After last week’s news that our ambulances are the best in the country, Londoners should be pleased to hear that there’s now another reason why, if you’re going to have medical trouble, you may as well do it in the capital. Londoners’ chances of surviving a cardiac arrest outside the hospital have more than trebled in the last five years, according to a new report by the London Ambulance Service. About one in six......

This Day In London’s History 1988: The Bank of England withdraws the £1 note from circulation. In 1797 the Bank of England started printing banknotes in denominations of one pound sterling on a regular basis. To quote their website: In 1759, gold shortages caused by the Seven Years War forced the Bank to issue a £10 note for the first time. The first £5 notes followed in 1793 at the start of the war......

Because schools aren't violent enough: Boxing is being reintroduced in several schools to help pupils develop their mental and physical skills. Of course! Nothing like the risk of a good old fashioned brain injury to increase fist to eye co-ordination. The director of sport at Beckenham's Kelsey Park Sports College, Matthew Strange, believes there could be a place for boxing within the national curriculum "due to the massive impact it can have on those......

What was that we just said? Well, that mostly wraps things up for Londonist in '06... Yeah right. What we should have said is that mostly wraps things up for London in '06 because according to ABC we are ho ho ho fucked. Check out that headline: London Braces for Attack; 'Miracle' If There Isn't One Are you braced? We're not braced. We have a nut roast to worry about and a Christmas episode......

You may have seen Liz Akers smiling from the news pages lately. You may have even seen her smiling at you on the tube or bus. If you're very lucky, and deserve it, she may have even handed a small 'nicetie token' to you on your commute to work (because you've acted in a nice way, not because you have a nice tie). Liz has earned her 15 minutes of fame, perhaps more, by......

More details have emerged today about Associated Newspapers' contender to thelondonpaper. It's described as a "new free London paper”, and the biggest disappointment is that they haven't chosen to call it thenewfreelondonpaper. In fact it's going to go under the monumentally boring name of London Lite, a ridiculous suffix that AN seem to have stolen from the diet drinks industry and got stuck on. For a start, it's spelled L I G H T.......

Forget the Middle East, the streets of London is where the real battle is. And the ammunition is newspaper ink... ...at least, that's what we'd possibly write if we were lazy, scaremongering Standard journalists who had been drafted in to write filler copy for a new free afternoon newspaper. The possibility of an Associated Newspapers afternoon freesheet has been reported today as their response to News International's September launch of thelondonpaper (also known as......

With the oppulent car-crash that is the Brits lingering long in the memory like the stench of a shared student bathroom, it seems appropriate that the ABC (Audit Bureau of Circulation) average monthly circulation figures for the UK's rock mags should just be released (courtesy of Blabbermouth). So which of the rock tribes reigns supreme? Which rag attracts the readers? Well, looks like £50 Man is currently ruling the roost with Emap's Q the......

Londonist was in Mile End last Thursday, attending Alan Rusbridger's inaugral lecture as the new Hugo Young Visiting Professor at Queen Mary, University of London. The subject of The Guardian editor's lecture, organised by a group of history postgraduate students, was 'Weblogs vs Journalism: The Future of Newspapers' and as you would perhaps expect, the delivery was sharp, erudite and at times, rather funny. Rusbridger's premise was that in an era where newspapers across......

Happy New Year to everyone from the Music Dungeonistas. We trust you found solace in some decent music while 'Best ofs' and Reality TV Rubbish polluted tweeters, woofers and sub-woofers over the break. In a bizarre collision of mainstream and alternative, we spent New Year's Eve doing a karaoke version of Run DMC's It's Tricky on Singstar. Still, it's the start of a new year and the start of the Music Dungeon's resolution to focus......

Moving seamlessly on from the tube adverts post below, here's some more ads-based news, this time involving the continuously ill-fated Standard Lite. You see, advertisers who pay to go into the proper, grown up, Evening Standard have never had to pay to be included in the Standard Lite...until now. As reported today the Standard wants to introduce charging for Lite advertising next month. The Brand republic article is interesting though because it offers a......

Newspaper sales figures for the end of 2004 are out and it's critical news for The Standard (if you listen very carefully you can hear us chuckling and rubbing our hands in glee). The Standard's circulation went down by more than 6% from November. That's a loss of around 23,000 readers, bringing the total circulation to around 350,000 copies. (If you listen very carefully indeed you might just be able to hear us breaking......

The Standard is thought to be planning a free version of the daily newspaper. The slimmed down version will most likely be called Standard-lite and will only be available between the hours of 12pm and 2pm, so as not to step on the toes of the Evening Standard or the Metro. The first two questions that spring to mind are: can the Standard really get any lighter? And, what will happen to the newspaper after......