This Londonista popped to Terminal 5 at Heathrow - due to open in a month's time - and live-blogged about it: It's 7.35am on a grey Saturday morning, and I'm on the piccadilly line. Sure - there are better things to do with my time, but I'm off to be a fake passenger and so to have a nosey around a new iconic building that swishly calls itself 'T5'. It's almost an airport in......

At Londonist we are often chuffed when Londoners 'do quite well'. At least initially. Like most Brits, we love The Underdog - right up until that moment when they become A Loser. Then we slag them off vitriolically, sit arms-crossed in a huff on our collective sofa, mumble that we "never liked them anyway" and promptly forget all about them when the next Underdog comes along. What's cockney for 'schadenfreude' anyway? When Shirley MacLaine......

The fifth in our series of interviews with potential candidates for next year's Mayoral election. Previously: Victoria Borwick (Tory), Andrew Boff (Tory) and Warwick Lightfoot (Tory), Sian Berry (Green). Today: Liberal Democrat candidate Fiyaz Mughal. He's competing with fellow LDs Brian Paddick and Chamali Fernando to represent his party in next year's elections. Would you vote for him? Read his ideas below. Where do you live in London and what do you like best......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 14. Poll-itics Well, I did a quick little poll this week amongst group of 26 professional people aged 20 – 35. Just to ask them what they thought were the most and least important issues to the following parties: Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat, Green, Socialist, BNP and UKIP. The results produced from this (admittedly tiny)......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 13. Rehabilitation? This week Team Nice quizzed Liberal Democrat Councillor Simon Carter of Lewisham Borough Council. The topic ran to antisocial behaviour and whether our solutions are up to scratch. What got you interested in politics, and what made you get involved in the liberal democrat party and why? I got involved in Politics because......

What we now know about the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes- * The stories that Jean Charles acted suspiciously by running away from the police and jumping the barriers at Stockwell tube are untrue. * He was not wearing a bulky jacket or a bomb belt with visible wires hanging out. * Members of the police force knew this (for instance, the ones that followed and shot him.) * Senior officers knew that......

Maybe because it is Friday afternoon and we swtiched off the hard working part of our brains (the Captain's Log for this particular Londonista has been showing "Offline" since Wednesday lunch time) but we thought we would share this WTF gem with you all as a special end of week treat. Brian Gordon, who has served as Tory councillor for Barnet for nine years, is in trouble for his criminal dress sense. Gordon's misdemeanour......

Tonight in Richmond, Portillo is bringing democracy to the people as he hosts an event modelled on the American primary in which three candidates will compete to become the Conservative Party's parliamentary candidate for Richmond Park. The candidates will compete "in an X Factor-style contest". Early rumours suggest that ecological megamillionaire and hot tip to win even though he was once quoted as saying that he would only vote Conservative if he was drugged,......

Crazy story in The Independent today: A former British National Party election candidate who stockpiled explosive chemicals for use in an anticipated civil war in Britain boasted that he would shoot Tony Blair... Police raided the home of Robert Cottage, who held "strong views on immigration", and found 21 types of chemicals which could create explosives when mixed together, along with a 300-page computer document called the "Anarchy Cookbook", which detailed how to make......

The government's plans to bring in high tech ID cards may have to go back to the drawing board after a Guardian investigation showed that biometric data could be electronically attacked and cloned with a £174 microchip reader. We say may have to back to the drawing board because so far the only response to the investigation has been a shrug of the governmental shoulders. Opposition parties have been quick to point out the......

There is a lot to like about the Liberal Democrats - the little yellow bird they have as their emblem, the nice old man they have running the show - but today they've churned out a survey with the usefulness of a Cornish nationalist in the Scottish parliament. The survey, carried out by London Assembly's Liberal Democrats, found an adult ticket at Leicester Square can cost £12.45 more than in Europe The 'survey' shows......

Commissioner "sorry" For Phone Tap Blair is in trouble again. No, not the PM, the other one! - Met Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair has said he is sorry for recording a telephone conversation with Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith. He claims that he taped the conversation as the two men were discussing a complex issue, and Sir Ian had nobody to take notes. Lord Goldsmith was said to be "rather cross". Liberal Democrat Home......

Somewhat later than promised, here is the latest Inside Westminster report on the Lib Dems under Ming: The Rt. Hon. Sir Menzies "Ming" Campbell CBE QC M.P. (to use his full title) is the new leader of the Liberal Democrats after one of the funniest and most farcical leadership elections in British politics. But now, "Ming the Merciless" has a real dilemma to face: where to take the party now? The Liberal Party was......

Ming Campbell Elected Leader Londonist must put its hands up and admit to being entirely wrong about the result of the Liberal Democrat leadership election. We thought Huhne would pip it marginally. The gossip in the House of Commons Members' Tea Room was that Huhne had won it, right up until 2:45 this afternoon, when the tide turned towards Ming. In fact, after Simon Hughes was eliminated from the competition, and the second preferences......

The Lib Dems clearly aren't damaged by the shambles that has been the deposition of Kennedy and the subsequent acandal-ridden leadership election. The results of yesterday's by-election in Dunfermline and West Fife - a neighbouring constituency to the Gordon Brown's. The Lib Dem candidate, Willie Rennie, received a gigantic 16% swing from Labour, and 9% from the Tories, turning an 11,562-strong Labour majority into a 1,800 Lib Dem majority. The results in full are......

It seems that the Liberal Democrats can't go a week without a scandal. First, there were the original revelations about Charles Kennedy's drinking (quelle surprise?!) Then there was the admission of the party's Leader in the House of Lords, Lord McNally, that he too has battled with a drink problem. Now Mark Oaten steps into the frame, with the News of the World uncovering his visits to a male prostitute over a six-month period......

With a lot of media attention diverted towards Ruth Kelly's supposed misdemeanors over at the Department for Education and Skills, it has been a fairly subdued week here in the Palace of Westminster. However, the fires are still raging over government plans to combat terrorism, including implementing biometric ID cards. The Terror Bill, which contains a clause that outlaws the "glorification of terrorism", was defeated in the House of Lords yesterday by 270 to......

You may have heard the rumours that Charles Kennedy is facing a coup d’etat within the Liberal Democrat party. Well, these rumours certainly got louder today. Lembit Öpik, the Lib Dems’ Wales and Northern Ireland spokesman, spoke to the press today denouncing those in the party who are plotting behind the scenes to unseat Kennedy as ‘cowardly.’ “What is questionable here is why go through the press and brief in what I think is......

The PM spent a portion of this morning sitting in Buckingham Palace asking the Queen to dissolve Parliament, perhaps nibbling a Mr Kipling's Fondant Fancy (or if you're a fan of David Icke, dancing naked in the guts of small children and laughing about the success of their reptilian plot to do away with Princess Di). Either way, the important thing now is that the election is ON! May 5th is the date to......

Today a list of the Prime Ministers dinner guests was released after Liberal Democrat MP Norman Lamb requested it under the Freedom of Information Act, as part of his "campaign to secure greater openness in government". Yeah, right. Not an opportunity to make Tony Blair look like a Heat magazine reading celebrity obsessive, and when you read the list it's hard not to see it like that. It's a mixture of talk show hosts, comedians,......

Today's Guardian has a piece on the so-called "Deotur From Hell", which has been causing a bit of a headache in west London for the past fortnight. The detour, set up to circumvent roadworks, meant that motorists "trying to progress 300 metres down a busy road were obliged to drive 12 miles to reach their destination". As you might expect, this is a great excuse for anyone who's ever passed a driving test to......