How envious our former Mayor must be when it comes to Venezuelan politics and the power that his erstwhile chum and budding autocrat Hugo Chavez wields. Pesky media criticising your government and daring to oppose you? Close them down. Irritating elections every four years? Heck, just eliminate your term limit. ¿Es facil, no? Ken's love affair with the Bolivarian Revolution reached its zenith when he struck a deal that saw impoverished developing world Venezuela......

Jem Finer's thousand-year musical composition Longplayer is now well into its first decade, and we still like to throw it out there as our favourite song just to trump everyone. What other single piece of music can we really, truly call the soundtrack of our lives? Apparently we're not the only ones still haunted by the transhuman span of its millennial strains. The stewards of the project, Artangel, are now making an annual event......

During the Mayoral election, one of the slurs regularly trotted out against Boris Johnson was his lack of tact when it came to race relations. In particular, his description of black people as "picaninnies" was offered by opponents as evidence of his unsuitability to rule over a multi-ethnic metropolis such as London. Nearly 100 days into his reign, not only has the new mayor failed to destroy the city as many predicted, he's surprised......

This is the damning conclusion of an audit into the London Development Agency under Ken Livingstone. During his eight years in power, millions were squandered on pet projects, approved without appropriate checks and balances, says the report, which was authored by Patience Wheatcroft at the behest of her long-time pal and occasional back-scratcher Boris Johnson. Contentious projects, like a world-class aquarium in the Silvertown Quays complex, were given Ken's glad-hand and pushed ahead despite......

The all-new, caring, sharing, environmentally sound Tory party wants us to live with the same spirit as their very own bumptious leader, all biking to work and wind turbines and eco-harmony. To that end they've announced households could be paid for recycling their rubbish under a Conservative government. Rightfully castigating Labour's predictably stentorian plan to fine non-recyclers, the Tories have been inspired by a US scheme in which households are paid $50 a month......

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......

Wethinks the Livingstone doth protest too much. Our former mayor is upset at the suggestion, made by Boris Johnson, that Ken kept a secret stash of liquor with which to get merry with the wives of Windsor and who knows whom else. A comedy of errors it may be (that's enough poor Shakespeare references. Eds.), but Boris claims that, when he first moved into the Thameside offices, he discovered a secret fridge stocked with......

Turns out Gordon Brown had bigger things to worry about than that silly waxwork distraction of a few weeks ago, where an online poll of Tussauds fans gave the PM a big clunking thumbs down. Yet it must be galling to see other world leaders slip through the entranceway, like a better-tailored rival granted admittance to a trendy nightclub while you're standing outside fuming and fussing. Brown's Gallic counterpart, Nicolas Sarkozy, is the latest......

The Crewe by-election looks like it just might be a bit of a watershed for the Conservatives. It's the first time the Tories have won a by-election in a Labour-held seat since 1978 - 30 years ago. If David Cameron becomes PM, will everyone look back at this moment as the point where he really began to take control? Anyway, Crewe is miles away - why should London care? Well, for one thing the......

The Gordon Brown statue saga has intrigued psephologists and, er, wax-ologists for months now: would our embattled PM be given his own waxwork at Madame Tussauds, or have the curators bargained that, with the odds of his removal ever-shortening, the task of crafting those craggy features into a lifelike visage isn't worth the effort? As we reported earlier this month, Tussauds turned the decision over to a public vote. The results are in: nearly......

Today, Boris Johnson's New York counterpart, Michael Bloomberg, is coming to town. The pair will exchange tips about the challenges of running effectively the two most important cities on Earth, and they'll be chinwagging about the pros and cons of their relative roles. According to the Beeb, Boris will be envious of the hefty £30bn budget his doppelgänger controls, while Bloomberg will eye the meager legislative red tape that allows schemes like the congestion......

Our lonely PM's glowering grimace doesn't lend itself easily to sympathy, but it would take a heart as hard as granite (or Granita, even) not to feel for Gordon Brown's plight. Having spent ten years waiting for the top job, in just ten months of Brownism Labour finds itself rudderless, mauled in the local elections and turfed out of City Hall. Yesterday was Brown's first appearance in Parliament since last week's calamities, and he......

Orhan* snaps Boris at the Sikh New Year festival of Vaisakhi in Trafalgar Square on Sunday, nicking a policeman's hat As our new Mayor cycles to work, meets the team and starts taking action on annoying alcohol related transport policies, we took a poke about the London blogosphere to see how the dust is settling. London transport guru, Annie Mole, was decidedly cross on election evening, seeing Boris was onto a winner given, "Whatever you......

So what are the weary vote-chasers' final offers? Ken Livingstone has been in Vauxhall launching a poster campaign advising Londoners to imagine Boris Johnson in charge of a £39 billion public transport improvement programme. It's punchline? "Suddenly, he's no joke." Then he launched his manifesto for women and ignored another YouGov poll while his office responded tartly to a hit and run attack by TravelWatch chairman Brian Cooke. Apparently, Brian wasn't keen on the Freedom......

One of the few things we can be sure of about the mayoral race is that Boris and Ken in particular are knackered. But with just three full campaigning days remaining they must now run harder than ever. If the opinion polls are telling us anything, it is that neither can be certain which of them will win and that every single vote–first or second preference–is precious to them. Livingstone’s strategy between now and......

OK, this Londonvidium lark is supposed to be a weekend feature. But this is so hilarious we just couldn't wait. A very clever bit of video editing courtesy of London Shite.......

Has the final wheel come off Boris Johnson’s 'New Routemaster' policy? The good thing about it was that it came with a promise to restore conductors to the routes currently served by the bendy buses Johnson wants to replace: a bus with a conductor is a friendlier bus, a friendlier bus is a safer bus and so on. Problem is, Johnson has no grip on the economics of the plan, even weeks after he first......

The tense stalemate following last month's election in Zimbabwe spilled over into the streets of London yesterday. Frustrated by the insistence of Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF party to hold a recount, activists from the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) - which claims their candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai, won the March 29th presidential election - stormed the Zimbabwean embassy on the Strand. Member's of the MDC-UK women's wing, led by Judith Ngwenya, snuck in after deviously (in......

Does anyone know who’s winning? On Monday, according to YouGov, it was Boris Johnson by a massive 13 points. But on Wednesday, according to Ipsos-MORI, it was Ken Livingstone by one, prompting The London Paper to dub him 'Comeback Ken'. So, is Ken coming back or is he a goner? Londonist is as baffled as everyone else but maybe the past week contained some clues about which way the tide is going. On Tuesday,......

Not only can blogging wage war on your health, but public figures are getting in trouble for their online opinions. The BNP’s Nick Eriksen learnt this the hard way last week, after he was sacked as the party's London Assembly candidate for publishing jaw-droppingly obtuse views on rape on his blog. The post has since been removed, but luckily journalists were quick to spot the following: "Rape is simply sex (I am talking about......

Update 17.20: The torch is now nearing the end of its journey, a bizarre spectacle that has seen minor celebrities rub shoulders with jogging police officers and cartoonish torch guardians in blue tracksuits. Dame Ellen McSailor is now shepherding the flame towards the O2, where a celebratory concert is planned (minus the laryngitic Sugababes). Update 14.45: The torch, approaching St Pauls, has been carried onto a London red bus by a man resembling Mr......

Having previously interviewed Sian Berry, the standard-bearer for the Greens now currently in a pact (electoral, not economic or suicide we assume) with Labour's Ken Livingstone, Londonist sent a set of common questions out to (most of) the other candidates in the May 1st mayoral election. First up is Gerard Batten, standing for the UK Independence Party, who doubles up as one of the capital's representatives in the European Parliament (the existential considerations of......

Muddled in the mind about who you're going to vote for in the upcoming Mayoral elections? The Vote Match website will help you out. You're asked to agree or disagree with 25 statements, and then indicate the issues that matter most to you. Vote Match compares your answers to those of the main candidates and presents you with a ranked list of who you might like to vote for. It has some inevitable holes -......

And they’re off! The runners and riders have bolted from their stables and the London mayoral race is now officially underway. Braced to face scabrous attack of their respective transport and environmental policies, and the bleatings of Madonna, betting on the field continues to swing away from Ken to Boris, with the Lib Dems’ Brian Paddick barely out the paddock. No mere Boris v Ken affair, the full line-up boasts 10 candidates, all contending......

Madam Tussauds may have given him the brush-off, but Gordon Brown can still count on his fellow statesmen to offer him the clammy hand of comradeship. Today he welcomed the US Republican presidential candidate to London, while he also announced plans to chew the fat with the Dalai Lama and the new Russian president later in the year. John McCain, the GOP nominee and oven chip czar, winged into town today on the latest......

We've been ever so slightly bored by the anodyne coverage of today's Budget from the usual media sources. Luckily, Channel Five has done the decent thing and injected a bit of originality into proceedings. On today's 5pm and 7pm bulletins, Natasha Kaplinsky will be assisted by a 21 inch papier mache sculpture of the chancellor, Alistair Darling. Ham-based artist Anita Russell, a learning support assistant at Twickenham's Orleans Park School, sculpted the miniature minister......

Feminists. They don’t shave their armpits and they bathe in toad spit and the pubic hairs of young boys. Right? Well, you could try asking that question at the European Feminist Summit, but we would advise against it. Part of the London Festival of Europe, the summit, titled The Future of European Feminism will discuss feminism in the 21st century, in the context of Europe, politics, art and media. With feminist blog The F......

The blink-or-you'll-miss-it honeymoon that Gordon Brown enjoyed last summer seems a lifetime ago. Amidst the Northern Rock fiasco, poll drubbings by the Tories and an economy on the turn, along comes another, devastating blow to the PM's authority: Madam Tussauds has declared that he is "too obscure" to merit a waxwork. The Marylebone tourist magnet has announced that they will not be making a waxwork of Brown for their World Leaders department, citing his......

We've all done it. Sat in the pub, arguing about the merits of the mayoral candidates and perhaps, journos aside, thought, "if only they were all a bit more down-to-earth, a bit more normal, more like you and me..." Well, here's a solution. www.londonelectsYOU.co.uk gives everyone the chance to put themselves forward as an independent candidate. Yes, even you.* Or that ambitious, politically savvy mate of yours who you think would actually do a......

All I do each night is pray...hoping that I'll be electable again some day. The highlight of the mayoral election week came at the Evening Standard’s Influentials Debate at the RSA on Monday, when Ken Livingstone told LBC breakfast host Nick Ferrari why he doesn’t drive. He revealed that he’d tried cars when a young man because he’d thought it would help him to get girls, but in the end had decided to “concentrate on......