Mayor urged to endorse cross-river tram plan. St Pancras to Peckham? Sorted Stop-and-search policy criticised by ex-head of the Met's homicide prevention unit Top cop in charge of 2012 Olympics security claims he's being racially discriminated against Ramsay rumbled: there's a new top restaurant in town. We're sure Gordon took the news calmly South London squatters told to sling their hook Lethal weapons: one-man gun factory jailed for life Bus strike to begin tomorrow.......

A rainy bank holiday really isn’t fair, is it? We feel very strongly that you should stay in for the rest of the week, in protest of nature’s unfairness. We’re sure nature will take the notice and reward our protest with better weather. That’s how it works, right? On TV, Londonist likes: Tuesday, 27 May Gordon Ramsay’s F Word (Channel 4, 21:00-22:00) McFly joins Gordon in the kitchen this week, along with Janet Street-Porter......

Gordon Ramsay hates it when you cook with food that’s out of season. He hates it so much he wants a ban on it. He wants a ban on it and he wants restaurants to be fined for doing it. That’s right; if you’ve got asparagus on your menu in December, you’d better be prepared to pay the price. His big rallying point is that produce should be locally grown and not shipped in......

The TA and the RAF celebrate their 100th and 90th birthdays respectively with a Red Arrow fly past over London. The Covent Garden buskers are striking (or strumming) back. If you don’t get enough of the underground every day, then you can now enjoy a virtual simulation of the experience. It’s apparently to help with paranoia. Gordon Ramsay for mayor? Actually, you read it here first. Surbiton’s crumbling Coronation clock tower is to get......

This is what we have learned this weekend while you were out looking for snow… Brent Council are gonna get tough on non-recyclers. Fake voddy hits the home counties. Our Kate is battling to save Stepney’s George Tavern. Morrissey fans will have to wait a little longer. In court this weekend: people smugglers, a very greedy drugs baron, and prolific pickpocketers. Londonist reckons that they were all in it together. And this is what......

Five London restaurants have newly received fabled Michelin stars in the latest edition of Michelin’s guide to good eating. No restaurants were awarded two or three stars, the marks of truly exceptional restaurants. So where should you take your date for a dinner that really captures the zeitgeist of London fine dining? The new star-boasters are Hibiscus, La Trompette, Quilon, Rhodes W1 and Wild Honey. We’re sure these restaurant are immensely chuffed but, at......

Worrying news for one of our country’s top gourmet icons. Gordon Ramsay’s flagship restaurant in Chelsea, called simply Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, has lost some of its brownie points, according to the latest edition of ‘Harden’s London Restaurants’. Love-him-or-hate-him-Ramsay has been undisputed king of the London restaurant scene for nearly ten years. Take a large measure of chefly talent, whisk it with lashings of colourful personality, and then cook up with a generous helping of......

...get the hell out of Gordon Ramsay’s effing-and-blinding kitchen. Former restaurant manager Martin Hyde of Dillons, an Indian eatery in Manhattan, is suing the British chef in an attempt to stop footage of Ramsay’s “Kitchen Nightmares” being shown on television in the US. The show’s premise is for Ramsay to enter a failing restaurant and turn it around in one week. Accusations have been put forth that "Kitchen Nightmares" hired actors to patronize the......

Anyone turning up for lunch at Claridge's yesterday ran the risk of ruining their nice shoes and enduring waft of poo due to a shitload of horse manure deposited on Gordon Ramsay’s doorstep. Animal rights organisation PETA resorted to poo-poohing Ramsay in protest at his dishing up horse meat to Janet Street-Porter on the F-Word and promoting it as a healthy alternative to beef, declaiming such culinary taboo breaking as a mere TV ratings-grabbing......

If you're hiking, consider charging up your iPod, as Seattlest finds out that a man lost during a hike was found by the glow of his iPod. That cleverness seems to be devoid in cops who were using police cruiser instant messaging clients - although we imagine IMs "so are you nakie" to be included in cop shows, just for realism. If only the cops were busting the Hummer-driving jerk who made a poor......

Every year the Which? Good Food Guide announce their 'Premier League of restaurants' and every year London comes top of the table. Indeed, this year, out of the 1200 or so restaurants that make up the list, 333 of them were in London, and the guide's editor, Andrew Turvil, is even quoted as saying that "No ther city can compete, just as Chelsea have dominated the Premiership these last few years." But we shouldn't......

Brian Haw appeared in court today for breaching conditions over his demonstration outside the Palace of Westminster (i.e. his placards exceed an area of 3m by 1m). The case has been adjourned for the defence to apply for a 'judicial review of the conditions imposed on Mr Haw'. A survey has found that a quarter of bankers in the City expect their bonus this year to be more than double what they got last......

The London Assembly is pondering what's going on with London's allotments. The Environment Committee is apparently going to look into whether allotments are disappearing to make way for things such as the Olympic Village in Stratford. With luck, they might even suggest what to do about it, because it'll be a little disappointing if the outcome of their investigation was 'Yup, they're disappearing,' and they left it at that. The timing is fortuitous (ok,......

... is pretty fugly. Judging by how it chooses to be presented on the small screen, at any rate. Take Gordon Ramsay's F Word (Wed 9pm C4): We're not denying that it's entertaining. It is hugely entertaining, especially when Gordon picks on twattish City trader boys from Essex and reduces them to tears, much as he reduces all sorts of delicious juices to make a lovely concentrated sauce. Mmm, we're hungry just thinking about......

Gordon Ramsay has 'accepted' £75,000 from the Evening Standard over false claims made in the paper that he and the makers of Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares 'cynically faked scenes'. And just when you thought this story couldn't get any better, it turns out the offending member of the Standard staff was....Victor Lewis Smith. Hurray! We hope they make him pay the fine out of his overinflated paypacket. Apparently the double barreled arsewipe and sometime TV......

The millions and millions of Londoners who have been to see The Da Vinci Code (sadly not as bad as we'd hoped it would be) or X-Men 3 (happily, not as bad as we'd feared it would be) or any other major release over the past couple of weeks have been treated to TfL's new advert, showing a day in the life of a young man-about-town as he uses the many forms of public transport......

By 7am this morning Labour had lost eight of their London councils, five of them to the Tories. Tony Blair is viewing Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez,'s plans to meet up with Ken and not him when he arrives here later this month as a 'snub'. Prince Charles yesterday attended the opening of a Bedouin tent made of goat hair in the gardens of the former St Ethelburga's Church which was destroyed by the IRA......

The Londonist Literary List appears every Tuesday. If you’d like to bring an event to our attention, please email londonistlit@gmail.com. It's all about the Indies this week, with an event by a publishing house, a literary magazine, and a Bookslammer rounding out the highlighted events below... That said, we 'd like to use this space to appeal to Waterstone's, that ubiquitous chain, to start putting more thought and effort into hosting quality readings and......

TV Troll is in a bit of a domestic mood this week; it must be the horrible cold weather. So, to celebrate this, here are a couple of programmes guaranteed to make those of a foodie bent quiver with joy. First up is Gordon Ramsay, whose Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares (Tue 9pm C4) started up last week, but apparently really hits its stride this week. As a What Not To Do In The Kitchen, it......

On the subject of dangerous kitchens we believe that Frank Zappa sang it best: Who the fuck wants to clean it? It's disgusting and dirty / The sponge on the drainer is stinky and squirty / If you squeeze it when you wipe up what you get on your hands then could un-balance your glands and Make you blind or whatever... Words to live by and as filthy depraved bloggers living in much the......

Well, TV Troll was 50% right, which is better than nowt, as salt-o'-t'earth Strictly Come Dancing winner Darren might say. We're still kicking ourselves for not having put money on Shayne to win as we predicted aaaages ago; we could have bought new cushions for the dungeon or something with the winnings. Congrats to the winners and the runners-up; both finals were superb, although it was a pain in the arse having to swap......

Before we get onto the subject of this week's telly recommendations, let's remind ourselves of Saturday's miscarriage of justice, when Maria was voted off X Factor. Even Simon admits he made a mistake in choosing the Conway Sisters (for those who don't watch X Factor, the Conways are like standing knee-deep in the Irish Sea on a wet Tuesday in October while someone slaps you in the face with a rotting plaice, except rather......

If there was such things as gastro-terrorists (you know, a crazed group of foody extremists hell bent on destroying the cabal of celebrity chefs that dominate the profession) then we think it's pretty safe to say that there would have been pretty tight security around Ristorante Fiore on St James's Street yesterday. Umberto Vezzoli's Itaian restaurant was the UK venue for the seventh annual Alba white truffle auction and everyone who's everyone in the......

Did anyone pick up Time Out's Eating and Drinking Guide 2006 when it came out? If you did you might have seen a little editorial comment suggesting that London is one of the most expensive cities in the world to drink wine. Ok, so it's not exactly front page news (Local man pays over the odds for bottle of wine court told) but when you start comparing us to those pesky "other European cities"......

Fast becoming the alternative to the Notting Hill Carnival, the Brick Lane Festival is a street carnival, food festival and outdoor music shindig all in one. It's going to be big, noisy and tasty... Contributing to the music element of this mela is the ever-hip Vibe Bar providing chilled live blues in its courtyard and spiky punk inside the bar. DJs and bands will perform on the Allen Gardens Stage throughout the day as......

During these difficult days, all Londoners have one great reason to rejoice and be thankful: George Michael and Elton John have ended their public feud. Yes, after all the claims and counterclaims, the poisonous bitching in open letters to the gay press, and the referring to oneself in the third person, the great powers have declared an entente cordiale... and all it took was a home-cooked meal by Gordon Ramsay (that is, a Ramsay-cooked......

A set of confidential health reports obtained by the Guardian have thrown a bit of an 'unsavoury' light on some of London's more exclusive eating establishments. Here's what they had to say about Gordon Ramsay's at Claridges in November of 2003: Raw meats were being stored in the same fridge near to other food which had already been cooked or was ready to eat, such as cheese. The raw meat had been wrapped in......

No time for a fully-fledged Friday Film News this week, as it's the Londonist Office Xmas Party this afternoon, so we're just going to skip right to the interesting film tidbits section: Following on from last week's teaser trailer, there's now a preview of the War of the Worlds teaser poster online. Is it just us or does it remind you of the poster for The Life of Brian? Somehow we don't think that......