We know the various London freesheets aren't exactly worthy of much attention on the commute home. But if you're going to peruse your work on the journey, it's wise to do as the announcer says and "take all personal belongings with you" when alighting - particularly if your work relates to, say, confidential and highly sensitive material. That's exactly what a clutzy civil servant from the Cabinet Office didn't do, when he left a......

29. Phantom Assailants: Part One One hundred years previous to Jack The Ripper’s reign of ghastly terror, London was overshadowed by another spectral attacker – a phantom aggressor that, although seemingly dreadful and unique, would simply become one of many urban legends pertaining to mysterious and elusive assailants across the world, with many actually analysing the peculiar cases of ripping, and asking ‘did such psychopaths exist or were they the product of local hysteria’?......

28. Urban Legends Of The Underbelly! Urban legends are often vague, friend-of-a-friend tales (FOAFtales) similar to ‘Chinese whispers’, in that they are distorted, exaggerated and through generations of storytelling, they become myth, embedded in our society. For the last fifty or more years there has been a sinister legend pertaining to the London Underground that a mysterious, possibly caped figure, lurks in the cold tunnels, and is known for the ghastly act of pushing......

Media regulators Ofcom have finally come to a conclusion about one of George Galloway's inappropriate outbursts on radio station TalkSport. As a sitting MP and representative of Bethnal Green and Bow, it was not acceptable for him to have hijacked the morning show for promoting himself as a better candidate for Poplar and Limehouse. Called to stand-in for regular hosts on the morning of 10 August, Galloway proceeded to outline his plan to pitch......

With bonfire night just around the corner, Parliament must be getting a little nervous. Unblinking beady eyes will no doubt be focused on Southwark Crown Court today where Brian Haw takes on Sir Ian Blair over the removal of his placards way back in May 06. No updates as yet but yesterday the BBC reported a master stroke of anti-terror logic in that Haw's camp could present a terrorist target. More specifically that Haw's......

22. The Thornton Heath Happening During the 1930s and 1970s several ghosts besieged residents of Thornton Heath, Croydon. The case was investigated in 1938 by researcher Nandor Fodor, who claimed that the victim of the poltergeist was in a sense possessed by the spirit of a murderer, stating that the visions and nightmares she’d been having were in fact memories of something akin to a past life. The case was never solved, as various......

Actually Scotch is not so common in Ealing at the moment. It seems that picnickers in Walpole Park, W5, had a bit of a shock last week when they had their Pimms/lager and lime/whatever confiscated by pernickety Police Community Support Officers (PCSO's). We know not whether the jobsworths in question were thirsty, just plain bored, or the ultimate in over-zealous – complaints have been made, and the ensuing investigation will surely reveal all. Now......

The last thing you expect to find as you're leaving a nursing home, perhaps after visiting your gran or your mum's Aunt Agnes, is a giant snake slithering around the car park. Of course, the word "giant" is relative, but we figure that a three foot long corn snake counts. If you were outside the Ashton Lodge Nursing Home in Sunbury last month, we're sure you'd agree. The police and RSPCA were called after......

Given that a member of Transport for London's Special Projects Team had assured us in his interview only a couple of weeks ago that the celebrated Tour De France publicity caravan would be commencing its parade around the Prologue circuit at 1:30 pm last Saturday we were more than a little startled when, as we sauntered gently along Constitution Hill at about ten past one, the first klaxons blared, heralding the arrival of a......

LAist was comped front row seats by the Dodgers due to Malingering being struck by a foul ball last week, and she came back with some great photos, and earlier made fun of 4th of July on Venice Beach. But the biggest stories of the week was that the Mayor's Hot Tamale was revealed, and that a Kwik-E-Mart was erected in Burbank. Phillyist was busy doing the Fourth of July up right, exercising their......

London went back to work this morning in a mood universally described as ‘jittery’. We must be vigilant, say the authorities, for the alert status remains ‘Critical’, and further attacks are deemed likely. The authorities are certainly being vigilant. Heathrow’s Terminal 3 was closed for a time yesterday, on the discovery of a suspect package. And in St Albans, a dodgily parked white Ford Transit was cordoned off after its owner could not be......

7. The Brentford Griffin Picture the scene: it’s a summer’s day in 1984, and Kevin Chippendale is strolling along Braemer Road, Brentford, when something suddenly catches his eye flying near to the Green Dragon apartment building. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s a Griffin! But aren’t such flying wonders merely creatures of mythology? Well you may scoff at such a sighting, but for a short while the soaring oddity that......

Happy Father's Day! For those of you who have dads, are dads, or know dads, this one's for you, from all of us at the Gothamist network. It was a week of bizarre, embarassing headlines at DCist. The trial of the local administrative law judge who sued his cleaners for $54 million over a pair of missing pants left everyone shaking their heads. Then the capital city was nearly brought to its knees, twice, by......

Cops shoot to kill in Ealing. Woman's body closes Barkingside Station. The City gets a terror alert system. A driver is knocked downr by his own van. It's fricking scary out there. Image courtesy of Orhan via the Londonist flickr group.......

Londonist loves a good protest; they're excellent for the constitution. Nothing like a nice amble all the way from Speaker's Corner to Trafalgar Square with 60,000 (or 2,000, or 100,000, depending on who you listen to) of your fellow Londoners, while carrying an "amusingly" modified placard expressing your outrage about something or other. Yes, Saturday was Stop Trident/Troops Out Of Iraq/Don't Attack Iran marching day, and so march we did, from that symbolic home......

Dear Terrorists, Your days are numbered. We've got the intelligence to stop you before you even know you're about to think up an attack. We've got armed police that will take you, the guy next to you, and even people in the next borough, down in a heartbeat if it means saving the people we don't kill. We have a terror alert system that keeps our citizens updated on whatever you may or may......

Around 200 hydrogen peroxide bottles are the latest piece of evidence in the July 21 terror case A second protester, this time a BT engineer, has been found guilty of stirring up racial hatred Even the games organisers are worried over the real cost of the Olympics More mice, but this time in Asda and munching on chocolate. Awww And Harry Potter's penis, a horse and some breasts have annoyed some idiots......

Nothing much on the old London terrorist radar today so let's have a quick gander at the rest of the country. Oh look, they've arrested nine people in Birmingham: The "significant" operation involved police and the security service MI5. Security sources said a terror plot not aimed at mass casualties would mark "a different approach" to UK terrorism. Crap, we don't like the sound of that. It's a little too much like when the......

So first we say we can put on a better Olympics than Paris and much to our surprise we were taken seriously. Much backtracking later and a LOT of scaling down of the very same plans that won us the bid, we realise that we can't afford it. And now the new security director of the 2012 London Olympics reckons that al-Qaida will want in on the games too: The al-Qaida terrorist group is......

Poor old MI5. It's never really been the same since Tom left - Danny got shot in the head and Zoe shacked up with some git in Chile. Some people insist that Spooks is more fictional drama than documentary, but we find it comforting to believe that Peter Firth is actually in charge of stopping us getting exploded and stuff. Sometimes though we have our doubts. Would Harry really think that sending out terror......

What was that we just said? Well, that mostly wraps things up for Londonist in '06... Yeah right. What we should have said is that mostly wraps things up for London in '06 because according to ABC we are ho ho ho fucked. Check out that headline: London Braces for Attack; 'Miracle' If There Isn't One Are you braced? We're not braced. We have a nut roast to worry about and a Christmas episode......

Shadow Homeland Security Minister Patrick Mercer reckons the government have done not a lot to make the tube less vulnerable to attack: "The Government is hugely complacent about Tube safety and security. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, when he was detained by the Americans four years ago, said that one of his principal targets was the London Underground, and that has been clear for years. Since then, we have had a successful attack that killed 52......

A government official is interviewed about the villainous terrorist threat. In the background Christmas shoppers rush home with their treasures: "Deputy Minister, what do you think is behind this recent increase in terrorist bombings?" "Bad sportsmanship." Sorry. Got a little off track there. We at Londonist were recently rereading the screenplay for Brazil, one of our favorite movies. But in other news… Home Secretary John Reid tells us that it is highly likely the......

The Americans are going back to the moon and this time they want to stay: US space agency Nasa has said it plans to start work on a permanently-occupied base on the Moon after astronauts begin flying back there in 2020. The base is likely to be built on one of the Moon's poles and will serve as a science centre and possible stepping stone for manned missions to Mars. Exciting stuff. Shouldn't effect......

We're still trying to digest yesterday's warning that al-Qaida wants to have a pop at the UK with a nuclear weapon: British intelligence officials believe that al-Qaida is determined to attack the UK with a nuclear weapon, it emerged yesterday. The announcement, from an officially organised Foreign Office counter-terrorism briefing for the media, was the latest in a series of bleak assessments by senior officials and ministers about the terrorist threat facing Britain. UK......

The Scatman's reign of terror is over: A man has been charged with causing more than £20,000 worth of criminal damage by defecating in train carriages across the south-east of England. Bonney Eberndu, 36, of no fixed address, was arrested at Camberwell Green bus garage, in south-east London. He is due to appear before Westminster magistrates on Friday. British Transport Police had released CCTV images of the man they wanted to question over 22......

The Londonist Literary List appears every Tuesday. If you'd like to bring an event to our attention, please email londonistlit@gmail.com. Wednesday The Palestinian poet Mourid Barghoutir has fourteen books under his belt and has been described by Edward Said as “one of the finest existential accounts of Palestinian displacement we now have”. Tonight Barghouti will give a talk on the nature of exile, read his poetry (in English) and a short extract from I......

The final bill for the Forest Gate 'anti-terror' raid came to more than £2 million, we've been told today. South West Trains is planning to strip seats out of trains on the most overcrowded routes from London to Surrey and Hampshire in order to 'reduce overcrowding'. Thames Water have set themselves the target of installing water meters in every home in London from 2010. Ken has offered TfL and the Met an extra 375......

In case you missed it earlier: The Met have pleaded not guilty to health and safety charges relating to the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes. It's a 'test case' apparently. Police patrols at churches and mosques in London have been stepped up following the protests over Pope Benedict's remarks about Islam. A survivor of July 7 has criticised TerrorBull Games of Cambridge for creating War on Terror: The Board Game. The game includes......

A relative of a youth arrested in Kennington during the last round of anti-terror raids has contacted the IPCC to complain about the way his family were treated by the police officers. There are reports circulating today warning that, due to legal action brought by builders Multiplex, Wembley may not be ready until 2010. A new permanent memorial, unveiled at the Tower of London this week, commemorates those executed there. It also marks the......