Not a luxury car salesroom

• Jaguar (the huge car company) has launched legal proceedings against Jaguar Shoes (the small east London art collective)
• Libya’s interim PM has laid a wreath at the site where Louise Fletcher was killed.
• Boris Johnson has a new press chief: ex-BBC man Will Walden.
• Level of recorded rape rises 53% over four years.
• £4m worth of fake coins seized.
• Glass in roof of Portcullis House shatters.

Photo of Dream Bags Jaguar Shoes by Adrian Cooper

The banner, reminiscent of Pyongyang leader worship, will grace/blight the south bank until the end of June. At 100 metres wide and 70 metres tall, it shows the queen approximately 43 times her usual height. It’s like something from the nightmares of David Icke.

Don’t worry about the poor office workers whose views have been sheathed. The building is currently empty and undergoing redevelopment.

To balance out this blatant bit of Royalism, we invite our more mischievous readers to take an image of the banner and use Photoshop or similar to give it a bit of a touch-up (if we dare use that phrase in front of Her Majesty). Here’s a version without the bus. Send your best efforts to hello@londonist.com.

Speaking to The Independent, Mr Hague revealed the next act of death defiance on his wishlist: abseiling down the Shard, the tallest building in Western Europe.

Unfortunately, the Shard’s Qatari owners stand in the way of his ambitions, citing insurance reasons. Perhaps his son, Foreign Secretary William Hague, can intervene.

“We don’t want to dash Mr Hague’s lifelong abseiling dream,” said a spokesman for the Shard (seemingly implying Hague predicted the Shard’s construction back in the 1930s), “but we aren’t Jimmy Savile”. He added: “We haven’t rejected the idea out of hand and no conclusion has been reached. Our main priority is getting the building finished for its inauguration.”

That inauguration, by the way, takes place on 5 July, when the Duke of York will march up to the top of the hill building with the Qatari Prime Minister.

Image by SurreyBlonde in the Londonist Flickr pool.

• The Metropolitan police’s anti-corruption unit is being investigated… over corruption allegations
• Police get fingerprint scanners to quickly identify people. Didn’t we see this in Back to the Future II?
• Roof on Stockwell houses collapses: makes the papers because Will Self lives there
• Social housing tenants will be helped to move to get them nearer a job
• In pictures: Leicester Square’s facelift

Olympicks

• TfL’s travel ambassadors will get iPhones and iPads, at a cost of £1.5m
• Timing, timing: ticket sale website back up after being taken offline overnight for scheduled maintenance

Photo by jaykay72 from the Londonist Flickr pool

The rest of the line was snarled up with trains not even leaving Stratford two hours after the incident first happened. One woman is reported to have had a fit, while others reported a lack of information. Transport for London (TfL) are offering £40 distress payments plus ticket refunds for anyone caught up in the train failures.

TfL Commissioner Peter Hendy was up before the London Assembly Transport Committee this morning. The tube’s recent lack of reliability (District Line commuters, feel free to vent your frustration in the comments) was high on the agenda, particularly with the Olympics now so near and the Jubilee line serving so many venues. Hendy said some tube failures will be inevitable during the Games, but that TfL are doing preventative maintenance. Given how much work the Jubilee line has already had on it, we’re not sure this will be enough to reassure Londoners. If you want to question him yourself, go to the London TravelWatch Board meeting next Tuesday.

For mainline train users, TfL confirmed they will express interest in bidding for the Anglia and Southeastern franchises this year – an election pledge to bring Metro rail services into the Overground. River bus services are also going to be increased to Putney.

Jubilee Line evacuation photo tweeted by Miss Jeni Yesterday. This post was updated shortly after publication to clarify river service changes.

Odder still was a moment halfway through proceedings when Nicky Gavron asked the Mayor how the new Homes for London department will differ from the London Housing Board, a question we pondered ourselves last week. Questioned about Shelter’s Homes for London pledge that he signed during the campaign, specifically the parts about protecting people who rent privately (clamping down on letting agents, fairer rents via a Londonwide letting agency and secure tenancies), the Mayor didn’t seem to know what he’d put his name to.

I’m going to have to study the detail of that… I may have had a lot of publicity about [the pledge] but not enough for it to come to my attention

Cue dropped jaws around the chamber and public gallery. We all know that electioneering is a shameless sport, but we rather hope the officials agreeing to high profile campaigns find the time to brief their candidate properly. You can watch the exchange yourself on the archived webcast, at 1 hour 25 minutes in, which also includes the Mayor – possibly realising he’d been caught out – launching into a furious attack on Nicky Gavron moments later.

New Lib Dem member Stephen Knight had clearly been at his calculator: he challenged the Mayor over his claim to be creating 104,000 jobs through the housing programme. Stephen pointed out that the construction programmes account for around 25,000 jobs each year, wondering if Boris was claiming each person employed each year as a new job:

This is as daft as saying the Mayor of London himself will be holding four jobs over the next four years

These jobs are also continuations of the current housing programme; in other words, they already exist. Stephen told the chamber there would be fewer than 200 brand new jobs created by additional house building, prompting a great hoo-ha from Boris about how he’d love to meet these few “heroes” who would be building thousands of houses by themselves, and failing to address the thrust of the question.

Andrew Dismore, Brian Coleman’s conqueror, started as we suspect he means to go on. A House of Commons veteran, he’s like a terrier who won’t let go until he’s got his answer and clearly isn’t impressed by the trademark Boris bluster. These two will come to blows sooner rather than later; their encounters are going to be fascinating to watch.

Unlike many Mayor’s Question Times this year, we actually got some information. Boris said Transport for London is “looking at the steps needed and implications” of implementing Dutch-style cycling. Vauxhall Cross and Greenwich will be the locations of two of three flagship cycle schemes, and Caroline Pidgeon said that of TfL’s review of 500 dangerous junctions, just 39 have been looked at in five months and six passed fit for purpose with no changes needed. TfL says no final decisions have been made. In other comments destined to rile cyclists, Boris repeated his insistence that Elephant and Castle is fine so long as you keep your wits about you, and said that two out of three cyclists killed or seriously injured were breaking road rules at the time.

The Mayor will also be holding monthly Q&A sessions on Twitter, the cost of reducing the Freedom Pass to include 60 year olds could be passed on to local councils (the Freedom Pass is run by London Councils, but Val Shawcross was hoping that as this was a Mayoral pledge TfL would bear the cost), the New Bus for London will go into production next year, the number of people spending more than one night sleeping rough has increased 21% (a figure, from Darren Johnson, that Boris dismissed as “talking crap”). There were also the usual bitter accusations across the floor but we thought we’d let that slide at this, the start of the school term.

In a sign of how the next four years will pan out, the Assembly later symbolically rejected Boris’s appointment of Daniel Moylan to the London Legacy Development Corporation (the post-Olympics body). It”s got absolutely no force behind it, but is basically the left groups firing a warning shot across the Mayor’s bows – he’s going to have a tougher ride.

Photo by Mount Fuji Man from the Londonist Flickr pool. You can watch an archived webcast of yesterday’s Question Time or attend the next one yourself: it’s at 10am on 13 June at City Hall.

Space Hijackers has now bounced back with another spoof account, itself likely to be short-lived. The account name @London20l2 copies the official channel (@London2012) save for a subtle letter substitution. While the page looks very similar to the genuine article, the content is certainly not. Here are some choice examples…

Follow the parody tweets here, and visit Space Hijackers’ website here.

A walkway on top of the O2 in North Greenwich is to open next month.

Previously dubbed The Skywalk and apparently now rebranded as ‘Up at The O2″, the attraction will see climbers kitted out with harnesses and safety gear and led on a 90-minute trip up and over the dome, where they’ll enjoy “spectacular 360 degree views of London from our viewing platform in the centre”.

Unlike the nearby cable car, work on Up at The O2 has mostly flown under the radar of publicity and media coverage, allowing them to beat their dangle-based rival to those all important tourist pounds. There’s a sneak peek at how it looks in this aerial image of the O2 by Jason Hawkes.

Tickets go on sale for O2 customers from today, priced at £22, and for the general public from 30 May.

• Prepare for much jollity in SW3 today, as Chelsea win the European Champions League…
• Happy days too for West Ham fans as their team climbs back into the Premier League.
• Brick Lane protesters fight to save Roa’s crane from extinction.
• ‘Special’ PC convicted for racism.
• Blackfriars Station gets two new platforms.
• Seems HM the Q likes to have rockers on the roof.
• London has seen two apparent police suicides in the last week or so.

Watching the Game, by in8vision via the Londonist Flickr locker room.

• Marble Arch beggars rounded up by police.
• Getting arrested is not a good idea; the Met are going to screen your phone and keep the data, even if you’re not charged.
• Reclaim your Oyster overpayments online.
• Mayoral votes mapped by ward.
• Our Victorian forebears had even more intrusive advertising than modern London.

Olympicks

• The Olympic flame is on it’s way to the UK.
• The official app is launched.
• The View Tube and Greenway are now closed for final park preparations.
• Spare a thought for those poor athletes who will miss the Games through injury.

Sunset from Greenwich Park by nigelwilliams2001 in the Londonist Flickr pool.

Shelter spent the election campaign calling for a Transport for London-style agency to deal with housing. Boris Johnson has now created a department called Homes for London, but so far it’s just the old department with a new name. Shelter has set out what “HfL” needs to do to make a difference to all Londoners:

• bring all housing budgets and functions into one, public facing, department
• create a visible position that is accountable for housing (presumably the new Deputy Mayor for housing, Richard Blakeway)
• set up the new London Rental Standard, an accreditation standard for landlords and agents (this was in Boris’s manifesto)
• publicise the London Rents Map and the First Steps scheme
• build the promised 55,000 affordable homes by 2015
• help Londoners get support when things go wrong

All the Mayoral candidates we asked said that housing was London’s most pressing problem, but it’s one that remains largely hidden to most people until they try to move. The Institute for Public Policy Research agrees with the analysis that London is facing a housing crisis, calculating the city will have a housing gap of 325,000 homes by 2025 unless serious action is taken. We’ll be keeping an eye on Homes for London to check it doesn’t end up a paper tiger.

Photo by msganching from the Londonist Flickr pool

Eagle-eyed mayor spotters will realise that this isn’t news. Two years ago this month we wrote a short piece on the prospects of a Johnson vs. Johnson match-up, noting that the Paddington-born ex-postman might make a decent foe for the Conservative incumbent. Admittedly, this was at a time when putative Labour candidates included less plausible figures such as Peter Mandelson and Alan Sugar.

In this week’s interview with The House, a weekly magazine in Parliament, Mr. Johnson reveals that he is also considering a run in 2016. Given that since 2010 he’s bottled out of the Labour leadership gig and hastily quit his position as shadow Chancellor, the MP for Hull West and Hessle will have to shed his growing reputation as a serial ditherer if he’s to prevail.

Full coverage of the 2012 Mayoral race

Photo of Alan Johnson reproduced under Creative Commons 2.0 Licence

• Sam Hallam, jailed for life in 2004 for murdering Essayas Kassahun, has had his conviction quashed
• Boris describes the Jubilee flotilla as like “Dunkirk – but more successful”
• A man thought to be a Tower Hamlets councillor is arrested after making “threats to kill” in a council meeting. Blimey
• Stow Stadium’s car park is going to be a bus depot
• Despite hiding in some bushes, a teenager was arrested and police found two loaded guns in Sydenham early this morning

Olympicks

• Bus drivers are getting ballot papers to decide whether to strike over Olympic bonus payments
• If you’ve failed to get tickets, you’ve got until 11pm to snap up seats for the rowing or Olympic Park entrance (£10 / £5)
• The Olympic torch has been handed over to Princess Anne. It’s flying to the UK tomorrow on a specially chartered plane, in the company of David Beckham, Seb Coe and Boris Johnson. Lucky torch
• Sally Gunnell beat Chris Boardman in a race from Liverpool Street to the Olympic Park. She was running, he was cycling. Seriously: she beat him and he was on a bike

Also recovered from the Croydon scrap dealer’s premises were a number of memorial plaques stolen from churches and crematoriums. The entire haul is estimated to be worth tens of thousands of pounds. Acting Inspector James Coomber, said:

“This represents a significant find in our ongoing efforts to target metal theft. The majority of scrap metal dealers who are legitimate support our targeting of those acting outside of the law. Metal theft is not a victimless crime and the public can play a vital part helping us by reporting anything suspicious to us.”

The increase in scrap metal prices has fuelled a spate of related thefts; last year a Barbara Hepworth statue was stolen from Dulwich Park and in January this year, a woman was jailed after stealing a WWI memorial plaque in Lewisham. An Essex cable thief must have had a nasty shock — British Transport Police recently found charred clothing at the scene of a cable theft and are now on the lookout for a medium-rare criminal.

If you have any information relating to metal theft you can call Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111, or 999 if you believe a crime is being committed in front of you. Otherwise you can report on the non-emergency 101 number.

Photo by tubb in the Londonist Flickr pool

Welfare reforms are leaving London’s councils facing increasing numbers of people no longer able to afford the gap between high rents and reduced housing benefit who require their services. But with social housing in short supply, councils are being forced to accommodate residents outside the borough or even outside London. Newham council was recently accused of ‘social cleansing’ ahead of the Olympics by moving families as far afield as Stoke-on-Trent.

Last week’s Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) report, helpfully paraphrased by Snipe here, paints a pretty bleak picture of London’s looming housing crisis and our pre-election examination of housing and poverty highlighted a general feeling that the mayor should be doing more to make living here affordable. Now that Boris Johnson has been reinstalled in City Hall, housing is one of the many things he’s being urged to get an urgent grip of putting pressure on the government to devolve power over housing to his office and introduce a Local Housing Allowance cap.

Dave Hill in the Guardian also highlights a shortage of social housing caused by tenants exercising their right to buy — and how the government’s increased RTB discount will only exacerbate things. In the meantime, families on the housing waiting list will presumably find themselves being shuffled around the city until the gap between the rent they pay and their actual earnings narrows.

Photo by Homemade in the Londonist Flickr pool

There’s nothing on the ORR website yet, but we imagine the charge will be for a breach of health and safety legislation (the ORR is currently prosecuting Southeastern under the Health and Safety at Work Act for overrunning at Stonegate in East Sussex). LU is quoted as being “very disappointed” with the decision, pointing out it’s already acted on recommendations made in a report from the Rail Accident Investigation Board. The RMT took the opportunity to warn against cuts and potential re-privatisation.

While we’re talking about the RMT, it’s saying LU is hiring 600 Customer Service Assistants, following cuts of 800 staff last year. These 600 are on top of 300 hired a few months ago. Staff were cut during a reshuffle of ticket office opening hours, but London Travelwatch has discovered plenty of occasions where stations appeared unstaffed. So, if the recent BBC series about the tube inspired you to work on the network, now’s your chance.

TfL have also unveiled what the tube map cover will be during the summer. Tracey Emin has, um, scribbled?, a version of her personal commute (Liverpool Street to Oxford Circus, with diversions to Victoria, Shoreditch and London Bridge), turning the Central Line into a branch so a bird can sit on it.

Another new coat of paint for Village Underground, Shoreditch. Image by M@

• Prince Phillip considers unzipping a lady’s dress in Bromley.
• Ali Dizaei gets his marching orders from the Met police.
• Naff story about Joan Collins stuck in a queue at Heathrow.
• How Peckham will spend £1.7 million of Heritage Lottery Fund money.
• Combative scenes at Kensal Rise library, as the council attempts to remove the books.
• A tour of Balfron Tower, the Trellick Tower’s lesser-known sister.
• Did you know that Kentish Town was once home to the world’s best-known taxidermists?
• Some extremely disheartening facts about housing in London.

Olympicks

• David Beckham plays extreme courier, delivering the Olympic flame to Britain.
• Brush up on your Olympic history with newly released documents on the National Archive’s web site.
• Bus drivers making a noise over Olympic pay.
• A quarter of hospitality tickets have yet to be sold.
• British gold medalists will appear on Royal Mail stamps within 24 hours of their victories.

Southampton Row seems to be the place you’re most likely to get hit by a fine if you go over your pay and display time or park illegally. That street racked up nearly £1.2 million worth of tickets alone. This, says The Sun, is an average of 50 drivers a day, which is about five an hour during working hours. In a way, we’re surprised it’s not more.

Second place goes to Bounds Green Road. The street has two separate controlled parking zones over it, so maybe confusion can partly explain its high ranking? Whatever the case, dodgy parking resulted in £1 million in fines for Haringey council. Other places that are evidently patrolled by particularly keen-eyed wardens and cameras are Clapham Park Road, Barking Road, Old Broad Street (people picking up at Liverpool Street?), Greenford Road, Clements Road in Redbridge, Chiswick High Road, Mare Street and Lea Bridge Road. Have any locals got suggestions for why these roads are so lucrative for the respective councils?

Perhaps surprisingly, even with all its bad press over parking, Westminster didn’t get a street in the top 10.

Photo by Chi Bellami from the Londonist Flickr pool

Backbeat: rare back-to-front Abbey Road image up for sale. And Paul's in sandals.

• Look, a photo of the Beatles crossing the road in a contradictory fashion.
• A polemic against Canary Wharf. Have fun picking holes, if you’re so inclined.
• Met officer found shot dead at North Woolwich police station.
• Boris says the cable car probably won’t be ready for the Olympics. Unsubstantiated rumours from other quarters suggest he’s playing it safe, and we could be riding the Arabfly Dangleway (copyright, Diamond Geezer) as early as June.
• Occupy the Sky, says a Finsbury Square Occupy protestor. Is this their Icarus moment?
• District and Piccadilly Line trains delayed due to wrong kind of hand grenade near the tracks.

Olympicks

• Anish Kapoor defends his love it/hate it Orbit tower in the Olympic Park.
• And, we only just found this, some urban explorers managed to scale the Orbit back in January.
• Aussie marksman to wear a lime green mankini at the Olympic opening ceremony.
• The IOC turns down Israel’s suggestion of a minute’s silence to mark the 40th anniversary of the Munich Olympics terrorist action.
• Start planning your Olympic TV habits.
• Paralympic torchbearers announced.

• The lecture line-up for Hackney Academy has been announced: Plan B, Leona Lewis, Labrinth, Lethal B and Rizzle Kicks.
• The ceiling at relatively new Shepherds Bush Tube Station needs repairing. Already.
• BMW has unveiled its range of Olympic-mobiles, to be used by general staff and medics.
• Protest news 1: anti-Boris Island protest at City Hall on Friday.
• Protest news 2: Occupy at the Bank of England yesterday: 11 arrested.
• Sir Michael Caine gets the Freedom of Southwark. Quite right too.
• Richmond police investigate the mystery of the fake election leaflets.

London colours, by aka Jon Spence from the ever colourful Londonist Flickr pool.

The left-leaning parties (Labour, Liberal Democrats, Greens), who hold 16 of the Assembly’s 25 seats, have brokered a deal to “share power in the operation of the Assembly” (see PDF of the document obtained by Mayorwatch). It says there are “a number of positions for the Conservative Group” but perhaps they had looking after the sandwiches in mind, since of the roles that have been allocated so far, Roger Evans is the only Tory Assembly Member to get one: Deputy Chair of the Audit Panel.

Of course, Conservative AMs Kit Malthouse, James Cleverly and Victoria Borwick have been the lucky recipients of top appointments from Boris, but that hasn’t stopped them complaining bitterly:

For anyone still interested, Jennette Arnold (Labour) is Assembly Chair for another year with Darren Johnson (Green) her Deputy. We’ll be back at Mayor’s Question Time in a couple of weeks and will report whether it continues to be as bad tempered as it was pre-election.

Photo of the London Assembly Conservatives from the GLA Conservatives Twitter account

Occupy have been in residency at Finsbury Square since last October and its occupants have seen their sister camps at St Pauls, the Bank of Ideas, School of Ideas and Occupy Justice all ousted. Attempts to set up further camps at Barbican and Paternoster Square lasted only hours, and a satellite protest camp at Leyton Marshes was also recently evicted.

Cllr Paul Convery, Islington Council’s executive member for community safety told us:

“The Council has said from the outset that we support the right to peaceful protest, and we have tolerated Occupy’s presence at Finsbury Square since October. However, it is now apparent that the character of the protest has changed and Occupy’s presence is significantly diminished. In the protesters’ place, we now see a group of vulnerable and homeless people who would be better cared for elsewhere.

“At the same time, residents and businesses in and around Finsbury Square are being significantly inconvenienced by the continuing camp and we have had complaints about alcohol and drug use on site, noise, harassment, and damage to property. The extent of damage at the site means Islington Council now faces a substantial bill for repair and clean-up.

“We wish to see the protest end through a negotiated settlement but, with our community suffering, the time has come for us to begin legal proceedings to remove the camp and return Finsbury Square to community use.”

The group, part of a worldwide protest against corporate greed and capitalism, has provided a platform for debate, but has also been criticised for a perceived lack of any particular objectives as well as alleged noise, mess and disruption. Further breaches in the movement were triggered when protesters from the St Paul’s camp tried to move into Finsbury Square.

Here’s a copy of the notice:

Photo by Richard Parmiter in the Londonist Flickr pool.

ArcelorMittal Orbit at night

The twisting, cherry-red ArcelorMittal Orbit tower in the Olympic Park will be officially revealed today, although it won’t open to the public until 28 July.

The tower is being unveiled with no little hyperbole: a press release likens it to St Paul’s Cathedral and the Eiffel Tower, while Anish Kapoor, the artist behind it, has apparently cited Tatlin’s Tower, a celebrated yet unbuilt Soviet structure, as a reference point. Standing at 114m, the tallest sculpture in the United Kingdom cost £22.7m, with £18.5m put into the kitty by steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal. A central lift will take visitors up to a viewing platform, from which they’ll be able to descend by walking down the winding staircase that loops around the central core. Better start saving if you want a trip, though: a family ticket will reputedly cost £60.

What does London think of the ArcelorMittal Orbit? The lack thus far of an accepted sobriquet suggests that locals have yet to embrace the design. London 2012 organisers have brushed off the generally negative response, arguing that people will grow to like it — an argument also made for the still mostly-loathed Olympic logo.

So, Londoners, what say ye: folly or masterpiece? This time lapse video might help you decide:

See also:

Pictures of the Orbit tower from last year

The power went down at 4.20pm and although passengers were still able to use the station, it was later closed at 9.20pm when it became too dark to see properly. Trains were able to pass through the station but passengers were unable to get on or off. The station re-opened shortly after midnight; according to Transport for London services have returned to normal.

The station is described as Britain’s busiest and has 180 trains pass through per hour at peak times. Clapham also popped up in our recent analysis of the bits of London which have the most stations named after them.

Photo by Andy Blackwell in the Londonist Flickr pool

Led by public sector unions, Public and Commercial Services (PCS) and Unite, the 24-hour walkout is also being attended by the National Union of Teachers (NUT) and that ubiquitous favourite of London transport users, Bob Crow from the RMT. PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka told the BBC:

“We pay more and not a penny goes into anybody’s pension fund,” he said. In every major public sector scheme – health, education and the civil service – the majority of trade unions have refused to accept these cuts in their pensions. We’re going to have the highest pension age of any western European country.”

Along with the civil servants, NHS workers, border control staff and lecturers, 20,000 off-duty police officers are to march in London against job cuts while prison officers staged an unofficial walkout. Police Federation chairman Paul McKeever said:

“The march is the only way that police officers can demonstrate their anger. In the past year alone we have lost over 5,200 police officers from the frontline and we are witnessing the privatisation of core policing roles as chief officers struggle to cope with budget restraints. The Government need to be realistic about the outcome of severe cuts to policing; we cannot afford to compromise on public safety.”

Policing was high on the agenda for the recent mayoral elections and newly re-elected mayor Boris Johnson has already ousted his former deputy Kit Malthouse in a City Hall shake-up.

See what police bloggers Minimum Cover and Inspector Gadget have to say on government cuts. The Guardian is also live-blogging the march.

Meanwhile, over in Camden, traffic wardens are threatening strike action over pay, joining transport unions in proposed walkouts during the Olympics. While this is doubtless welcome news for Camden’s motorists, Camden’s coffers could take a £50,000 hit if the action goes ahead.

Bus drivers are also siding with their train-driving brethren to demand a bonus for working during the Olympics and are to vote on whether they will strike over it. Talks are still taking place to avoid tube strikes during the Olympics. Central line driver ASLEF Shrugged talks about the bonus and shift scheduling.

Photo by Nick Atkins in the Londonist Flickr pool.

• Velodrome sponsorship deal falls through, meaning council tax payers could pick up the bill post-Games.
• M4 and M25 given development approval.
• JK Rowling accepts Freedom of the City; entitled to free pint in the Leaky Cauldron.
• Last-minute Olympic tickets include 100 metre finals.
• The London rain might just continue forever. That guy who wanted to build an Ark for the Olympics might have had the right idea after all.
• Dustin Hoffman to the rescue in Hyde Park.
• Walthamstow dog track one step closer to the knackers yard.
• Ride a 1938 Tube train.
• The Leaning Tower of Rotherhithe.
• What connects the Kentish Town Forum with Mussolini?
• Boris appoints a few more helpers. Victoria Borwick is the Statutory Deputy (the person who becomes Mayor if anything happens to BJ), James Cleverly replaces Brian Coleman as LFEPA (fire and emergency planning) head, Isabel Dedring is Deputy Mayor for Transport. Nobody quite knows what’s happening with Stephen Greenhalgh.

Image of the velodrome by Andy Wilkes in the Londonist Flickr pool.

Keen to squeeze ever more retail reddies out of the crowds of commuters moving around Liverpool Street station, the plan by Arup (architect of the original Broadgate Estate) will add new units surrounding the performance space. Six additional kiosks will be created at ground level, and the performance space itself will be lowered, with the steps removed and a few bits of greenery added to spruce things up. Happily, it will continue to have an ice rink during winter.

The new space will be overlooked by the fortress-like new UBS building that is being built on the site of the bank’s existing headquarters, despite objections from some quarters and a botched attempt last year to list the 25-year old estate.

We’ve been playing with re:route and it seems fairly straightforward to use (especially once you’ve taken the introductory tour): create an account or sign in with Facebook (you can turn oversharing off), tell it where you want to go and it’ll plot various methods for you to get there by public transport, cycling or walking. It even factors in cycle hire, telling you how many available bikes and docking stations there are at your start and destination racks. It calculates how many calories you’ve burned, how many kilos of carbon dioxide you’ve ‘saved’ and how far you’ve travelled. It even has badges to unlock à la Foursquare and  there’s a nice sense of community on seeing how many other people are cycling at that moment.

You get five points per completed journey (and 75 for signing up), which can be redeemed via the Recyclebank website. You can pick up money off or cheap deals for as little as 15 points and although some of the participating shops/restaurants etc are limitingly specific, chains like M&S, Cineworld and Origins are taking part. Not bad for taking a walk.

His replacement isn’t mentioned in Boris’s press release but the Evening Standard is very confident that it will be Stephen Greenhalgh. The delay in officially unveiling him might be because Greenhalgh is, until the end of May, leader of Hammersmith and Fulham Council. Labour Assembly Member Val Shawcross has pointed out to the BBC that, in law, one person can’t hold two local authority posts at the same time. If and when he does come in, he’ll have the unenviable task of overseeing the police during the Olympics and a number of racism scandals. We’d also like to ask him to be transparent and finally publish the members of the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (which replaced the Metropolitan Police Authority); also, we discovered today that the general enquiry phone number for the MOPC goes through the Met’s Central Communications Command – which handles emergency calls and despatch – and we suspect those officers have better things to do than handle questions from people like us…

Sir Edward Lister remains as Deputy Mayor for Planning, while Munira Mirza gets boosted from adviser on culture and youth to Deputy Mayor for Education and Culture. Richard Blakeway, previously advisor for housing, also gets a promotion to Deputy Mayor for Housing and will chair Homes for London. Shelter has been calling for such an agency, but while they wanted a body to regulate landlords and set up a centralised lettings service, the new Homes for London is just the new name for the London Housing Board – which was primarily responsible for house building. Time will tell whether it gets new powers to go with the new name.

Boris also needs a new Communications Director after Guto Harri’s out of office confirms he’s quit City Hall.

We still don’t know who Boris’s statutory Deputy Mayor will be (the one who gets to be Mayor should Boris get mown down by a New Bus for London) after Richard Barnes lost his seat, but the filling of this vacancy, and when Greenhalgh finally gets confirmed, will take Boris’s Deputy Mayors to six. Will there be any work left for the Mayor to do?

Photo by Laurabot_ from the Londonist Flickr pool

A London bee

• A political comeback in the Lords for Ken Livingstone? The man himself thinks not.
• Mary Beard on the similarities between London and ancient Rome.
• Derek Chisora and David Haye are to have their grudge match at Upton Park in July.
• Unscrupulous landlords are turfing out tenants in order to make a fast Olympic buck.
• Building homes for London’s bees and bats.
• The brand exclusion zones around the Olympic sites.

Photo / pallab seth

• Boris vows to ‘work his socks off’.
• But he claims not to harbour any prime-ministerial ambitions.
• Man found dead in ‘unexplained circumstances’ in car in Perivale.
• Nine year old Hackney girl officially opens the Olympic Stadium to the public.
• Suppose we ought to mention the football. And the fact that Chelsea are probably quite chuffed today.
• Pearly royalty gather for a coronation at the Carpenters Arms this afternoon.
• Keep your eyes peeled for these stolen brewery plaques.

Londoner, by adewale-oshineye via the Londonist Flickr pool.

The London Assembly’s 25 members split as Labour 12 (up 4), Conservative 9 (down 2), Green 2 (no change) and Liberal Democrat 2 (down 1). What this means in practice is…not a great deal. There had been concerns in the Conservative camp that they might end up with 8 seats, which would mean the left parties would be able to club together and block Boris’s plans (the Assembly needs a two-thirds majority to block things like the budget). But with 9 seats, the Tories are able to wave the Mayor’s plans through, much like the previous four years.

Look a little deeper though, and interesting things start to emerge. Boris needs a new statutory Deputy Mayor for a start, after Richard Barnes was defeated in Ealing and Hillingdon by Dr Onkar Sahota. He also may be looking for a new head of the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority after Brian Coleman lost heavily in Barnet and Camden (Boris could appoint Coleman to the LFEPA board anyway, but given his unpopularity and confrontational nature the blond one might be best leaving well alone).

We also think all the Mayoral candidates apart from Boris and Ken lost their deposit, as they didn’t get 5% of the first preferences.

The Lib Dems suffered a similar fate in London as the rest of the country: the Greens are now the city’s third party after Jenny Jones beat Brian Paddick in the Mayoral race and the Greens took nearly 40,000 more votes in the Londonwide count, as well as coming third in some constituency battles. They still only got two seats on the Assembly, the same as the Lib Dems, the result of the practically unfathomable maths involved in the proportional part of the system.

Despite the Tories still holding the power to rubberstamp Mayoral policies, they are no longer the largest party. That honour (?) passes to Labour, meaning Boris will face even more tough questioning in the chamber. The BNP/more recently independent member Richard Barnbrook wasn’t up for election but the BNP didn’t get anywhere near enough votes for a seat; neither did UKIP, despite some polls predicting two seats for the anti-Europeans.

Our new Assembly members are all on Twitter:

• Dr Onkar Sahota (Lab), the aforementioned member for Ealing and Hillingdon
• Andrew Dismore (Lab), representing Barnet and Camden
• Tom Copley (Lab), Londonwide member
• Fiona Twycross (Lab), Londonwide member
• Stephen Knight (Lib Dem), Londonwide member

Turnout was 38%, far lower than in 2008 (45%), but still higher than in 2004 (37%) and 2000 (33%). That compares with at least 50% turnout in the capital for the 2010 general election. Do we not care as much about the Mayor and Assembly? Were we all bored of the negative campaigning and that we were faced with Boris, Ken and Brian on the ballot again? Siobhan Benita’s good showing (she polled only around 8,000 fewer votes than Brian Paddick) could be a symptom of alienation from regular politics.

Whatever the cause, we can say one thing for certain: in 2016, it will be a whole new ballgame. Boris has promised not to stand for a third term, Ken declared this was his last election, and we can’t see the Lib Dems nominating Brian Paddick again. See you back here in four years?

You can see all the numbers on the fabulous London Elects website.

Photo by martinturner from the Londonist Flickr pool

Green Party candidate Jenny Jones finished in third place, with Brian Paddick of the Liberal Democrats pushed into fourth, independent Siobhan Benita in fifth, UKIP’s Lawrence Webb in sixth and the BNP’s Carlos Cortiglia seventh. The turnout in London was 38%.

In a free-ranging concession speech, Livingstone confirmed that he would not stand for election again.

In the London Assembly, Labour won two constituencies from the Conservatives: Boris deputy Richard Barnes’ seat in Ealing and Hillingdon fell to Onkar Sahota, while in Barnet and Camden, Brian Coleman was defeated by Andrew Dismore. The final makeup on the Assembly stands at: Labour 12, Conservative 9, Green 2, Liberal Democrat 2.

Detailed results are available on the London Elects website. We’ll have further analysis on Saturday.

• Today’s unlikely addition to the Olympic armamentarium: the Royal Navy’s largest warship.
• Police offer reward for information about cyclist shooting.
• Greenwich Peninsula will be used as a model for a smart city of the future. Must be the cable cars.
• Protester barred from Jubilee and Olympic events.
• While LOCOG pledge no Olympic or Paralympic spectator will have to queue for more than 20-30 minutes to get into the Games.
• MP for Grimsby: London sucks the life out of the rest of Britain.
• Paralysed marathon runner finishes the race, but doesn’t get a medal.
• Nice piece on Euston Films, who made classics like The Sweeney, Minder and Quatermass.

Image by Andrea Marchesetti in the Londonist Flickr pool.

The picture at 12.45pm.

What connects Alexandra Palace, Excel and Olympia, other than the fact that they’re all exhibition centres beginning with vowels? Those are the three locations where, right now, our votes for the Mayor of London and London Assembly are being counted. Here’s the scene at Olympia.

The London Elects web site has a live update of vote counts. Tory Boris Johnson has a clear lead over main rival Ken Livingstone (Labour), with Jenny Jones (Green) in third. Lib Dem Brian Paddick and Independent Siobhan Benita appear to have a similar share of the vote.

Results are not expected till 6pm at the earliest, with 8pm thought more likely.

Although Boris is in the lead, the picture is not yet complete. Unless he charmed over 50% of us, the supplementary vote kicks in. This means all candidates are eliminated except for the top two (Boris and Ken, in overwhelming probability). The votes we cast in the second column of our ballot papers are then summed for the two remaining candidates and added to their first-round tallies. Whoever has the highest total takes City Hall.

This page summarises the process, as well as the somewhat complex mechanism for working out who sits on the Assembly (a combo of first-past-the-post and a modified d’Hondt Formula, as we’re sure you already know). The London Elects website suggests that Labour are trumping the other parties in the Assembly votes.

• Seen any big military kit round town? The MoD are testing stuff out. Blackheath is enmissiled.
• Asylum seekers should not have to travel to Croydon, say human rights campaigners. It’s a serious story, but you can’t help thinking the headline writer was attempting a mild comedy effect.
• The Met is stockpiling plastic bullets.
• Parliament Square tent-based protester Maria Gallastegui, in situ since 2006, can be cleared out, says High Court judge.
• Heathrow immigration queues are officially shit.
• Parties clash at polling station fracas in Tower Hamlets.
• You can still vote in the Mayoral and Assembly elections until 10pm.

Image by M@.

It’s a bit complicated so if you need a reminder, take a look at our guide to how it all works. For the full lists of candidates, see the London Elects website.

If you’re still making up your mind you can cast your eye over our election coverage.

• There’s a big hole in Borough Market.
• Today’s improbable new addition to the Olympic armamentarium: a squadron of Typhoon jets.
• Much of Hounslow loses its water following a burst main.
• Five people were arrested during Occupy’s short-lived occupation of Paternoster Square last night.
• Wonderful old photos of London’s docks in their final days.

Mayoral referrals

• UKIP held a pro-motorist rally in Westminster and burned photos of Brian Paddick.
• Independent Siobhan Benita visited the Salvation Army in Kings Cross, and thence Havering, Redbridge, Barking and Dagenham, and Liverpool St station. Her website crashed after Jonathan Ross and Peter Jones tweeted in support this morning.
• Green Jenny Jones visited Kentish Town.
• Ken Livingstone’s been on LBC, and in Hammersmith.
• Lib Dem Brian Paddick’s been in Brixton.
• Boris went to Uxbridge and Chiswick.

Photo: City Hall spiral by gavinjevans in the Londonist Flickr pool.

The water company says that the ban, announced on 5 April, will remain in place despite London receiving more than double the historic long-term average rainfall for April. Thames Water’s Richard Aylard said:

“Yes, we have had a seriously soggy April. We had more than double the rain we would expect the last month. In fact, it hasn’t really stopped raining since we and six other companies imposed ‘hosepipe bans’ on April 5. We are alive to this irony, and our contribution to the endless talking point that is the British weather.

“But it took the two driest years since records began for us to get into this drought and one wet month, even one as wet as April, will not be enough to get us out of it. Last month’s downpours will wipe out the shortfall for the last couple of months, but not all the dry months before that.”

The news comes as the Environment Agency issues 37 flood warnings across Britain. A brief respite from the rain appeared yesterday but the forecast approaching the bank holiday weekend is looking inevitably bleak. We give it less than a day before someone says that it looks like we’ve had summer already.

Photo by Alex_Pink in the Londonist Flickr pool.

The statistic was released as the RNLI launches London Lifeboat Day to raise funds and mark the tenth anniversary of lifeboats on the Thames.

According to a press release earlier this year, the emergency service launched a total of 919 times from Chiswick, Tower, Teddington and Gravesend stations in 2011 and rescued 245 people. The four stations were set up following the Marchioness disaster and have saved 2,600 people in the last decade between them.

During the day volunteers will be visiting more than 50 train and tube stations across London from 7am to 7pm in a bid to raise funds. Those wishing to donate can also visit the RNLI website.

Photo by blueDonkey in the Londonist Flickr pool.