Ken Livingston's vision of driving a Routemaster to Beijing as a 2012 promotional exercise may have been ditched as a total waste of time and money because of the Sichuan earthquake but the bus itself is still in line to be the star of the handover ceremony at the end of this summer's Games. In fact, it's already on it's way in a container ship. As for the spangly ceremonials, as per the rumours,......

Remember Mayor Ken's deal with Venezuela? He agreed to share expertise in areas like public transport and tourism - in return for a 20% discount on fuel bought for London's buses, which he then used to subsidise bus fares for thousands of Londoners on Income Support to 50p. During the election campaign, Boris Johnson referred to the deal wryly as "completely Caracas" and questioned the maths behind the whole thing. Now in post, there......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 46. Misunderstood Signals Along with an unhealthy obsession with social interaction on London’s public transport (which is what Team Nice investigates), I am very superstitious. Saluting magpies and not walking across three drains is an everyday occurrence. Crossing the road at the traffic lights the other day, I sidestepped the third drain, and in doing......

Operation Blunt 2 cracking down on knife crime made its first big arrest on Saturday night on the top deck of a bus in Deptford. An astonishing 24 teenagers were stopped and searched after boarding the bus en masse and police officers recovered the following makeshift arsenal: six knives, two screwdrivers, a corkscrew, a golf club, a metal baseball bat, a mallet, two wrench handles, a claw hammer and a metal bar were found......

Some Routemasters just don't know when to retire. While Boris considers his pledge to resurrect a modernised Routemaster, the original omnibus gets an artistic outing at the London Transport Museum. The double-decker is celebrated in a photographic exhibition by Ralf Obergfell, a German-born artist with a deep affection for the curtailed London icon. Last Stop opened this weekend and runs till 27 July. Meanwhile, Travis Elborough, author of The Bus We Loved, will give a......

Space.com are showing a picture of a London red bus ensconced within European space freighter the Jules Verne. Less romantically known as the Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV), the Jules Verne is due to dock with the International Space Station tomorrow. Alas, the bus is intended as an indicator of capacity for, as far as we know, the craft is laden with supplies and experiments, and not a decommissioned Routemaster. That said, Nasa are looking......

Unite lived up to its name today, presenting demands on behalf of bus drivers across the capital for a standard wage and agreement on driving hours to address considerable disparities across operators. This is their first coordinated claim since privatisation in the 80s. Drivers working for different companies might currently be earning anything from £20-28K all in. Unite is calling for pay to be standardised at £30k across the board, recognising the key role......

A 24 bus crashed into a bridge at 9am this morning on Prince of Wales Road NW5, injuring 6 people and wiping out its own roof. The bus was on diversion following the Camden Canal Market fire at the weekend. Other buses had been successfully centering themselves and passing unharmed beneath the arched bridge since the fire cut off access to Camden High Street. We wait to hear what on earth the driver was......

If you were out and about on the Underground this weekend you might have caught sight of one of these guys on TfL's latest 'don't be a selfish bastard' campaign. Together for London employs a gang of unthreateningly rounded cartoon figures, The Londoners, each promising to be a better traveller: I will offer my seat I won't play my music out loud I won't drop litter There's even a short split-screen film by Mike......

After receiving what they judiciously describe as "a lot" of feedback, TfL has announced significant changes to the recorded information announcements on London buses. Those changes mainly seem to involve - hooray! - reducing their frequency. The announcements, rolled out last year in conjunction with a display system, are designed to help visually impaired travellers, as well as visitors, navigate the confusing streets of London. A worthy project, certainly, though it means less hilarious......

Boris Johnson is backing a plan to bring Routemasters back into action, with electric motors and no emissions, and the reintroduction of drivers and conductors on each bus. With characteristic swiftness, Ken Livingstone has taken opposition to the plan and Londoners are once again torn between the two views on the possible return of the famous big red bus. For a brief set by Autocar magazine, design company Capaco came up with the electric......

Straight out of Steptoe and Son - bogus bin men bag bonuses. Straight out of a Whitehall farce - illegal immigrant home office worker to be deported. Straight out of a Bond movie - driverless people shuttles at Heathrow. Straight out of real life - the bit-too-much-booze bus. Straight out of a Dickensian novel - immigrant detention at Heathrow is getting worse. Reminds-us-of-the-end-of-the-world piccie courtesy of paniek’s flickr photo stream.......

Langdon Park DLR station opened yesterday, to initially no fanfare, until Ken turned up with some free Oyster cards. Diamond Geezer has blogged in heartfelt detail about the "shiny alien mothership" lighting up a neglected, marginalised area. Langdon Park now easily links up with Canary Wharf and Stratford, where a second platform was also officially opened yesterday, possibly anticipating the immediate influx of people escaping Tower Hamlets for a day. TFL are consulting about......

What we learned this weekend whilst you were enjoying all the fun of the fair: Weird statistic of the week: Emmas from Sutton and Evas from Kingston should not be allowed behind the wheel. How on earth do they get these stats? Two arrests have been made following Saturday’s night bus murder. Londonist would so like to like night buses, but it is hard. Find out what north-of-the-borderers make of us. Mummy gets a......

It's very easy to get caught up in this city for all of it's music, clubs and big shiny loud stuff. Well, as much as we remain a fan of all that is big and shiny, Londonist occasionally needs some down time. Preferably with trees and tweety birds. And there's nothing more relaxing than a walk through the countryside. This is why The Wildfowl and Wetlands Centre is perfect. It's a short skip and......

As Londoners we pootle around our fair city doing Londonish things: pretending to read anything off the Orange shortlist, pretending not to read the free newspapers, pretending not to notice how bad the man sitting next to us on the bus smells, rush-rush-rush with our minds usually elsewhere. And then once in a while we focus and spot something unusual, something that hasn’t happened before, or that wasn’t there yesterday. Thus it is with spaces......

Dusting off the snow from last year, every day this month the Londonist team will be pointing you in the direction of a Christmas present that (with a bit of luck) you won't already have on your list. Climb up onto our collective lap and we'll see what we can move from our sack to your stockings... Look up when you're next out and about in London - you'll see things you hadn't noticed......

O2, it seems, are cornering the market in progressive mobile gadegtry, already having the monopoly on the shiny smart iPhone and now the pilot phase OyPhone. Sorry, "Oyster Wallet" is the much more sensible and meaningless name for TfL's latest technology wheeze which puts your travelcard in your mobile phone and today, 500 Oyster users begin trialling the Nokia 6131 handsets with Oyster embedded. Barclaycard are also in on the trial, charging up the......

One year since Alexander Litvinenko's murder, yet our Russian friends haven't been dissuaded from moving here. Good for them! Superbug victims to get their own ward in hospital. A green London is affordable - especially if we follow Greenwich's lead. Bus careers off road. Perhaps the driver was in training for the London Grand Prix? Tube cleaners score pay rise Image courtesy of dartar via the Londonist flickr group.......

Have you been watching the telly channel Dave? If yes, then you'll have been having a comedy improv revivalist session as "Whose Line Is It Anyway" plays back to back for hours on end. If this is you, we suggest you shake off the couch potato act this weekend and get yourself to the Isle of Dogs for comedy improv in the here and now. Stories That Want To Be Told will be previewing......

Man had up for lewd of-fence A cloud is cast over our earlier story, as the Cutty Sark in fact now looks set for a cutty in funding. The latest excuse for bus tardiness? Sorry, the bus got welded to the road. Much cheered by this ridiculous tale, bus drivers elsewhere have called off a strike which was planned for Wednesday. We’ve only had it for a week, and now we’re selling it: farewell......

London and Delhi get in bed together. Small blast at Enfield pharma company causes injuries. Bus crime is down on last year. Put a less optimistic way, one crime is committed on London buses every 15 minutes. What price God? St Bartholomew the Great to charge entrance fees for services. Fifth would-be 21/7 bomber jailed for 33 years. Image courtesy of SooHK in lens via the Londonist flickr group.......

We've seen you racing down Rainbow Road in the queue at Sainsbury's. We've also noticed you desperately arranging tetrominoes on the tube and catching Pokémon at the bus stop, so we know you're just as addicted to playing Nintendo DS as we are. For over a year now, DS:London has been organising frequent pub meetups where fans of the handheld console can gather for competition and conversation over pints. If you've been playing alone,......

Close to 300 cases of measles have been reported to City and Hackney Primary Care Trust over the last 5 months. It is thought that the outbreak is directly linked to increasing numbers of parents deciding against the MMR vaccination for their darlings in the light of the well publicised but now discredited research which linked it to autism. With hundreds of spotty kids sickening in East London direct action is being taken by......

Apparently they are fed up with being dissed in and by the media, and distrusted by society at large. As the BBC launches its Talking Teenagers campaign, a brave and shiny teenager has taken up the challenge down in Bexleyheath, claiming that the press are too keen to focus on under-performing, dysfunctional adolescents and all too ready to ignore happy teenage stories (such as her own – she is a champion St. John’s Ambulancer). Londonist......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 24. Llamas As Team Nice and the Niceties Campaign is a year old, last week we spoke of niceties tokens, which is the mechanism that started Team Nice. So this week I thought I would speak a little bit more about Team Nice. Team Nice is an ever-growing group of people (currently just under 1,000)......

Ken Livingstone, bless him, has brought us six new buses that are more environmentally friendly than our existing red beasts. They'll soon be putting the green back into Greenwich on the 129 route, and chugging round the 360 route between E&C and Kensington. The new buses are to enter service alongside six that are already on the streets; but the Mayor isn't content yet. By 2012, he wants every new bus joining the fleet......

Had TfL existed in his time, the great Samuel Johnson may well have amended his famous aphorism to read "a man who is bored of London needs to hop on the number 19 bus". In its perambulation from Battersea to Finsbury Park, the 19 cuts a swath across the capital's economic and cultural barriers, revealing the world within one city that modern London manifests. Vogue has certainly been impressed by the number 19. The......

Here’s what we’ve learned while you lot have been out, up and away with the fireworks: The Polish Prime Minister is to make a personal visit to Ealing to thank his, er, voters… The police have sneaked out a discreet Sunday press release about the obscene amounts of money they have spent on PR for PCSOs. Forget gang-on-gang violence... howzabout octogenarian on octogenarian murder? The University of Surrey is to build a hip and......

25. More Road-Related Horror! Lord John Angerstein’s coach has been sighted pulled by four headless horses, in the vicinity of Trafalgar Road, travelling onwards to Vanbrugh Hill in southeast London. Why the horses appear headless no one knows. On the Bayswater Road near Hyde Park, another phantom coach and horses is said to travel, without sound. But the most astonishing vehicle to haunt Greater London has to be that of a spectral bus, sighted......