We've told you about Westminster's recent shifts in attitude towards parking enforcement, and now it looks like they're attempting to change how traffic wardens operate. A new plan to have traffic wardens issue fewer tickets and give more drivers a chance to move their motors is being implemented over the next 12 months, with the hope that 10% fewer tickets will be issued. As 800,000 tickets were issued in 2007, that's hopefully a lot......

It's confusing having a car in the capital. On the one hand, there's Congestion Charging but on the other, there's really cheap parking bang in centre of town despite London in general having the priciest parking in the world. Then news today says 140,000 more penalty charge notices were issued in the last year, compared with the previous, yet it's now even easier to get them revoked, with 10% more contested parking tickets being......

Divorced, male lawyer? Man, you must be shattered. Sir Ian Blair's probably feeling it too. 12 naked ladies coming to the West End stage Sinking to new lows; dodgy mortgage brokers exploit illegal immigrants Bikers hit by new Westminster parking fees Unsolved - Jill Dando, what next? Image courtesy of toguko via the Londonist flickr group.......

We can't really feign any surprise to learn that London's parking is the world's priciest. While we generally favour ambulation via foot, bicycle or (occasionally) Hoverboard, our car-bound chums are forced to hand over £586 a month to park their motor in the City, while the West End isn't much cheaper at £568. Just need to park it for a day? That'll be £34, guv (unless you get in early). Puts idle kvetching about public......

It seems in Southall, one must ask oneself, do I want fries and a yellow wheelclamp with that? Two families in Southall should consider moving to clamping-free Westminster after two identical clamping incidents have put their cars and fast food buying habits out of action. Locals Kamran Victor and Tony Martino both had their cars clamped in the car park of MacDonalds, Southall branch on Uxbridge Road by overzealous area director Atul Pathak, who......

In a press release from City of Westminster, some astonishing news about clamping and towing cars: it's going to stop. Entirely. Completely. From today, only vehicles causing a serious obstruction in a disabled or suspended parking bay will be removed to a safer location and issued a parking ticket, with no extra charges for the removal costs. Wheel clamping has in fact been slowly phased out over the last two years but today that......

We all know the Wombling song; that they're tidy and clean and make good use of the things the everyday folks leave behind. A lesser known line in the full version of the popular Wimbledon Common song is Wombles are "incredibly, utterly devious" and hey ho, that's been borne out today as locals living close to the All England Club are flogging their special Tournament resident parking permits on eBay. These were special yellow......

Image of parking meters having a day off courtesy of malias' Flickrstream under the Creative Commons Attribution license 50 years on London streets today.......

Westminster City Council has announced that it is trialling a budget parking scheme in its Queensway car park. Using a pricing structure based on that of Easyjet, the hourly rate will vary depending on how full the car park is when the driver enters. When it is nearly empty customers will be charged as little as 20p per hour for the duration of their stay, a price which will rise on a scale to......

Meet the fish-eating Surrey dinosaur. Nothing to do with Michael Winner. He lives in Holland Park. As a clampdown on knife carrying is announced, Londonist exposes a possible loophole. 'Potential for some chaos' as a sliding scale of parking fines is mooted. London rugby clubs doing well. Wanted: Gordon Brown lookalike. Another Banksy piece set to fetch thousands. File in the same draw as Pete does drugs and Amy does everything. Meanwhile, what's going......

Car owners in Lambeth can breathe a sigh of relief: Lambeth Council is no longer going to clamp illegally parked cars in the borough. But before drivers start flooding into Lambeth to drop off their cars anywhere they like under the impression it's a vehicular wonderland south of the river, let it be known that parking tickets and fines will still be enforced and cars will be towed away instead of clamped in extreme......

It's a horrible feeling, getting caught by the traffic warden. Your heart just plummets when you return to your car and realise you read the parking restrictions wrong or, in the time it took you to get to your friend's front door to pick up a parking voucher and get back across the street, the damn car's already been ticketed. £60 down a very unfair toilet. Well, maybe next time you need not feel......

First it's our music venues, now it seems even our police stations are up for grabs. With a potential value of £1.5 billion, the Metropolitan Police property protfolio is quite a cash-cow. No wonder then, that they're going to be reviewing the number of nicks. This asset Management strategy predicts that some stations may close to be replaced with smaller facilities across the (32) boroughs. Unsurprisingly, there are a few concerns. Mike Green, councillor......

Londonist is a massive fan of two-wheeled transportation, especially when it comes with a gift voucher attached. Yes, the lucky residents of Islington can now give up the motor, get on the manual and be £100 richer. Or even £300 richer, for those who would otherwise fork out £200 annually on a parking permit. We were practically packing the bags and moving to the Borough upon reading this, but alas, the following recent government statistics......

Reginald Perrin rides again. A canoeist who vanished 5 years ago has surfaced alive and well. Car free London = care free. And popular apparently. Sporty Londonist readers should check out the London Sports Awards. Dial-a-parking-space out of order. Temporarily. Celebrities are worried about Camden Market. The internet is a wonderful thing, but apparently not for matters of the heart. Rail IS getting exciting. Now they are planning trains from Heathrow to Paris. Singers......

It's a rare day when London's drivers and the parking authorities can actually kiss, make up and play nice, but we think this scheme might do the trick. Westminster Council has chosen 200 'Golden' parking bays, which - until 6.30pm this evening (that's Thursday, folks) - will be entirely gratis.Yes, if you can make it through our glacially slow traffic, you may be lucky enough to park your motor for free. This is no......

The breathlessly international Bicycle Film Festival is seven years old this year and it is rolling into London with a string of cool films and even cooler parties and exhibitions, from Wednesday 17 October to Sunday 21 October. Films about two-wheel transport range from modern-day radicalism in Canada to gruelling fundraising cycle hikes over the Alps, from the factory floor in America to changing lives in Ghana, a helmet-camera tour of several international cities......

Apparently many CCTV cameras may as well be doing just that for all the good they are. The Lib Dems have drawn attention to the apparently arbitrary relationship between the number of cameras in each London borough and their respective crime solution rates. There are some councils who have loads and loads of the things (Wandsworth leads the pack here with 993), and yet they are no more successful at the old apprehension of felons......

Protest over national vs. regional chains, the never-ending debate over the place of cars and bicycles in our metropolises, professional sports scandals, remembering a solemn day, and being issued a search warrant - it all happened across our sites this week! Another banner week at Chicagoist started off with daily reports from food writer Lisa Shames on her attempt to eat only locally grown and raised foodstuffs all week as part of a farmers market......

Long dead man gets parking fine. Paris Hilton wants to call her first-born 'London'...after her cat? "I want kids next year, so I have got to get my body ready." Big Scottish party tomorrow Have a happy weekend: Tube strike called off! Image of Hammersmith Bridge courtesy of Lu¡s' via the Londonist flickr group.......

The BBC are facting us out from under the sheets this morning with a bevy of traffic stats garnered from London councils. 5 million parking tickets were issued in 12 months up to March 2007. That’s roughly one per car in the greater London area, and a 2.7% increase on the previous year. People have cottoned on that straying into bus lanes is a bad thing. Penalties have dropped by 41%. However, nearly 300,000......

Shoreditch Park is a relatively unimpressive green space tucked away behind the Regent’s Canal in Hoxton. There’s not a great deal there, bar a mini-BMX track and some grass, but this weekend, it won’t know what’s hit it, when the Shoreditch Festival commandeers it. The theme of the festival is transforming local spaces and the park promises to be a riot of family tropicana, congo and mangoes on Saturday with a grand parade leaving......

We all know the teeth-grinding, hair-pulling inconvenience of needing a ticket to board a bus then finding that the ticket machine has been vandalised and won't dispense the expensive little slip of paper that the driver doesn't look at anyway. A good citizen will cross the road or go further along the route to find an unvandalised, working ticket machine. We commend those good citizens. Barnet Council tries to fine them instead. Office manager......

This Week In London’s History Monday – 9th July 1968: The Hayward art gallery on the South Bank is opened by the Queen. Tuesday – 10th July 1958: Britain’s first parking meters are installed in Mayfair. Soon there would be 625 of them in the district, charging 6 pence per hour. Wednesday – 11th July 1848: Waterloo Station is opened. The original station would survive just 52 years until 1900, when it would be......

Mayor 'wobbles' over West London tram. Man burns down his wife's house...twice. No rats smelled in connection with the other double fire in the news. A two-tier parking scheme is introduced. The peerless Diamond Geezer, as usual, spots what the rest of us missed. The Olympic Park is now closed off for five years of development. He describes several walks around the derelict land that are now impossible. Image courtesy of [windscreen fly] via......

What with Paris Hilton's release earlier this week and the upcoming celebration of American Independence (sorry, Londonist!), we've been thinking a lot about freedom. Freedom to vote, freedom to choose, and most importantly, freedom to blog. Here are a few things we're happy we've been free to blog about this week. Being the nation's capital, DCist felt especially proud to let freedom ring this week by exposing the really important issues, like how sad they......

Sri Lankan family 'thought a tsunami had struck Queensbury' Buttocks on show at Wimbledon (and we're not talking Henman. Sorry. Oh so predictable.) Not interested in nubile buttocks? How about red knickers? Is the UK too dependent on London? Westminster scraps the parking meter Image courtesy of onionbagblogger via the Londonist flickr group.......

Yesterday we told you about the new stuff going on at the top of the page, today we celebrate our sidebar. Can you contain your excitement? Well, we’ve basically had a bit of a tidy up, and added a Partners area. Partners are other websites that we have a close link with – like staunch friends The Way We See It and Nestoria. But there’s a new one. It’s called My Neighbourhoods and you’ll......

Only a fortnight to go now before central London is engulfed by the two-wheeled juggernaut of the world's most celebrated race. "Le Grand Depart" is the title given to the weekend of sport and festivities from 6th - 8th July that marks the first visit to the UK capital of the Tour de France, a cycling contest in the same way that a royal wedding is a quiet ceremony in a local family church.......

A gang of Albanian assassins murdered a rival in a disagreement over the who was to steal from London's parking meters. Register your bike with the Met and then if it gets stolen and subsequently recovered, it will be returned to you and you can ponder what to do with it now that you've bought a new one. Paddy Ashdown was offered a job in Gordon Brown's cabinet but refused it. A London wide......