Plans for a pedestrianised Parliament Square piazza (a tautology, surely?) have been scotched by City Hall. Mayor Boz has decided to review an £18m plan minted by his predecessor to "do a Traf Square" on the area, paving the southern bit beside Westminster Abbey and putting in extra benches in aid of turning it into a nice spot to gather and graze. The reason for this rethink? Concerns over traffic congestion, an issue that......

Massive "event" gigs currently seem to be in favour at the moment, with Live8, Live Earth, and last saw one of the biggest to date, and most worthy: 46664, to celebrate Nelson Mandela's 90th Birthday and also to raise awareness of his AIDS charity's work. You've probably heard about it in the press - the whole Amy Winehouse will she turn up / won't she turn up situation, the issue over whether Nelson Mandela was......

Nelson Mandela arrived in London yesterday in anticipation of his 90th birthday concert that takes place in Hyde Park this weekend. The former South African president is a frequent visitor to these parts: just last year he unveiled his statue in Parliament Square, and he has long recognised London's contribution to the overthrow of apartheid in his native country. Mandela probably wants little more than to relax, but for such a statesman, politics are......

Who’s the first performer that comes to mind when you think “Nelson Mandela’s 90th birthday bash”? Amy Winehouse? Right, us neither. London housing prices fell by 0.5% in April. Brilliant! At that rate, Londonist should be able to afford a home here around 2028. The deputy mayor for young people warns that there is no “magic solution” to the recent spate of violence among teens. No magic solution, perhaps, but let’s hope that other......

Well, it would have been rude not to. After announcing a big 90th birthday bash in his honour two days ago, organisers have today revealed that Nelson Mandela will indeed be attending his June 27th Hyde Park party. Those conceding that, yes, Nelson lead the transition to multi-racial democracy in South Africa, and that true, he’s one of few people that can call themselves an international icon of peace and equality, but are unable......

Nelson Mandela is turning 90, and he’s doing it with style. A massive concert will be held in London for the former South-African president on 27 June to honour his life and work. A reformed Queen, now fronted by Paul Rodgers, Razorlight, Annie Lenox, Leona Lewis, and Simple Minds will be joined by South African artists for the Hyde Park concert as part of the 4664 Campaign. The 4664 Campaign takes its name from......

Happy first weekend of September - and happy Labor Day weekend, too, for our American cities! Let's take a look at what's been happening around the Ist-a-verse. The deaths of two firefighters shook Bostonist this week. Boston's firefighters bent over backwards all week long - first, they fought flames pouring from the Boston Tea Party museum, and then a restaurant fire killed two and injured many more. Their efforts make everything else - like Tom......

After seven years of speculation and debate, London today finally unveiled its tribute to Nelson Mandela. The 9’ high, 1 tonne statue was unveiled by the man himself in the presence of an impressive cast of London’s ‘great and good’, including Gordon Brown, David Cameron, Ken Livingstone and Lord Richard Attenborough. The proceedings were watched by a vast and cheering crowd, and overseen by Disraeli, Churchill, Lincoln and former South African leader Jan Smuts from......

Stand Aside, oh diminuitive purpley chap formerly known as Prince. Make Way for the taller and altogether more substantial man formerly known as the 42nd President of the USA. As previewed here last month, Bill Clinton came to the O2 this lunchtime. To afford the VIP tickets we re-mortgaged our home, sold our grandma to science before she'd even popped her clogs and employed George Galloway to do a bit of fund-raising for us.......

Oliver and Adelaide Tambo lived in Muswell Hill for 30 years. Adelaide worked as a nurse at the Whittington Hospital and they raised 3 children in London. In 1990 they were the first recipients of the Freedom of the Borough of Haringey. Why? You may well ask. Oliver Tambo was a friend and comrade of Nelson Mandela, who worked to defend victims of apartheid. He played an unparalleled role in the growth and development......

This Week In London’s History Monday – 11th June 1988: The Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute (a.k.a. Mandela Day Concert) takes place at Wembley Stadium. On a scale approaching the Live Aid concert that took place some three years earlier, more than 600 million people worldwide tune in to watch the epic day-long concert featuring dozens of high profile bands protesting against the apartheid regime in South Africa and the ongoing incarceration of Nelson......

This week – rage causes a lot of trouble in 28 Weeks Later and the memoirs of Nelson Mandela’s prison guard are opened in Goodbye Bafana. In 28 Days Later the Rage virus spread throughout Britain leaving it full of dead people and those that had killed them. Now, in 28 Weeks Later, the US Army has come to restore order, repopulate the city of London and, during the same process, also reunite families. Among......

A statue of Nelson Mandela is going up in parliament square. It's been in Ken's garage for ages. A new tower has opened at Heathrow. It'll make air traffic control even more exciting. Dec of Ant and Dec fame has had his house plans turned down Couple get doused in a tramp's piss - "I don't need to point out how unpleasant the walk home was." Image courtesy of Orhan* via the Londonist flickr......

We don't know about where you are, but it seems like spring can't decide whether or not to happen. Some days are warm, some days are cold, and sometimes you aren't sure which. Baseball may have started up (and soccer/football winding down) but it still seems cold out there. Unless it's not. Anyways, onto the -ists. Austinist happily anticipated fall's Austin City Limits, even though they're not fully recovered from South By Southwest. In......

The phrase "it's PC gone mad!" usually comes from the mouths of those such as Bernard Manning, taxi drivers and the hairdresser who just cut this Londonista's hair who used the phrase with regard to immigrant children being allowed to go to 'our' schools. Yikes. However, perhaps it applies with regard to an incident last week which left a Barnet councillor facing calls to resign after he 'blacked up' as part of his Nelson......

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......

The Nelson Mandela Challenge football match between South Africa and Egypt scheduled to take place at Brentford’s Griffin Park stadium on Wednesday November 15th is in danger of being called off. Two weeks ago, the South Africa Times announced that this annual fundraiser would be moved to London for the first time “to raise its profile,” but, with the game less than a fortnight away Brentford claim to have received no more than a......

We promised to keep you updated on what was happening with the statue of Nelson Mandela that Westminster City Council wanted no part of. Well it finally looks like it'll be finding a place in Parliament Square. Or Canning Green. "The clock would start ticking as soon as we have a planning application. With all this pre-planning hopefully it would be a matter of months before it would come through." Good grief. We're not......

The argument over whether or not a statue of Nelson Mandela should be erected in the north terrace of Trafalgar Square has now turned into a full blown 'war of words'. And, wouldn't you know it, Ken Livingstone is right at the heart of the furore. Today's Guardian reports that a planning inquiry meeting organised to decide the fate of the Mandela statue "erupted" when Ken likened a sculpture of Harold Wilson by Glynn......

What is it with London councilors? After the rainbow flag ban and not allowing gay couples to hold their ceremonies on council property, they're now not letting Nelson Mandela in Trafalgar Square. Well his statue at any rate. What's that you say? Get the Mayor on the case? Before we could even light the Ken-signal atop Londonist HQ he had already jumped into the fray: "There can be no better place than our greatest......

Charles Clarke seems determined to out-Blunkett his predecessor as much as possible and is preparing a new wave of anti-terrorism laws that go as far as offering a five year prison sentence to anyone who "glorifies, exalts or celebrates" any terrorist act committed over the past 20 years. This of course all hinges on the debate over what exactly constitutes an act of terrorism and the old chestnut of terrorist vs. freedom fighter. To......

We reported on the row over 'rainbow flags in Soho earlier this year, and then everything went quiet. It's not surprising really as, for some reason, these issues very rarely get taken up by the mainstream press (for example: today's Standard has London's smallest flat, but hasn't featured the flag story at all in the past week). Now that Ken has joined the fray maybe the papers may sit up and take notice...but we're......

Nelson Mandela hasn't had an easy life: growing up fighting for change in apartheid South Africa; that whole prison thing; not to mention having to meet the Spice Girls; and now his life of political turmoil looks set to continue. A proposal to put a 9ft high bronze statue of Mandela on the north terrace of Trafalgar square has met with resistance and has had its planning permission turned down by Westminster Council "on......