Dead fish in London's river Lea caused by pollution after a storm

Artists impression of a fatberg on the 4th plinth

London home owners, private renters and social renters 1961-2011

Lilo Evans and Tristan Stocks in the Mikado

Chart showing how Londoners get to work across inner and outer London

Chart showing how Londoners get to work by mode, 2011 data

Chart showing how the way Londoners get to work is changing over time

Map of empty homes or second homes in London

London borough population changes 2011-2012

Map of red kite sightings in London, May 2014

Artists impression of the "Teardrop", as seen from Ridley Rd, Dalston

Poster against Chatsworth Rd market in London

Tim Cresswell's poetry collection Soil, published by Penned in the Margins

A first-rate city with a second-rate country attached

— How a friend of BBC economics editor Stephanie Flanders describes London. Discuss.

26 Mar 2013

Reviewing London's culture in 2012: an incoherent babble. More of same expected in 2013

Jasper Rees, at The Arts Desk, has a fine summation of the cultural year just gone. What was London coming out with in 2012?

His verdict (I paraphrase): an incoherent babble.

The most effective, or at least the most popular, piece of public art was the least challenging: the Olympic torch relay. Aside from that, a deluge, but little sense.

Rees finds order in the exhibitions of the big old institutions, the British Library and British Museum.

“It was in the great museums where it was possible to discern a lasting statement, a narrative palimpsest taking the measure of Britishness.”

A conservative analysis then, but a powerful one. There’s an awful lot happening on the fringes of London’s art and cultural scene, away from the attention which the great institutions command. But how much of this activity will have any lasting significance?

This contest, between the established and the unknown, was dramatised in one of the most attention-grabbing incidents of 2012 – the Yellowist defacement of a Rothko painting at the Tate Modern.

Vladimir Umanets signed his name and the words “a potential piece of yellowism” on the painting.

Here was the avant garde, or what passes for it, making a direct physical assault on the galleries from which their art is excluded. In its selection of target it was a vibrant act, but in that sense alone. For yellowism is, or was, utterly bankrupt.

Umanets:

“The main difference between yellowism and art is that in art you have got freedom of interpretation. In yellowism you don’t have freedom of interpretation, everything is about yellowism, that’s it.”

What “everything is about yellowism” really meant is that yellowism was about yellowism, and nothing more (the movement’s manifesto builds upon this depressing theme.) This made it coherent, boring, and thoroughly insignificant. Perhaps in 2012, as Rees suggests, the big galleries just had better things to say.

Looking ahead to 2013, we must hope that the grand institutions retain their excellence. Elsewhere, more cultural incoherence may be just what we need. An indistinct babble is exactly the sort of noise a diverse and vibrant city should be setting out to make. Someone, somewhere, must be saying something worth leaning in to listen to.

Link

The Arts Desk – London 2012 and Beyond – The Best of 2012

02 Jan 2013

Croydon chief has jouros kicked out of meeting because they may report on him

— Croydon Council chief executive Jon Rouse after journalists were ejected from the West Croydon Community Forum. The Forum voted to throw out the journos after Rouse ‘said he felt “uncomfortable” with their presence’ and ‘it “be a very different meeting” if they remained.’ The meeting, held last Thursday, was about the regeneration of West Croydon.

H/T Omar Oakes

10 Dec 2012

Being called a "renty-something" is the final insult for a generation on its knees

Rosamund Urwin, in a column with the headline Stop the super rich pricing us out of London, raises the terrifying spectre of a sitcom called Rentysomethings. Plot thus: a collection of attractive young professionals entwine themselves in increasingly tortuous sexual relationships against the hilarious backdrop of above-inflation rent rises and unattainable deposits.

Congratulations, renty-somethings. We’re a generation defined not by our cultural output but by our property status. Heady, heady times.

05 Dec 2012

Who counts in London? A thought exercise

Here’s the Evening Standard’s top 20 people “who count”.

Let’s all read this list quietly together, and muse upon who we think counts, and why.

1. Boris Johnson
2. David Cameron
3. Ed Miliband
4. George Osborne
5. Danny Boyle
6. Sir Mervyn King
7. Lord Coe
8. Mo Farah
9. The Queen
10. Bernard Hogan-Howe
11. Nick Clegg
12. Angela Ahrendts
13. Thomas Heatherwick
14. EL James
15. Dame Majorie Scardino
16. Stella McCartney
17. Daniel Craig
18. Plan B
19. Armando Iannucci
20. Duchess of Cambridge

EL James and Stella Mcartney are all very county and all very well, but who, you may ask, is the twelfth most countable Londoner, Angela Ahrendts?

06 Nov 2012

Behind local anger over the Walthamstow dog track demolition, some deep and difficult questions remain

Rick Holloway, of Save Our Stow, spoke to BBC London after Boris Johnson approved a plan to build houses on Walthamstow dog track.

The Mayor was rubber stamping the decision take by Waltham Forest Council at a contentious meeting back in May.

Mayor Johnson’s approval of that decision will disappoint campaingers given his previous statements. In a letter sent to Mr Holloway in April 2012, the Mayor said he was

“…becoming more and more concerned about this planning proposal as more information comes to light…I understand local residents’ concerns and their desire to see dog racing on this site, and I would welcome a user who was able to facilitate this.”

In November 2010, Mayor Johnson said

“London has a rich tradition of dog racing and it is lamentable that some of its iconic stadia have suffered decline and closure in recent years. I urge Londoners to support this increasingly endangered pursuit and the owners of the remaining stadiums to preserve these in active use or dog racing for the benefit of Londoners. I urge the owners of Walthamstow Stadium to take full consideration of the needs and wishes of local people with regard to the future of this sporting venue.”

These words will please students of political phraseology. While they sound supportive of the campaign to save the track, any firm commitment to help is elusive. So it has proved.

But there are much bigger stories unfolding here too.

First, those dogs. The dog track closed in 2008 for a reason – it was no longer making enough money.

Nationally, dog racing attendances fell 19% between 2004 and 2008. This decline self-perpetuated: smaller crowds led to closed stadia which led to still smaller crowds. Would a restored Walthamstow dog track be able to buck that long term trend? It looks like we’ll never know.

Secondly, housing. That London has a problem with the economics of housing its inhabitants has been well documented. The new plan will build 294 homes, not a negligible addition to the housing stock. According to L&Q Housing Trust, which owns the site, 20% of these homes will be “affordable for local people.” But none will be social housing.

The architects plans for the devlopement (their latest statement is here) are suitably wholesome.

Again, opponents protest. The bulk of these properties will not be bought, and possibly not lived in, by people from the area. They wonder if these plans are really for them. Whatever the dog track was, it was undeniably Walthamstow.

There are also questions about whether L&Q can meet its commitments and still make a profit. Since it receives public money, it would be something of a scandal if it could not. L&Q says it will make a profit. The Standard covers that dispute here.

So where are we?

We’re without a dog track. But we’ve been there since 2008. More importantly, we’re in a planning system which makes scant allowance for how people feel about the places where they live. There’s a dilemma here which resists glib solutions: how to empower individuals without letting NIMBYism kill improvements which could benefit the city as a whole.

This isn’t easy. More houses might well have to built if London is to accomodate its people. The question is, do they have to be built like this?

See also:

Campaign website – Save Our Stow
Architects Conran’s statement – Mayor Gives Conrad’s Walthamstow Homes Plan the Green Light
Walthastow MP Stella Creasy Call on Pickles to Call In Stow Stow Decision Over Value for Money
Evenign Standard – Walthamstow stadium project ‘will lose £14m’
Snipe – The Council Vote to Approve the Plan in May

31 Oct 2012

Proposed bust of Christopher Hitchens in Bloomsbury reopens old scars

Labour councillor Awale Olad, of Camden, opposes a proposed bust of the late Christopher Hitchens in Red Lion Square. The Camden New Journal has the full story.

Some thoughts:

1. A bust of Christopher Hitchens is unlikely to have any effect on social cohesion. To suggest otherwise overrates the power exerted by busts of dead writers. I doubt Christopher Hitchens affected social cohesion one bit while he was alive. He’s not about to start now. Most people will never even know the bust is there.

2. To those who are engaged, Christopher Hitchens remains, as councillor Olad says, a divisive figure. He had strong opinions. He supported the Iraq war and disbelieved in gods. Neither of these should disqualify him from commemoration. Had Voltaire been a town planner he might have said this:

“I may not agree with what he said, but I defend to the death the right for an image of his face to be made into a bust and plonked at the side of a square if his supporters really really want to.”

A good guiding principle.

3. A better argument against Hitchens’ commemoration is put forward by councillor Julian Fulbrook, also quoted in the Camden New Journal’s story (read it.)

“My main problem is that Hitch left for the United States in 1981 so any link with Red Lion Square would have to be fairly tenuous.”

It is with this sort of pragmatic reasoning that the question should be settled. Not a million tortuous reruns of whether or not we should invade Iraq.

4. There’s an argument that London has too many statues and memorials for its own good. Ronald Reagan, an American President with limited connections to London, has one. Peter Pan has one, despite being immature, thoughtless and fictional. Ledley King has one in Mile End Park, despite being an always injured footballer. The animals of war have one, despite the fact that animals are only really able to appreciate statues as objects to piss on.

5. However, this argument ultimately fails when pitted against the fact that each of these memorials is an addition to the richness of the streets. Statues of dead people can’t hurt us. It’s the living who do that.

26 Oct 2012

Actors perform a fine reworking of MacBeth in protest at BP's union with the British Museum

A witty protest from the Reclaim Shakespeare Company at the British Museum yesterday. They acted out scenes from MacBeth rewritten to question BP’s sponsorship of the Shakespeare: Staging the World exhibition, in the light of that company’s abysmal environmental record. Here’s the press release and full script.

I like this protest because it questions rather than hectors, and does so with a bit of style.

The essay du jour on big energy companies’ role in climate change is by Bill McKibben in Rolling Stone. It may be the most depressing thing I’ve read all year. Sample:

“The numbers are simply staggering – [the energy] industry, and this industry alone, holds the power to change the physics and chemistry of our planet, and they’re planning to use it.”

Worth a read if you can bear it.

23 Jul 2012

Plan B on why he wore a Skrewdriver t-shirt

— Plan B, explaining why he was wearing a Skrewdriver t-shirt on the cover of Shortlist. Plan B tells The Quietus that he had no idea that Skrewdriver were a neo-Nazi sympathising band.

23 Jul 2012

New in London: A car showroom without cars

There’s a car showroom opening in Mayfair which contains only a token car. The rest of the range is visible on giant screens lining the walls. Brand interaction, it seems, is now reason enough to hire an expensive space in an exclusive district. You no longer need a real car in order to sell cars.

Some people might think this mad – another step on the road to the apotheosis of the brands, where objects cease to exist, and we crave only the visions of their abstracted forms.

But I think of it as progress. It takes us one step closer to the time when physical cars are a thing of the past. Virtual cars will roam virtual roads, humans will travel through fibre-optic cables, and the ferns reclaim the motorways.

Motor City – Audi launching new ‘Audi City’ retail concept in London

17 Jul 2012

LONDON WEATHER

Snipe Highlights

Some popular articles from past years