Just a week after we were all taken aback that work on the Olympic stadium had begun ahead of schedule, its fate is being discussed with potential hosts of the next Games and the idea mooted to recycle its seats for reuse in 2016. It was always planned for the sunken cupcake to have a certain number of permanent seats with extra capacity retained only for the period of the Games. Discussions with Chicago,......

As the repercussions continue around the Premiership's shock announcement that it was going to take its brand of football around the world in a weekend, its chief executive Richard Scudamore is determined that the plan should survive in some way, shape or form. As we mentioned last week, FIFA's regional associations and its president Sepp Blatter himself have come out in opposition to the idea of our league matches encroaching on their territories at......

Another reason (as if one was needed) for Londoners to be interested in the US presidential race: Democratic hopeful Barack Obama has revealed that he is a West Ham fan.. The White House hopeful's love for all things claret 'n blue stems from a visit to England five years ago, when his Kent-dwelling extended family introduced him to the passion of the Boleyn Ground faithful, and he's been hooked ever since. If Londonist recalls......

This is what we have learned whilst you have been browsing through holiday brochures this weekend: A pub in Tottenham with a really bad record for trouble is to be shut down. Londonist can think of a few more that should be… A gang fight at a greengrocers has left one man stabbed to death. A met. policeman accused of killing his wife has been found dead. As has his former mother-in-law. People have......

The Guinness Book of Records names London’s Lyle’s Golden Syrup the world’s oldest branded anything. We love him dearly, but God forbid that Beckham ever gets the urge to go into politics. EVEN MORE private records stray. Anarchy rules. Strange magnetic fields affect London City Airport. We just love Dean Koontz. It seems even London ZOO has to do a stock-check. Farewell Leicester Square - well, as you know it, anyway. Public consultation on......

The Mayoral race has been quiet recently. Londonist suspects that it is the calm before the shitstorm. According to a recent poll, Boris is only one point behind Ken. A sign that campaigning is going to start making a dent on the Winehouse news in the London Lite is that Boris, from the blue corner, has launched a new Back Boris website. The photo gallery shows us that recently the campaign trail has taken......

It’s now over ten years since the Spice Girls entrenched themselves into the mindsets of teenyboppers around the world. Now all of those teenyboppers are in their early to mid-twenties and apparently desperate for a slice of retro-tastic cheese. Armed with plenty of alcohol in our system and a set of fuzzily fond memories we set off to the O2 to see the reunited Spice Girls in action. A quick glance round the audience......

Erm, police agents lose the security codes for 73 of their stations. Dolts. The Royal Marsden re-opens for business. Troopers. Paddick is Elton’s candidate of choice. Sweeties. The East London Line is on schedule to be on schedule. Can’t call them liars, so let’s settle for optimists. Beckham honoured for being Beckham. Top man. It’s-that-time-of-year piccie courtesy of shadow of my future self’s flickr photo stream.......

Lasers, screens, explosions, giant mutant zombie mummies (hmm, we may have inadvertently made a cruel pun there), apparently the latest gig gizmo is to parade your offspring, as opposed to The Offspring, which in this case might actually have been better. Brooklyn, Romeo, and Cruz Posh, Baby Beau, Barbabelle, and Scary Phoenix and Angel Scary Murphy all joined their famous Mums onstage at the O2 this week, during the track Mama. Surely these people......

It's been a bad few weeks for the Spice Girls: they released the worst selling Children In Need single ever (to put this into perspective, let's remember that Martine McCutcheon once had a Children In Need single. Martine McCutcheon), appeared in terrible Tesco adverts, played to half full shows in America and Baby Spice sprained her little baby ankle on stage. However, little Emma Bunton ingested her weight in painkillers, soldiered on and appeared......

We've never made it down but the tales we've been told of Saturday night party Together at Turnmills make us curse everytime we realise it clashes with something we've already done. So while some of the Londonist music team are djing a clubnight on a boat down Temple way with a request list that includes Dane Bowers & Victoria Beckham's "Out of Your Mind", the slightly better DJ David Guetta will be pumping the......

Banner week for SFist as the site's new editor introduced himself -- hooray for Brock! While the NY Times weighed in on SF's mayoral race, only SFist had the (insert tongue firmly into cheek) hard-hitting latest on candidate/activist Josh Wolf. Coverage of a protest vs. gentrification spawned a fantastic debate amongst SFist's readers. Finally, from the sublime to the ridiculous: video of a man that confused a Board of Supes meeting with "open mic......

We have to admit when we first saw this advertised we didn't have much of an idea what to expect. Henry VIII certainly knew how to cut it with the ladies, but we reckoned that a re-enactment of His Majesty's finest chat-up lines was unlikely, particularly in the middle of a river. It turns out that the Tudor Pull is run by the Thames Traditional Rowing Association and features crews of six oarsmen rowing......

The Bank of England have raised interest rates for the third time in five months. This time to 5.25%. After yesterday's confusing news from Real Madrid, it's been confirmed that David Beckham will leave the Spanish squad for LA Galaxy at the end of the season. It's Simon Amstell vs Preston. We know which side we're on. A police investigation has started after a mother and her two children were found dead in a......

It was always going to be tricky to pull off a quirky road movie centred upon the Taliban, but Kabir Khan almost pulls it off. And seeing as Kabul Express is produced by Yash Raj Films (the most successful Indian film studio, more used to financing over the top Hindi blockbusters) it's a miracle that this is as restrained as it is. Khan's background as a documentary filmmaker puts him in good stead, but......

Hammersmith & Fulham (and a few other London boroughs) put their heads together to drum up a bit of tourism and have come up with a West London movie map entitled Go West: One in five visitors are inspired to holiday in Britain because of a film they have seen. Today, film tourism is a growing global phenomenon creating a new breed of tourist – the ‘set-jetter’. Set jetter - nice. West London is......

It looks like it’s a season of extremes ahead for the capital’s Football League clubs if the predictions at www.statto.com are to be believed. The site showcases an index based on 25 years of league results and claims a 92% correlation between its forecasts and the results of actual matches. On the eve of the big kick-off the index is predicting that Crystal Palace, Millwall and Brentford will be pushing for promotion while Queens......

Two days to go and eight games to play in the group stages of the world cup and only Brazil and Spain are going into them sure of their places in the knockout phase. Much of today's attention will centre on the clash between the USA and Ghana at 3pm where a win would see Ghana through, as might a draw, but even a victory might not be enough for the States if the......

Opening tonight at the Proud gallery in Camden is Shoot! A History of the World Cup in pictures. Yes, the name is almost unbearably predictable, but judging by the website it does look like they've lived up to their tagline, which reads "classic and unseen photography from all seventeen World Cup Finals 1930-2002". So there's a lot of atmospheric black and white shots of men who look far too old to be playing professional......

Given that we're actually due some sunshine this weekend, we have our doubts that attending a film festival will be at the top of many people's lists. Especially when they learn that all the films being shown are about FOOTBALL. For most, the only cinematic football offering that approaches anywhere near an acceptable level of quality (and then only in an ironic 'this is shit but in a good way' fashion) might be 'Escape......

...he's a very speedy boy. But that's about it for now. 22,500 England fans plus one England manager finally got to see Arsenal's Theo Walcott play last night in England's B international at Reading and the wonderful news was that the 17 year-old forward didn't do anything terribly wrong and, unlike the excruciatingly unlucky third choice goalkeeper Robert Green, didn't get hurt, so Theomania can continue to take the pressure away from the players......

On Saturday afternoon the whole nation, while not wishing injury on anyone, might have breathed a sigh of relief that the most goal-shy, undisciplined striker of England’s world cup qualifying campaign was unlikely to play more than a cameo role in this summer’s finals tournament. Instead the reaction has been more what you’d expect if the government announced all English telephone codes were changing at the end of the week. Such is the importance......

That's right, it's the news you were all waiting for - your favourite London multi-contributor weblog has come out in support of the FA's bid to hire Luiz Felipe Scolari as the new England head coach. SHAZAM! We do realise that this isn't the kind of announcement that will convince Big Phil to drop his extravagant pay demands and sign on the dotted line, we just felt compelled to speak up against all the frenzied......

Guns. A big issue with our cousins across the pond. The 2nd Amendment to the constitution means that people can keep assault rifles at home, and with Bush and his cronies in the White House, it doesn't look like there will be any changes to the law anytime soon. American Liberals, however, are increasingly using the media to get across their simple and sensible message: Gun crime will not decrease unless gun laws are......

Just a quick reminder to let you know that Bollocks to Alton Towers came out in paperback this week. From the same people who brought you the Framley Examiner BtAT is a journey across Britain to find "small, fascinating, unique" days out. As well as the secret nuclear bunker at Kelvedon, and Walthamstow Borough Council's 'Beckham Trail' the book also feature a real Londonist favourite: the dinosaurs of Crystal Palace: "one of the world's......

There is always plenty for the football fan to think about when news reaches you of the passing of another great from generations past. In Peter Osgood's case, we might think of the swagger in the image of a young man that we never saw play, but understood that he was supposed to represent an idealised point in this city's history, when everyone swanned down the King's Road looking like Alfie or Twiggy. We......

As the Met begin their "swift" probe of the weekend's protests it turns out that the man who dressed up as a suicide bomber is in fact a convicted drug dealer who has been out of jail for less than a year. A British Airways flight heading for Heathrow from Newark, New Jersey was diverted to Boston's Logan International Airport after smoke was reported in the cockpit. It landed safely and there were no injuries.......

How many Londonist readers who've never thought of buying a lottery ticket in their lives before have found themselves tempted in the recent weeks by the obscenely escalating Euro Millions jackpot (estimated prize this week: £125,000,000). And how many of you have actually went out and bought a ticket only to have some high-minded killjoy let you know that your chances of winning are akin to playing a roulette wheel five times the size......

Maybe you don't have any children. Maybe you do. Do they like football? Maybe. If they do, then there will be no 'maybes' about it, they are going to be begging you to send them to the David Beckham Soccer Academy , which had its official opening in Greenwich (it's next to the Dome) today . This is the Disneyland of football academies, and every young lad or lass that dreams of one day......

It was reported over the weekend that the IOC have been busy putting together "a timetable of deadlines" to meet over the next seven years in the run-up to the Olympics. There isn't much detail on this "timetable of milestones" except for something about sponsorship plans and budgets. However Londonist can reveal that a section of the plan was leaked to us earlier today and we can now give you a sneak peek at......