• 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.

A typically underused bit of London transport

• Nine jailed over planned terror attack.
• Harry Redknapp says, unconvincingly, that he “hasn’t thought” about the England job.
• Tory AM: “Relatively few Londoners use London transport“. Discuss.
• Police investigating the 1984 murder of Yvonne Fletcher hope to visit Libya soon.

Photo / sinister pictures

The main outstanding issue from the draft budget was an £85.5m shortfall in police funding that would have meant a cut of 1,000 officers. That’s been sorted by George Osborne giving City Hall a £90m grant to help the Metropolitan Police deal with the Olympics and Diamond Jubilee. Labour have described it as a bung to help Boris get re-elected; we’re more concerned about what will happen next year, if no more help from the government is forthcoming.

The Conservative Assembly Members supported the budget, Labour abstained, Liberal Democrats and Greens voted against.

Mayorwatch asked the opposing parties for their alternative budgets. John Biggs (Labour) highlighted that the Mayor’s £3.10 a year cut in council tax per household was outweighed by fare rises, and proposed reinstating cuts to Safer Neighbourhood Teams (SNT) and creating a joblessness taskforce to replace the London Development Agency; Mike Tuffrey (Lib Dem) said that by cutting spending on chauffeur driven cars and private flats for senior members of the police they could cut council tax by £10 a year, restore SNT cuts and introduce a ‘fairer’ fares package; Darren Johnson (Green) proposed cutting fares, funded by alterations to road pricing, apprenticeships for young people and improvements to cycling. Naturally, none of these amendments were passed but they do offer an insight into where the parties will be focusing their election campaigning.

Photo by Jonathan Herbert from the Londonist Flickr pool

“… unless there is hypocrisy, like some Tory MP denouncing homosexuality while they are indulging in it… Well, the Labour ones have all come out… As soon as Blair got in, if you came out as lesbian or gay you immediately got a job. It was wonderful… you just knew the Tory party was riddled with it like everywhere else is.”

We understand and appreciate the underlying sentiment but the wording, from such an experienced politician, is highly surprising. You tend to find “riddled” used about cancer, bullets, STDs or – another popular derogatory use, heaven help us in the context – AIDS. Just because Ken’s main opponent is a man known for glib comments getting him into trouble, doesn’t mean he should start taking tips.

Lib Dem Mayoral candidate Brian Paddick has taken offence. Paddick, who is gay, says

“When he talks about homosexuality in the Conservative party as being ‘riddled with it like everywhere else’ his remarks are clearly homophobic. He is a political opportunist who likes to be controversial in order to draw attention to himself, I think his true feelings towards LGBT people have seeped out.”

We don’t think Ken is genuinely homophobic – his record is excellent – but does this gaffe show that the 66 year old is growing out of touch?

The New Statesman also carries an interview with Boris Johnson, and is on shelves now.

The ramshackle interior of Wilton's, by M@.

• Wilton’s Music Hall officially saved.
• But Brick Lane loses its brick surface…Tarmac Lane?
• TfL announce consultation over river crossings.
• Spurs boss cleared of tax evasion.
• A big old chunk of Mars is acquired by the Natural History Museum.

A city-wide operation today will see raids designed to track down and arrest people suspected of gang membership and those believed to be involved in crime. The diversification of Trident to target gangs as well as its original remit of preventing gun crime in black communities was revealed by the Guardian in January this year, though not everyone thinks organising extra raids is the way forward. Met Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe said:

“This is a step-change in how we tackle gang crime in London. It will allow us to identify and relentlessly pursue the most harmful gangs and gang members. It will help us identify young people on the periphery of gangs and work with partners to divert them away.”

Boris Johnson also acknowledges the need to go beyond arrests and work with the community, charities and local authorities, although he’s obviously keen to demonstrate his determination to tackle crime ahead of the mayoral elections in May:

“We’ve been attacking gangs from all angles. Now the Met has a concerted and determined push to take out the ring-leaders and tempt impressionable youngsters away from this destructive life.”

The crackdown will focus on 19 ‘key boroughs’; Brent, Croydon, Ealing, Enfield, Greenwich, Hackney, Haringey, Islington, Lambeth, Lewisham, Newham, Southwark, Tower Hamlets, Waltham Forest, Wandsworth, Merton, Camden, Kensington & Chelsea and Hammersmith & Fulham. The Met estimates that there are around 4,800 people involved in 435 gangs, with 250 gangs criminally active and responsible for two thirds of gang-related offences. Stats around those offences include approximately 17% of all personal robbery, 40% of ‘cash in transit’ and commercial robbery, 12% of residential burglary, 26% of aggravated burglary, 14% of rape, 22% of serious violence, 20% of stabbings and 50% of shootings.

The Met’s announcement comes in a timely fashion — the trial of three men accused of a gang-related shooting in Stockwell last year is currently underway. Tragically, five-year old Thusha Kamaleswaran was left paralysed when rival gang members clashed in a south London convenience store.

The mayor also seems keen to get stuck in, so we wonder if he will be joining the Met on any of their raids today.

Photo by yorkshire stacked

Write your own joke. Image by Geoff Caddick/PA

• Massive fake whale spotted in the Thames, part of a WWF campaign to save the last 130 western gray whales.
• Another alleged racist ranter on public transport is arrested.
• Dame Shirley, Sir Paul and Sir Elton headline the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee concert. There’s a ballot for tickets.
• TfL announce first 500 junctions to be reviewed for cycle safety.
• A scrap dealer financies replacement plaques for a vandalised war memorial.
• Olympics tickets to be printed in Arkansas of all places.

Your company's name here? Olympic stadium from above, by M@.

London could soon be treated to a new raft of daftly-named landmarks, as the long-term naming rights for key Olympic venues are put up for sale. The Olympic Park Legacy Company is seeking sponsors for Stratford’s Olympic Stadium, Copper Box handball arena and Aquatics Centre. The sponsors gain naming rights when the venues reopen in 2013.

Applicants have until 2 March to register their interest, with a final decision in May. The venues will each lose the ‘Olympic’ portion of their title when they take on sponsorship, as the International Olympic Committee strictly forbids properties still associated with the games from receiving commercial branding.

Recent years have seen commercial naming rights move from the realm of too-far American curiosities (Pizza Hut Park, anyone?), to a disheartening fact of everyday life. Newcastle residents still mourn the loss of their sporting heart, St James Park – now known as The Sports Direct Arena.

To the surprise of many Londoners, CNN cited the O2 arena as an example of how venues can sell naming rights successfully. Renaming the old Millennium Dome apparently gave the building “a new, better identity,” reckons CNN, adding that the name has become part of metropolitan vernacular.

But a quick survey of past naming rights disasters is enough to put any self-respecting Londoner on their guard. Choice picks include:

• KFC Yum! Center (Louisville, Kentucky) – Unfeasibly listed by CNN alongside the O2 as an example of “how to get it right”, the home of the University of Louisville Cardinals Basketball Team doesn’t stop at referencing one of the least sporting foodstuffs available – it also legally includes an entirely inexplicable exclamation mark. Yum!? No.
• Mitsubishi Forklift Stadion (Almere, Netherlands) – Dutch footballing side Almere City FC didn’t exactly attract the big guns when they opened their new home in 2005, but might just be happy not to have gone the same way as their Irish peers…
• Hunky Dorys Park (Drogheda, Republic of Ireland) – This tiny 2,000-capacity football stadium signed a sponsorship deal with Ireland’s “leading crinkle-cut crisp brand” in 2010, giving Drogheda United fans a home to be ashamed of.
• Enron Field (Houston, Texas) – briefly, until the company’s collapse in 2001, the Houston Astros Baseball team played out of this 40,000-seat arena financed by the infamous energy trading fraudsters. It is now known as Minute Maid Park, after the Coca Cola-owned juice brand.

Following last year’s record-breaking sponsorship deal by Farmers Insurance Exchange for a new stadium in LA, the smart money could be on London’s key venues going the same way as that other recent Olympic host, Sydney. The Australian games’ showpiece Telstra Stadium is now known as the ANZ Stadium after signing a seven-year deal with a leading bank – and a resurgent City could clean up similarly in the Olympic Park.

Sceptical Londoners can take solace in the fact that the sponsors sometimes suffer for their lavishness, with Enron leading the rogues’ gallery of companies who take a nosedive after giving their names to stadiums. Yet Arsenal fans will be forgiven for worrying that it will be the sporting hosts, not the sponsor who inherit the curse, as the still-trophyless former giants ponder the wisdom of their move from ancestral home Highbury to the Emirates.

What would you like to see? Coutts Stadium, Stratford? The Pieminister Aquatics Arena? Amstrad Handball Centre? Suggestions below.

By Matt Ponsford

Events of all kinds are marking the occasion. On the ‘official’ side of things, the Prince of Wales will lay a wreath at Dickens’ grave in Poet’s Corner as part of a service at Westminster Abbey while the British Council are running an international Twitter-based ‘read-a-thon’. The Prince will also visit the Charles Dickens museum in Doughty Street (pictured).

Elsewhere, Dickens tributes are ubiquitous. Google has a Christmas Carol-esque graphic; one  of Dickens’ biographers, Claire Tomalin, has written an open letter to her subject and actor Simon Callow has been stalking Highgate Cemetery (where many of the Dickens family are buried) to promote his own Dickens biography.

Dickens books are unsurprisingly being published at breakneck speed this year but it is not only biographies that are worth a look: we recommend The Dickens Dictionary by John Sutherland and the Museum of London’s photography book, Dickens’s Victorian London 1839-1901. Want to celebrate Dickens today in your own way? How about a Dickens-themed pub crawl.

There is much more Dickens celebrating still to come, of course. You still have a few months to catch the leading Dickens exhibition in town at the Museum of London, while there is a new exhibition coming soon at the Royal Academy of Music (opening on 2 May) that will explore the novelist’s relationship with music. And watch this space for news of a Londonist Dickens quiz, with Victorian fancy dress and a proper Dickens impersonator.

Photo courtesy of wallyg via the Londonist Flick pool.

Food boxes

London Street Food Bank volunteers collect unwanted and unsold food daily from shops in Westminster, the City, Hackney and Islington and try to get it to places where it can be useful. That could be direct to people on the streets gathering at the food bank or to projects working with vulnerable people, like the Hanbury Project in Shoreditch.

In their own words:

LSF serves up 100+ items of food on the street daily – which saves London councils money in waste pickups of food and dead starved bodies and companies money also for special coloured food waste bags. It is run by one ex-homeless, and two currently homeless distributors, along with a wider membership of varying interest in it. Also: We pick up after ourselves and others. Like wombles trying. Cleaning as we go.

The food bank knows its operating model is a challenge for grant-givers who want neat paperwork, business plans and committee meetings. They are upfront about their bad business model (use volunteers, give food away) and realise that using homeless volunteers (the best way to get food from LSF is to help move it around) means the paper trail is often non-existent.

But they know there’s demand for what they do, and they want to expand. They’d like to have a city base with a street window, or perhaps set up a free indoor market. It would be nice if the hugely dedicated individuals running the bank could could get paid for it and be able to properly focus on making the whole thing bigger and better. But all that needs someone to tackle the admin and formalise the fundraising. They were previously refused charity status for having an income of less than £5,000 so currently they operate as a not-for-profit sole tradership and are totally open about their accounts. In fact, they just published their ‘Current Assets Statement for Feb 2012‘ — the ‘executive summary’ says it all.

Could you help London Street Food Bank make sure ‘no-one goes hungry in London’ with donations of food, items from their Amazon wishlist, volunteer time, admin or charity expertise, storage space, or a big chunk of money? Email LondonStreetFoodBank@gmail.com.

Find out more at www.londonfoodbank.co.uk and read the blog, like them on Facebook or follow @LDNfoodbank on Twitter and help spread the word.

Other food bank projects in London:

The Trussell Trust has foodbanks in Haringey, Hillingdon, Islington, Kingston, Norwood, Peckham, Tower Hamlets, Vauxhall, Westminster and Wimbledon, with foodbanks in development in Camden, Dagenham, Edmonton, Hackney, North Enfield, Waterloo, Woolwich. Trussell Trust food is largely donated by individuals and operated through church partners.

FareShare operates out of Bermondsey and Park Royal and works with community partners to distribute food boxes.

Foodcycle redirects food thrown out by retailers and turns it into nutritious meals, served in community centres and cafes (Station House, N4 and Pie in the Sky, Bromley by Bow) at an affordable price (e.g. main course £2.50).

Find out more: Listen to BBC Radio4′s Food Programme on Foodbanks.

Mark Spencer, a director at NHS North West London, says that the group – which covers Brent, Ealing, Hammersmith & Fulham, Harrow, Hillingdon, Hounslow, Kensington & Chelsea and Westminster – have to make £1bn savings over the next four years from its annual £4bn budget. He told the BBC

We have more hospitals per head of population, more hospital beds per head of population and travel time to your local hospital is much shorter than anywhere else in the country.

Which sounds brilliant! More beds means shorter waiting lists, a hospital nearby means easier access if you’re old, immobile or have an emergency! But wait:

And that’s an inefficient system.

Oh.

An NHS North West London report says care at their hospitals is inconsistent and that the “patient experience is generally poor”. So the plan is to rationalise facilities and create more specialised hospitals.

It’s likely that A&E departments will also close and, while it’s tempting to pin this all on Health Secretary Andrew Lansley’s controversial and incredibly unpopular NHS reorganisation, at least five of the area’s eight A&Es were under threat two years ago.

Photo by Adam BRI Smith from the Londonist Flickr pool

• On how the London Olympics could, er, crash the internet.
• Meanwhile, the ‘games makers’ have commenced training
• Boat owners beware: you’ll have to pay to moor near Olympic events in the Summer.
• James Bond is here. Living among us. Looky here.
• The National Geographic’s top three British pubs are in London.
• Have you seen this man? Trident officers (unusually) release a photo of someone they want to talk to….

Wimbledon Common. Because we just can’t get enough of London in the snow, can we? Image by Stephskimo via the Londonist Flickr pool.

If you can’t play the video, as Jepps walks through the garden an automated voice kicks in saying

Stop. This is a restricted area and your photograph is being taken. It will be sent for processing if you do not leave the area now.

Understandably Jepps, and large swathes of the internet, are outraged at such a seemingly authoritarian move by Camden Council, and one that residents weren’t consulted about. Jepps has since discovered the camera is light sensitive so in winter, it can be ordering residents out of their garden for most of the day.

Camden Council say the horrible American voice was never a planned initiative: it’s a function of a flash camera (Jepps refers to said camera in his original post) that was accidentally switched on, possibly during a battery change a few weeks ago. The flash camera was installed as a temporary measure after complaints from some residents about antisocial behaviour (something that Jepps counters by pointing at police crime maps, showing not one recorded incident for Walker House. We don’t know; we’re not about to get involved in neighbourhood rows and are backing slowly away from that one).

But this made us wonder: is the flash camera sending photos off to be ‘processed’ anyway, with or without the shoutiness? If so, where are these photos going? Who has access to them? How long are they stored? Wouldn’t that be the same invasion of residents’ rights to use / walk through their garden at night without risk of having their photo snapped and stored as a potential criminal, but without a warning? We’ve asked Camden Council and will update this post with their reply.

Edit: Camden Council say images are stored on a memory card inside the camera. Community Safety Officers are “usually” the ones to download them and they can be shared with police “ for the purpose of addressing crime and disorder”.

"And how many of these have been sent out...?"

For visitors to London, it’s a tricky one to pronounce — let alone spell — but it appears that the man who is in charge of the capital also has been having a little difficulty when it comes to spelling Marylebone.

In the run up to the Mayoral elections in May, Boris has been distributing borough specific literature through the capital’s letter boxes. The leaflets are your typical pre-election bumph — focusing on improvements that have been made to your local area with the obligatory political spin.

Each leaflet includes a map of the borough and it is here that he’s come a bit unstuck. In the leaflet for the borough of Westminster, Boris spells the affluent area of Marylebone  ’Marlebone’, as this image by Twitter user @ZuluAdams shows:

It's all about the where's and 'y's...

Marylebone, (pronounced mar-lee-bone), is an area which skirts Oxford Street and is home to the world famous Harley Street. The name actually derives from the church of St. Mary that was situated near a stream or ‘bourne’.

The gaffe will be embarrassing for the current Mayor as he seeks to convince Londoners that he is the man they should vote to stay at the helm for another term. It’s not the worst mistake that has or will ever happen on the campaign trail, but being unable to spell correctly a key central location in the capital will hardly have helped his cause — even if it was written and proof-read by his election team.

Image of Boris by Dean Nicholas from the Londonist Flickr Pool.

• Cyclist killed on Bishopsgate.
• Huge fire in Grafton Street, Mayfair yesterday morning.
• K & C traffic wardens given minimum ticket quotas.
• Yesterday saw clashes outside the Syrian Embassy.
• Double stabbing in Croydon last night.
• Non-news of the weekend: Ripley’s have swapped a crystal-covered mini for a hand-knitted Ferrari. As you do.

Image by belkus via the snow-dusted Londonist Flickr pool.

In the end the capital received a very pretty couple of inches but, as Annie Mole and Mayorwatch demonstrate, every single tube line was affected (even the Northern line, which looks fine on those screengrabs, had problems at least Golders Green-Edgware at one point). On Friday TfL and the Mayor had released a press statement describing what cold weather measures were in place, with points heaters, a team of engineers on standby and use of “ice mode” on the Metropolitan line (suspended north of Wembley Park last night) plus compressed air systems and wheel slip protection on the Central line (entirely suspended last night). Boris Johnson said:

“Across all our roads and rails hundreds of workers are on standby to ensure that, should we receive a mega deposit of snow, we are in a position to keep the capital moving.”

We suspect the Mayor may come to regret overdoing the rhetoric with “mega deposit”. His Twitter feed had this to say earlier:

That “most” is technically true, but probably best not to tell that to anyone trying to use the Bakerloo, Central and Jubilee lines this morning.

And as surely as night follows day, train services experienced problems too. Despite Southeastern and Network Rail spending around £40m each on cold weather preparedness, this was the situation at London Bridge last night:

One train was actually announced as being “178 minutes late from Orpington“. The situation across all routes is far better this morning, though still be prepared for some delays and cancellations.

Euston concourse: unlovely home to many angry commuters tonight.

• Train lines out of Euston are still crippled following this morning’s freight derailment. We wouldn’t advise walking.
• Some parking fines will go up mahoosively during the Olmypics.
• See who went to see Beckham’s pants on Regents Street.
• International Olympic Committee impressed with London’s preps.
• Mayor opens emergency St Mungo’s shelter for rough sleepers.
• The Occupy movement confronts capitalism head on…by capturing a community centre from a Scout group.

Image by M@.

Photo by nottheviewsofmyemployer

As the repercussions of last year’s riots continue to ripple outwards, the Metropolitan Police have embarked on a mission to train more officers in dealing with any repeat rioting.

The Met were criticised at the time over lack of officers and vehicles to contain looting and violence — in Clapham there were just eight officers available which led to police withdrawing from the area and allowing rioting to continue unabated. In the aftermath, the police took the opportunity to draw up new rules of engagement around policing and civil unrest. New Met Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe told the London Assembly police and crime committee:

“On the Saturday night we’ve accepted from the beginning that we didn’t have enough police available to deal with Tottenham High Road. We’ve got significantly more police officers available to deploy, we’ve tested that.”

We’d love to say that these are extra officers and local policing won’t be affected but we can’t — Hogan-Howe also warned that numbers would fall while training was being given but it’s all for the greater good. Recruitment was also on the agenda at the committee and the commissioner said that the Met mustn’t disregard graduates in favour of promoting from the ranks of PCSOs.

Now that the Met’s performance is within City Hall’s remit, the mayor is responsible for overseeing the force’s strategy; though just last month he was criticised by electoral adversary Ken Livingstone over a 1700-strong dip in the capital’s police numbers. Brian Paddick, however, advocates recruiting local communities to fight crime.

Today, Greenwich gets a regal promotion. The Borough will adopt a Royal appellation as part of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations. It joins existing Royal Boroughs Kensington & Chelsea and Kingston upon Thames in this privilege, and sports a new crest (right) to symbolise the new status.

The occasion will be marked with a fireworks display at Woolwich this evening. Further events, including more fireworks on Sunday, will take place across the weekend.

Greenwich certainly deserves the honour, at least from an historical perspective. Three monarchs — Henry VIII, Mary I and Elizabeth I – were born at the palace of Placentia, the long-demolished royal residence formerly on the site of today’s Old Royal Naval College. Only St James’s Palace can boast more Crown births. In addition, boy king Edward VI died at Placentia, and two of Henry VIII’s marriages took place there.

Then there are, or were, many other ‘Royal’ buildings around the borough: the Royal Observatory (itself part of the newly branded Royal Museums Greenwich), the Royal Artillery, Dockyards and Arsenal downriver at Woolwich, and the Queen Elizabeth Hospital on the slopes of Shooters Hill.

Diamond Geezer has more on the naming, and similar bestowments around the country, while Darryl Chamberlain gives a local’s view.

The site looked at 3m quotes for home insurance made over a year and found that 33.6% of applicants living in N16 declared a previous claim for theft. This could mean various things: maybe Stokey residents are more honest and own up to previous incidents, or it shows that people who have had a burglary are more likely to need to switch insurers (bye bye to the no claims discount that made your old policy so cheap) or maybe, indeed, the mung bean capital of North London is thief heaven. It’s all so different from the picture painted by comedian Helen Arney.

Also battling it out with seemingly crime-ridden West Yorkshire for places in the top 20 are Wood Green, Streatham, Woodford Green, Barnet and Mill Hill.

Photo by Nicobobinus from the Londonist Flickr pool

The centre is run by St Mungo’s and provides hot showers, food and clean clothes as well as refuge from the sub-zero streets and a bed for the night. Support and advice is also available to help guests get off the streets for good.

All boroughs have ‘Severe Weather Emergency Protocols’ which kick in whenever three consecutive nights of freezing temperatures are predicted and a full list of London shelters is available from Homeless Link.

If you are concerned about a rough sleeper, you can contact St Mungo’s outreach teams, who are working round the clock in Westminster, Southwark and Ealing to bring people in off the streets.

Support St Mungo’s – make a donation online.

Photo by Roll the Dice via the Londonist Flickrpool.

• The Turnpike Lane shooting victim was sitting in his car
• MI6 cancels all leave till after the Olympics
• Speaking of which, have your kids got free tickets through school?
• And TfL have turned down the Black Cab Olympic fare premium proposal
• Finally, are you braced for snow?

Photo taken in Crouch End today ‘Cougar Encounter’ by Peep O’Daze via the Londonist Flickrpool

The 550m tunnel, which runs underneath the old Connaught Passage linking the Royal Albert and Victoria Docks and formerly used by the North London Line, suffered a hit in 1940. Experts want to make sure no other devices buried themselves in the soil before they start repairing and reinforcing walls. The middle section of the tunnel was narrowed in 1935 when the Passage was deepened; original 1878 brickwork was taken out and replaced with steel.

Crossrail contractors will dredge a section of the Passage next year and lay a reinforced concrete slab. This will allow the steel to be removed and a foam concrete (which sounds fun) added to the walls. And all this is just to prepare the tunnels for boring!

As well as checking for old bombs, archaeologists will have time to explore the Crossrail sites to see if they can find artefacts from London’s buried past.

London Reconnections had a look round the Connaught Tunnel in 2010. Didn’t spot any bombs, though.

Photo courtesy of London Reconnections.

Today’s Times is not a happy result, but the latest chapter in the tragic story of Mary Bowers, 27, hit by a cement truck on The Highway on her way to work. Mary has been in a coma ever since her accident. And so the work of her colleagues — notably Kaya Burgess — brought this issue onto the front page of the paper of record. We’re not aware of any occasion where the Times has taken such a stand – it is commendable, go read their manifesto and if you agree, sign up.

Though the campaign is national, it is deeply routed in the London streets where Mary cycled. Those streets, remarkably, have become a significant issue at the Mayoral election. We have Boris to thank for that — his enthusiasm for a particular kind of cycling is what got the blue paint on the roads and the hire scheme up and running – he made cycling a bit more ‘in your face’, gave long suffering campaigners a new enthusiasm to keep trying, and unleashed a new wave of online activists.

However, in the four years of his mayoralty the idea that we can promote cycling while not making space for it on our roads has been exposed as tragically — fatally — flawed. Most cyclists don’t want to cycle like Boris Johnson, his phone to his ear, his hair blowing in the wind, his life in his hands. Most people who would cycle, but don’t, wouldn’t ever consider his approach to personal safety.

Campaigning group Londoners on bikes are asking people to pledge their vote to the candidate promising to do the most of Cycling Safety. As we approach the elections our candidates are taking positions, and all have new cycling policies — Paddick has endorsed cycle lanes at dangerous junctions, Ken has promised to make Green AM Jenny Jones the ‘supreme commander’ of cycling, Ms Jones herself is a full-on infrastructure-ist and Boris promises further expansion of the cycle hire and highways schemes.

If you cycle, or think about cycling, these are exciting times for London — but let’s never forget the terrible human cost of the progress we’ve made. Best speed on your recovery, Mary.

The mayor was criticised last year by the Green party over the scaling-back of his original proposals and by April last year only 534 people had taken up the government’s £5,000 grant to buy EVs. Figures published by Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) suggest either a massive success or a slow take-up, depending on how you choose to spin the data — 2011 saw 1,082 total EVs registered against 138 in 2010. It’s certainly a big increase, but it’s nowhere near Boris’s projected 100K (although his disclaimer of ‘as soon as possible’ does allow for some wiggle room presumably).

Despite the £5,000 grant, the electric vehicle revolution is in its infancy; the choice of eligible cars is tiny, with just five being currently available but due to expand to nine by the end of 2012. Going electric is also costly — the Nissan Leaf starts at £25,990. Availability of charging points and the car’s travelling range are also concerns; no-one wants to run out of power on a busy roundabout. SourceLondon’s charging point map shows a growing network of around 400 but still far short of the 1,300 points promised by 2013. That’s next year, folks.

The motivation of car buyers is also questionable. £25K is a high price to pay to be a member of the environmentally-friendly motoring club and given a choice between spending £5K on a reasonable second-hand petrol or diesel car and £20K on an EV (with grant applied) you’d have to be pretty determined to prove your green credentials to want to part with that extra cash, especially in these times of austerity. And for inner-city driving, the whole raison d’être of the push to reduce pollution via the EV grant, a car is not always the most practical transport solution anyway. That leaves the occasional run out of town, away from all those lovely charging points. What’s that you say? A range of 110 miles? Oh.

With any technological innovation, early adopters pay the highest price. Within 10 years we could see a far more extensive range of attractive, cheap-to-buy electric cars with a greatly-extended battery life which would make them a viable option for those on lower incomes. We think that over-reliance on the electric vehicle revolution to significantly address carbon emissions in London may be a tiny bit premature.

Photo by BethPH

A new initiative in Soho is trying to cut down on plastic waste by only giving customers a straw on request. Although the wee tubes make up just a small fraction of the total amount of plastic crap that ends up in landfill and (due to the ease with which they end up down drains) oceans, they’re an easy single-use item target that could make more of us stop and think whether we really need to use all this stuff.

So far, 18 restaurants have signed up, including Barrafina, Randall and Aubin, Wahaca and Ducksoup. And although it started in the heart of London, the message is already spreading as far as Shoreditch (Pizza East), Somerset and Berlin, where they take recycling very seriously.

Now the campaign needs to tackle a small stumbling block – McDonald’s, with its 3.5m drinks-with-straws a day – and they’ll really be onto something.

Photo by emmlpop from the Londonist Flickr pool

• A man has been shot dead near Turnpike Lane station
• Sixteen parties are bidding for the Olympic Stadium, including West Ham
• The second longest serving Tower Beefeater has retired
• Does BBC London love the Jubilee Line?
• A Ladbroke Grove water tower has been turned into a home
• Is the Doc Marten the most Londony shoe?

Photo: Blue Cheese (Soho) by Julian Reid via the Londonist Flickrpool

Photo by Xube

Anyone dreading traffic chaos during the Olympics can breathe a (very slight) sigh of relief with the news that the dedicated VIP lanes could be opened up to the public after all.

City Hall announced that the controversial routes, which will allow the ‘Games Family’ – officials, sponsors, VIPs and media – fast movement between key venues during the games, will be made available to private users when Olympic traffic is scarce. A meeting between TfL and Games organisers came to the agreement that mobile traffic signs will alert regular road-users of changes if the dedicated lanes are expected to free up.

This announcement from the Mayor’s camp comes after a pile up of transport concerns in anticipation of the Olympics, which has resulted in Boris slumping behind Ken in the mayoral election race. Boris may be worrying that he will be booted out of the VIP lanes too, if he cannot provide some relief from the ‘car-mageddon’ expected if Tube strikes materialize and the Olympic Route Network remains out of the public’s reach.

One piece of good transport news might be just the ticket to launch him back into the lead – but this is not it. An official from the Olympic organising committee, LOCOG, admitted the traffic relief will be limited, with most lanes “highly unlikely” to be opened up during the games. Routes will remain very busy throughout with ‘official’ traffic which, organisers revealed, will include the chairman of McDonalds as well as Seb Coe and Usain Bolt.

If Boris fails to iron out the transport problems by 3 May, he might find himself stuck in the congested pleb-lanes with the rest of us. Londoners will have to pray that Boris’ stock drops even lower, forcing the white-haired warrior to bring out the emergency measures. Regent Street monorail anyone?

By Matt Ponsford

Members of the group, from Stoke, Cardiff and London, conspired to send five nail bombs to targets across London. A supposed hit list, found at the Isle of Dogs home of Chowdhury, contained the addresses of Boris Johnson and two rabbis, as well as the American Embassy and the Stock Exchange.

Security services arrested the men after close surveillance. The men are not thought to have acquired any explosives or other harmful materials. They will be sentenced next week. The Telegraph seems to have more details than most reports.

Photo of the inside of the London Stock Exchange by Tanya Nagar in the Londonist Flickr pool.

Reports on Twitter suggest that the cyclist has emerged relatively unharmed; we’ll update this post when we get further details. But the rear part of the bike itself, as shown in this picture, was mangled beneath the wheels of the vehicle.

The incident took place near the junction with Goswell Road,  close to the location where architect Rebecca Goosen was knocked off her bike and killed by a cement mixer in 2009. A quick glance at the map of road deaths in London suggests that this stretch of Clerkenwell Road is particularly lethal for cyclists, with a number of other riders losing their lives along it.  In fact the Clerkenwell Road/Farringdon Road junction was included in the Tour du Danger ride last November, which sought to highlight the capital’s most dangerous cycling blackspots.

The accident is among the first serious ones involving the cycle hire scheme since its launch in July 2010 (discounting the time when a careless motorist ploughed into a docking station in Shoreditch) and is likely to reignite the debate about whether HGVs should be allowed in central London during rush hour.

Photo / mumphalee

• Theatre news: Chariots of Fire is heading for the stage, whilst box office figures are generally encouraging.
• Big fire in White City this morning.
• Gotta see this: UCL is launching a multi-species art exhibition.
• The Lawrence killers will appeal. Of course they will.
• False call outs drop, London Fire Brigade saves £9m. Astonishing.
• 7/7 survivor develops new app to help London wheelchair users.
• Finally, some interesting reading: the RA’s plans for London post 1945.

Text, by Ayton Images via the Londonist Flickr pool.

LFB went to around 8,000 fewer (40,734) false alarms in 2011 than it did in 2008 – and either students at Kings College aren’t smoking as many sneaky fags or the halls of residence alarms are less sensitive, with a whacking 44% fall.

There’s still a false alarm or hoax call every 10 minutes on average, which the LFB reckon costs £37m a year. Taking a nerdy look at next year’s budget, that’s almost as much as the expected earned income for the whole year, which is crap.

While we’re talking money, the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority last week suggested combining fire and ambulance services in a bid to save more cash. Moving 50 of London’s 70 ambulance stations into nearby fire stations, bringing them under the jurisdiction of the Mayor, could save £50m. London Ambulance Service, however, has said it needs to remain part of the NHS and that, like, thanks and everything, but no.

To get an idea of the Fire Brigade’s work, take a look at their Bonfire Night live tweets from last year.

Photo by McTumshie from the Londonist Flickr pool

• RMT rejects £500 Olympic pay bonus for LU staff
• LOCOG free up 120,000 Olympic hotel rooms
• Harmondsworth Barn — the ‘Cathedral of Middlesex’ — acquired by English Heritage
• Will the Big Breakfast return to Lock Keeper’s Cottages for the Olympics?
• Interesting BBC video about sponsorship of the transport network
• And finally, stay warm folks!

Photo: Skaters at Canary Wharf ice rink reflected in the building opposite by sczscz via the Londonist Flickrpool

If you’re not fortunate enough to be able to work from home or spend your commuting hours in the pub this summer, you might need to have a look at the brand new Get Ahead of the Games travel website.

Launched today by TfL, LOCOG and UK-wide transport agencies the site highlights Games travel ‘hotspots’ to prepare the public for a challenging few weeks of public transport.

Have a play with the interactive map for London. Move the date slider back and forth through the Olympic fortnight and you get an oddly pleasing / vaguely disturbing bloom and shrink effect as the overloaded tube stations apparently explode.

Nearer the time, this graphic snapshot of Olympic tube hotspots could prove handy — once they’ve finished mapping the anticipated effects of the Torch Relay and Paralympics — especially as two of their top five travel tips include advice to ‘avoid’.

Follow @GAOTG on Twitter for updates.

Photo by JudyGR

The Occupy movement have been evicted from their Bank of Ideas building in Sun Street just days after a failed occupation of another former banking office in the City.

A possession order was served on the protesters after the building’s owners, Swiss investment bank UBS, won a a legal case against the group. Occupy had attempted to shift operations to a new site in Leadenhall Street which housed the now-defunct Iraqi Rafidain Bank as well as the former Midland Bank at St Alphage Highwalk but they were evicted by police. They also took over and then abandoned Roman House in Barbican after concerns were raised that their presence would result in loss of work for contractors employed to strip asbestos from the building.

The Bank of Ideas has been open since 18 November 2011 and hosted a variety of arts and community events with talks, workshops, lectures, film screenings, conferences, debates and performances.

Could Occupy have lost their impetus with the latest series of evictions? We imagine that owners of empty buildings in the City must now be wise to the possibility of occupation and have taken appropriate measures to secure properties. The police are also not being slow to use their powers to prevent Occupy getting their feet under the table. Or are we simply looking at a cunning feint while the group prepare to re-open the Bank of Ideas somewhere unexpected? The group look set to lose their initial St Paul’s flagship site too after the City of London Corporation won their bid to remove the camp.

With the Olympics bearing down on London, protest camps are being targeted – the long-standing Parliament Square camp was recently removed and ministers have called upon Olympics organisers to ban tents to prevent Occupy-style camps from being pitched.

A video of Sunday’s eviction was streamed live on the Bank of Ideas website where the group say they will keep supporters up to date.