education

Hey, Teacher, Leave Those Kids Alone

London’s Institute of Education is to issue lesson plans based on – this is difficult to type – soap operas, adverts and Grange Hill. The packs will be distributed to 1000 schools and contain lesson ideas and DVDs – which just goes to show that …

Blairpod Shuffle

Emperor Blair is gathering a merry band of ne’er-do-wells around him with his not-quite new cabinet reshuffle. Causing the most controversy is a new educational post and peerage for Andrew Adonis. Here’s what the Lib Dems have to say about him: “This is a man …

Cannabis Rally

“Hey man, check out the massive lion statue. I bet you could make a really wicked bong out of that.” The annual pro-cannabis rally which normally takes place in Brockwell park has found itself a much more prominent location for 2005′s event, taking place this …

Vampires In London

Oh my God there are vampires in London. Seriously, look it’s in the Independent so it must be true. Evacuate the city now. Call Wesley Snipes. Call Buffy. Won’t someone think of the children? Oh, wait…there’s a question mark…it’s a book review. Panic over. Real …

The Power of Celebrity

We didn’t catch all of Jamie Oliver’s School Dinners, but then we’ve never been able to stomach one of his Sainsbury’s ads all the way through never mind a TV show. Nevertheless, the faux cockney has done the country a great service by finally getting …

This Is No Paint by Numbers Kind of Art Project

Exciting times over at the ICA (yes, we are obsessed). It is Singapore Season, which is a celebration of the booming contemporary art scene in all of Southeast Asia. The entire building is being taken over, famous Asian artists are in residence, there is performance, …

Friday Film News

Getting the remake treatment this week is the fondly remembered Magic Roundabout, recreated in a very European computer generated style, with the added draw of celebrity voices, such as Kylie Minogue, Joanna Lumley, Bill Nighy, Jim Broadbent and Robbie Williams. This doesn’t save the film …

Bloody Students

The latest government figures on truancy were released today and it was bad news for London as the capital had the highest rate in the country, although this is probably good news for any retailer with a lax policy on selling cigarettes to kids. Given …

Nerdiest Londoner Ever?

A twelve-year-old boy from Highgate has put himself right up there for the title of London’s nerdiest resident after he found five errors in the latest edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Lucian George (even his name is a bit nerdy) wrote to the editors of …

Pinter At Goldsmiths

There are a lot of reasons to like Harold Pinter. He’s no fan of the Bush administration and thinks Tony Blair a “deluded idiot” for taking the UK forces into Iraq but the main one is that he isn’t Andrew Motion. Londonist would, however, like …

London’s Cultural Refurb’

A few stories have popped up in the papers over the past few days which point to a bit of a cash injection in the capital’s cultural artery (did we just mix our metaphors then? Apologies if we did). Here’s a quick rundown of the …