if there’s sport rather than transport on the front page, we’ve done our job properly.

Photo by Paki Nuttah

London Elects wants to find 32 people turning 18 on 3 May, who are passionate about London and their local area, to take part in the campaign to make sure young people know how to make their voice heard. Eleven of the London Assembly members are elected by calculating all the votes for a party across the city, so there’s more chance to make an impact than with First Past the Post.

If you fancy getting involved then contact London Elects via Twitter, their Facebook page or email info-at-londonelects.org.uk

To vote in the London election you need to be at least 18 years old on 3 May 2012, live in London and be a British, Republic of Ireland, Commonwealth or EU citizen.

• Man gets shot in the face in Green Lanes, survives.
• Arrests made at anti-deportation protest in Harmondsworth.
• British Olympic hopefuls get a 34-page rule book to gen up on. Seems they won’t be able to sell their kit on eBay after all.
• In spite of apparent housing shortages, London does have a record number of new homes.
• Our city has been declared second only to Paris in terms of the best places in which to study.
• Popular busker wins record deal. See – it does happen.
• Happy animal story of the day: read about the lucky dachshund who spent 30 minutes in a frozen lake…and survived.
• Happy plant story of the day: Bluebell Heath in Stanmore gets a grant to enable its restoration.

Canal at dusk. Image by Simon Crubellier via the Londonist Flickr pool.

Artist's impression of the unbuilt Dubai original. (c) Dynamic Architecture

The future of London’s architecture is not short of ambitious projects. In the works already are the Shard, the Boomerang Tower, the Pinnacle and Alain de Botton’s proposed “Temple for Atheists”, but a building announced this week trumps them all in terms of eye-candy.

News comes to us (via Construction Digital) of a new 80-floor skyscraper (8 more than the Shard) which incorporates a unique feature, namely independently-rotating floors. Actually, it’s not that new. The project was initially planned for Dubai — admittedly, not a place short of a ridiculous building or two — but is now being touted for London.

Whether anything will happen is dubious, to say the least. Originally called “The Dynamic Tower“, the concept was first announced in 2008 with a stated completion date of last year. And architect David Fisher admits to having limited credentials.

Indeed, no details are given about an intended building site, planning permissions, funding, or potential tenants, and we suspect the notion is more spin than twist.

Below is the official video envisioning this latest addition to the London skyline.

PS, We checked the calendar and April Fool’s Day is still some way off.

The 16 year old boy witnessed a violent attack and agreed to provide a statement with the proviso that his identity was kept confidential over fears of reprisals. In what the CPS rather euphemistically describe as a fall “below our accepted standard”, details of his identity were revealed to the defence, which led to threats against him and his family. The Met initially denied that a breach of confidence had occurred — the family’s solicitor told the BBC:

“Through a series of individual and systemic failings, his name and address were revealed to the criminal gang and the family began to experience a campaign of harassment and intimidation, and when they brought their concerns to the attention of the Metropolitan Police it was denied that their identity had been revealed.”

The family were forced to go into a witness protection programme, leaving their jobs, friends and homes behind.

The Met recently announced that they are targeting London’s gang crime at the same as attempting to deter teenagers from gang culture and the subsequent 500 arrests. As anyone with even a passing interest in policing and crime will tell you, it’s not just about the arrests, it’s about the convictions, and witnesses are a vital part of this. If potential witnesses can’t trust the police and the CPS to take their safety seriously then the process falls down.

Tunde Banjoko, founder of young people’s charity LEAP, recently told the Guardian that community groups are better placed to tackle gang crime while Claudia Webbe, chair of the Met’s independent advisory group for Trident says that anti-gang strategies risk alienating young people where trust should be built.

A Met spokesperson said:

“The Metropolitan Police Service aims to always provide victims and witnesses with the support they require. When we get it wrong we acknowledge it with those involved and if appropriate provide compensation.”

Photo by pintofstripe

Londonist takes a look at what the campaigns are saying about themselves and each other.

One thing we’ll hear a lot about over the next few months is affordable housing targets, and whether Boris has kept his promises. This is partly because the final totals for Boris’s tenure won’t be released until after the election and partly because comparisons between the current and former Mayors are bloody difficult to make, offering scope for campaigns to cherrypick their figures.

The Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) tallies statistics for affordable housing starts and completions, but because it was founded in 2008 it’s not much help on Ken’s record. The Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) has data on all housing going back to 1998-99 but breaks it down by local authority, housing association and private enterprise – and while some of that private enterprise housing will clearly be classed as affordable, the DCLG doesn’t provide figures for London. They do have some nice charts about affordable housing supply in London but numbers are approximate.

Then there’s a difference between how the HCA and DCLG calculate their figures. We worked out that for 2009-2010, the DCLG’s figures show 13,855 affordable homes built in London (frustratingly, you usually have to hope they provide a handy stat about London in their key points and work back) while the HCA figures for that period are 15,114 starts and 12,772 completions.

So what do we know?

• Well, using the DCLG’s approximate charty figures we know that there were around 37,000 additional affordable homes built during Ken’s first term and around 50,000 during his second.
• Boris Johnson’s manifesto (PDF) promised 50,000 affordable homes by 2011. He’s since revised that goal to be achieved by the end of his Mayoral term.
• Using figures from the HCA and February 2010′s London Housing Strategy (PDF, p91), as of September 2011 40,602 affordable homes had been built under Boris Johnson. This is where the main scrap will come: will the remaining 10,000 be finished in time for him to claim he’s fulfilled his promise?

What don’t we know?

• How many homes are currently being built. 16,331 homes were started between April 2010-March 2011, some of which probably weren’t finished in time to be counted as part of the 40,602. Since there were only a pathetic 56 starts April-September 2011, if Boris has any hope of hitting the 50,000 target he must be hoping that either most of those 16,331 are taking a long time to finish or that a bunch of new homes sprang up since the latest stats and are being worked on like the clappers.
• How many of the affordable homes built under Boris were legacies from Ken’s time in office. Unless someone fancies going through each planning application for dates and funding (and we’re certainly not doing it) it’s probably easiest to acknowledge there would have been some crossover, and deal with it like adults.

Seen a campaign claim you want us to look into? Email us at tips@londonist.com. Photo by Stephen*Iliffe from the Londonist Flickr pool.

Help save Cooke's Pie and Mash shop in Shepherds Bush

• Fire crews tackled and contained a blaze on the Olympic Park last night
• St Pancras International cleaners to strike over pay
• In the wake of the latest Dispatches, Olympic organisers deny access to Games Lanes can be bought
• Petition #1: residents want to restrict the proliferation of betting shops in Southwark (the borough has 77)
• Petition #2: help save Cooke’s Pie and Mash Shop and other historic buildings on the Goldhawk Road (petition link)

Photo by Su Lin via the Londonist Flickrpool

Why £60m? Well, it’s how much we’ve been told (at a meeting with TfL) it would cost to remodel the northern roundabout at Elephant and Castle, and how much the Thames cable car is costing (£36m being provided by Emirates). These are two infrastructure projects that will have a significant impact on their local area, so we wondered what else could be achieved for a similar amount?

We asked the bloggers at last week’s election event and answers ranged from “develop a new bus and put 200 on the road” to “abscond and have plastic surgery”, “turn Oxford Street into a social housing development with swimming pool” and “whatever I was elected to do”.

So what would you do?

Photo by Laurabot_ from the Londonist Flickr pool

Several senior journalists were recently arrested after the company’s Management and Standards Committee passed information to police, leading to accusations against both the Metropolitan Police and News International themselves that Murdoch and the organisation are sacrificing others to save their own skins. The waves of blame and counter-blame have been reverberating on an axis between those three bodies ever since with the unenviable Sun staff at the centre.

The Sun’s associate editor Trevor Kavanagh spoke out against the apparent pursuing of the paper’s closure in an interview with BBC Radio Five Live:

“There is certainly a mood of unhappiness that the company proudly, certain parts of the company – not News International I hasten to add, not the newspaper side of the operation – are actually boasting that they are sending information to the police which will put (the arrested journalists) into police cells.

“You have to wonder what is behind it all. It is self-evident that there are people who will stop at nothing to destroy News International and they will not be satisfied until the Sun is closed. I have to tell you, that is not going to happen.”

Although Murdoch has said he plans to keep The Sun open, the shock closure of the News of the World last summer can’t be far from the staff’s minds along with the potential losses to the NI corporation if it does fold. And like their cousins in public condemnation, bankers, the impact of closing the paper won’t just result in a few bad apples losing their jobs but will likely be felt throughout the industry.

Photo by ponyintheair

'School of Rockupy' - photo by @HeardinLondon

The School’s predecessor, the recently evicted Bank of Ideas in Shoreditch, reportedly managed to host around 400 free workshops and other events during its occupation. Occupy plan to work with the local community around the school to establish a similar programme of events, designed to address local needs.

On opening day, a Community General Assembly sought to reach out to local people and Occupy Half Term has begun, providing free activities for kids on the theme of citizenship and there’s also talk of a ‘School of Rockupy’ on beats and ‘conscious’ music. Find out more about the initiative and coming events at schoolofideas.org.uk.

Meanwhile, the eviction of the Occupy London camp outside St Paul’s has been delayed, pending a decisions from senior judges over whether to hear an appeal. The camp, however, faced a rude awakening on Saturday morning when the library tent was the target of an arson attack. No-one was hurt, although there were “at least four homeless people asleep in the Library at the time of the incident.” The incident is under investigation and the camp has said that it would welcome “donations of books to restock the library as well as other provisions including food, warm clothing and bedding.”

Lewisham People Before Profit (PBP) walked into some of the houses during open viewings at the weekend (and ‘gained access’ to others) and began squatting. They say the houses, which were given guide prices of as little as £130,000, could be used to home one of the 1,000 families in the borough currently in temporary accommodation. Lewisham has 16,500 people on the waiting list for social housing.

Campaigners have made a video (below) and some of the houses in question look spectacularly grotty. The Council says work would cost £40,000 to renovate each home, but PBP say it costs that amount to house a family in a B&B for a year, so costs could be recouped quickly. They also say the work would provide much-needed jobs for the area – or, if the council won’t do it, PBP will consider training local unemployed people to do the necessary electrical, plumbing, plastering and carpentry work.

Lewisham Council told us it is

disappointed by the actions of the squatters. Given its limited funds, these properties are uneconomic for the Council to repair. Instead, the Council intends to sell these properties to speedily release much needed funds to bring other council properties, which are legally occupied and in better repair, up to decent homes standard. Regrettably the Council has been forced to withdraw the properties from sale due to the unlawful occupation by squatters. This will only delay the repair of other properties in its housing stock.

Given the perilous state of public funds at the moment this isn’t a black and white issue and we suspect there’s truth and good intentions on both sides. Housing is a tricky subject and we’re looking at it all week as part of our Mayoral Election coverage.

• YouGov / Evening Standard poll sees Boris Johnson scrape ahead of Ken Livingstone by just two percentage points
• The Tube was in a right old mess this morning. Hope things are better for your commute home.
• Following a retrial, former Met commander Ali Dizaei has been found guilty of misconduct and perverting the course of justice.
• Did Arsenal midfielder Aaron Ramsey cause the death of Whitney Houston? The Sun has a whacky theory…
• Occupy London has a new project: the School of Ideas.
• Waltham Forest is home to a high number of al-Qaeda sympathisers, according to a report.
• Harry Redknapp ‘s commitment to Spurs hasn’t stopped him opining on who he’d take to Euro 2012.
• Runway trial leads to increase in Heathrow noise complaints.

Photo / Mark Heathcote

King's College School rowers photo by solstråle_flicka

Most of us will have had a go at rowing, if only on the boating lake at Ally Pally or down the local gym. It’s knackering. So imagine repeating that rowing action up to 40 times a minute, for six or more minutes, in perfect synchronicity with a crew or responding to the command of a cox. We are in awe of the strength and stamina required.

Here’s a heads up on what to expect from the incredible Olympic and Paralympic rowing competitions.

There are 14 Olympic medal events taking place over eight days at Eton Dorney, the Eton College created and owned Dorney Lake near Windsor. Sweep rowers (one oar) compete in crews of two, four or eight whilst scullers (two oars) go solo, or in pairs or fours. The Telegraph has a nice infographic which summarises the permutations of boat and crew.

There are four medals up for grabs in Paralympic Rowing — also known as ‘adaptive rowing — the men’s and women’s single sculls, the mixed double sculls and the mixed coxed four.

Rowing is one of Team GB’s most successful Olympic sports, producing impressive medal hauls and national heroes like Steve Redgrave and Matthew Pinsent.

Adaptive rowing made its Paralympic debut in the 2008 Games and Team GB won two of the four medals. Safe to say, home team expectations run high for London 2012.

London is home to oodles of Olympic rowing history. Jamie Halliday of Vesta Rowing tells us, “London Rowing Club has a four suspended from their ceiling that won silver in Berlin (1936), my own club Vesta was represented in the 1908 games by one Harry Blackstaffe who won Sculler gold and Tideway Scullers in Chiswick is the home club of the current GB Single Sculler Alan Cambell.”

If you find yourself upriver in Henley-on-Thames visit the River and Rowing Museum where an exhibition about the 1948 London Olympics opens on 31 March.

Fun fact: Rowing is the only sport where competitors cross the finish line backwards.

Fancy row, row, rowing your boat not so gently down the stream? There are loads of places to start rowing in London and on the Thames. London Regatta Centre at Docklands is the place to go for adaptive rowing.

Find out more at British Rowing.

We’re bringing you the Londonist lowdown on all Olympic and Paralympic sports in the run up to London 2012.

Each week we’ll take a look at an issue that’ll be important in May’s election. This week it’s housing, and we asked Kate Allen, Editor of Social Housing Magazine, to give us an introduction to the topic.

Housing is unusual in that the Mayor has some considerable direct power in this policy area. He sets requirements, e.g., for the proportion of affordable housing demanded in a development, and last year he acquired control of government spending on affordable housing across the capital, which was previously held by the national housing funding quango, the Homes & Communities Agency.

This means that the mayor, who chairs the HCA’s London board, is responsible for setting councils’ housing budgets, and providing funding for new affordable homes. Boris Johnson did this for the first time in 2010, publishing the capital’s first statutory housing strategy (PDF). Whoever is elected as mayor will thus find that housing is a key part of their job.

Housing is certainly a challenging policy area. 344,771 families were on waiting lists across Greater London in 2010, up from 181,080 in 1997. 10,180 households were accepted as being statutorily homeless in London in 2010/11, down considerably from 26,580 in 1998/9, but a slight rise on the previous year’s record low of 9,460.

Delivery of new housing has dropped off in recent years, partly thanks to the recession but also due to the end of the previous government’s spending programme. New build completions in London peaked in 2004/5 at 24,060 units, of which 6,180 were social housing, but had fallen to 19,530 by 2009/10 (the last year for which full data is available). 6,990 of these were social housing.

A complicating factor in all this is that the coalition government has shifted the goalposts over the past couple of years. They have abandoned the previous term ‘social housing’ – where tenants on low incomes pay relatively cheap rents to live in council- or housing association-owned homes. An ‘affordable’ rent, which councils and housing associations can now charge new tenants, is defined as being up to 80% of the local market (full-price) rent. Implementation of this new system is patchy – some councils have chosen not to introduce it in their areas, but others are going ahead with it.

This, along with the government’s benefit reforms, will fuel an already-emerging trend of increasing differentiation in housing markets across the capital. The government’s forthcoming benefit reforms, including rent capping and the introduction of the universal credit, will push people on low incomes out of a swathe of inner London boroughs, and fuel the growth of sink neighbourhoods in the outer boroughs and poorer parts of the capital such as south-east London.

This trend is being fuelled by the housing market: rents have climbed in recent years, and are forecast to continue to do so (Savills estimates 4% rental growth per year over the next five years). This is creating a wider affordability crisis, even for households on moderate incomes.

Photo by SabineThoele from the Londonist Flickr pool. Read more of Londonist’s election coverage. 

• Eleven people arrested following stabbing in Newham.
• More arrests at News International: five Sun journos are rounded up.
• Ricky Preddie’s gone straight back to jail without collecting £200.
• The ROH gets to host the BAFTAs tonight.
• Mencap leads calls for over-inflated hotel room rates during the Olympics to be reviewed.
• Art news 1: Michael Pinsky runs blue light rings round landmarks to highlight rising sea levels.
• Art news 2: a Kingston roundabout is to get a fancy paper plane garnish.

Parka, by dbtelford via the Londonist Flickr pool. Keep warm, y’all.

Westminster council has given the go-ahead for a new project on the site of the old Middlesex hospital in Fitzrovia.

Mostly torn down a few years ago, save for the listed chapel and the western facade, the site of the former hospital has remained in limbo after a controversial Candy Brothers scheme, Noho Square, was cancelled due to financial troubles.

The new building, pictured above with the re-developed western wall, is a little on the bland side, though preferable to the scuppered Candy cheme. It will have 300 homes, a sixth of them designated as affordable, along with restaurants, shops and offices, a primary care facility, and an educational centre.

Mayor in facepalm moment

It’s been something of a gaffe-prone week for London’s two main mayoral rivals with Boris Johnson joining Ken Livingstone on the naughty step after he described St Patrick’s day events as ‘lefty crap’ and linked them to Sinn Féin.

Ken Livingstone sparked outrage earlier in the week over a comment in a New Statesman interview that the Tory party is ‘riddled’ with homosexuals. In an interview, again with the New Statesman, Boris Johnson said of a gala dinner celebration:

“…And I’ll tell you what makes me angry. . . spending £20,000 on a dinner at the Dorchester for Sinn Féin.”

Ouch. The dinner in question is an annual event and has not been subsidised by the taxpayer since Boris came into office, a fact which Labour AM hopeful Christine Quigley pointed out:

“Boris’s lazy and stupid remark is utterly factually wrong. The fact is the annual St Patrick’s Day event he refers to was a self-financing community event attended by a wide range of Irish actors and politicians from many parties, community figures and celebrities, including Bob Geldof, the Irish Ambassador, Dermot O’Leary, Richard Corrigan, and Pauline McLynn. It did not cost the taxpayer £20,000 and it was not a Sinn Féin event.”

It’s certainly a bit of a sideswipe at Ken Livingstone; his office backed the event for six years and the former mayor is now working hard to bring London Irish voters on side.

It’s not so much that either Johnson’s or Livingstone’s remarks were calculated to offend — despite the outraged fury spiral circulating around the internet post-unwise comment, we don’t tend to believe that Boris thinks all Irish are Sinn Féin any more than Ken thinks all Tories are gay. It’s more that both men at times seem to demonstrate an alarming lack of judgement.

We now await ill-judged comments from Green mayoral candidate Jenny Jones and Lib Dem’s Brian Paddick and the resulting wave of national anger (or international, depending on what they say) to make up the full set.

Photo by daejn

• Funding to help girls in gangs who get raped within their gangs announced
• Alcohol tags that perform sobriety tests to be trialled on problem drinkers
• Enfield Council seeks to outlaw spitting in the street
• London riots six months on: Hackney heroine’s got talent and then and now photos
• Those Shoreditch Kanye West rumours: what really happened

Photo by Andrew Smith on Kensington High Street yesterday via the Londonist Flickrpool

The ‘Phase 2′ surge will see the number of azure velocipedes increase from 6,000 to 8,300, with 4,800 new docking points. Blessed locations include most of Tower Hamlets, the northern parts of Shoreditch, Camden Town, Canary Wharf and Westfield White City. An official map of the new coverage can be found here.

TfL’s press release practically swaggers with impressive-sounding stats about the scheme, which launched 18 months ago. The bikes have made almost 10 million trips in that period (making them almost as popular as Londonist, if we can somehow compare journeys with pageviews for the sake of an idle boast). 150,000 people have registered for the scheme, making 7.7 million hires. Casual users are very much in the minority, with 2.1 million hires.

So, where should TfL expand for a future Phase 3?

As part of the event, we asked attendees to give their opinions on twelve questions on about the elections, and totted up the results for a quick picture of what they thought we could expect from 2012′s Ken vs. Boris grudge match.

The headline result was that, whilst a slim majority of those present backed Ken Livingstone as their preferred candidate, a clear majority felt that, when all the votes were counted, Boris Johnson would be victorious, with many commenting afterwards that this was largely due to the boundaries of outer London.

When we asked what people would do with a spare £60m if they were London mayor, a range of answers came flooding in. The equal leaders from our options were “Build a cable car“ and “Develop a new bus and put 200 on the road”, but write in votes included “Abscond and have plastic surgery”, “Turn Oxford Street into a social housing development with swimming pool” and “Whatever I was elected to do”.

Next we asked what the most important issues would be at the elections, and transport dominated, with the leading option being transport fares, closely followed by transport infrastructure, with housing and policing in joint third place. When we asked about whether the top three parties had chosen the right candidates, the selected candidates all won, with a strong showing by Steve Norris for the Tories and Lembit Opik for the Lib Dems.

Next we presented a range of rather leading statements, and asked the group to choose which one they most agreed with. In the first, titled “London is…”, most of the group chose “London is stupid to have decided to have the Olympics”, but a more positive close second was the statement that “London is lucky to have two of the UK’s finest politicians willing to be its mayor”.

In the second part, most thought that “Boris is an old Etonian who thinks it is his right to be mayor, but would rather be Prime Minister”, though the second most popular choice was “Boris is a pretty decent chap actually”. When we asked about Ken, most chose that “Ken Livingstone is a grasping scheming politician who will do anything for power”, though the second largest group chose “Ken Livingstone is an old man who likes newts”.

Next, most knew that “Brian Paddick is the Lib Dem policeman lad who keeps fighting Boris and Ken to be London Mayor”, though he must do more to raise his profile as a few confused souls chose “Brian Paddick is the bloke who cleaned out my guttering last summer”.

Finally, we asked which roads be resurfaced in London, prompting replies of everything from Salisbury Road, Romford, to Deptford High Street, and the troubled Hammersmith Flyover. However, one less picky respondent was just happy for “Anywhere outside Zone 1” to get some care and attention.

The evening ended with the results of a Boris drawing-competition, for which readers will have to wait a little longer.

Attendees on Wednesday were Ianvisits, Snipe, Fresh Eyes on London, Janeslondon, Discovering London, Caroline’s Miscellany, 853, one of Occupylsx, Westminster Walking, Londonist and others to whom we apologise if we have missed them.

Londonist’s election coverage begins next week. In the run up to 3 May we’ll be exploring the issues, probing the personalities, fact-checking campaign claims, interrogating data and finding out what you think. Save the date for our big election results night party on Friday 4 May.