These 1930s kids got cycling safety right. Why can't we?
MODEL TRAFFIC AREA NO. 1
It’s Tottenham, it’s 1938, it’s the model traffic area!
The video is irksomely unembeddable but click on the pic above and you’ll be watching it in no time. Especially good is a rousing political speech beginning with the immortal words “The kiddies of today…”
British Pathe – Model Traffic Area No 1
14 Mar 2012
London agenda for Tuesday 13 March
1. Watch the hacks battle the flacks [Le Cool]
2. Listen to stories of evil bosses, faceless corporations, and rebellious underlings at Liar’s League: Hired & Fired [Run Riot]
3. Visit 93 Feet East for clothes stalls, DJs, art and special guest performances at Market Place [Don’t Panic]
4. Observe and report a discussion on Has Surveillance Gone Too Far? [Ian Visits]
5. Stock up at Dulwich Pot and Plant Garden [Tired of London]
13 Mar 2012
No more saying sorry - the Standard's back on Boris's side once again
“Sorry… for being negative,” the ads proclaimed.
“Sorry for losing touch. Sorry for being complacent. Sorry… for being predictable.”
Remember those? It’s less than three years since the tired old Evening Standard was relaunched by Russian tycoon Alexander Lebedev. Freed from the shackles of having to be a mini-Daily Mail, new editor Geordie Grieg quickly cottoned onto what Londoners had known for years – the Standard was a miserable, spiteful, dying paper, about as in touch with the capital as Country Life magazine.
The ad campaign caused a stir. His predecessor, Veronica Wadley, who used the Standard to push Boris Johnson’s cause in the 2008 mayoral election, called it “humiliating”.
But that relaunch – and a decision to turn the Standard into a freesheet – revived the old paper. New columnists and more upbeat features were the shot in the arm it needed.
That all seems such a long time ago, though. With Geordie Grieg, who turned the paper around, lured away to a bigger gig at the Mail on Sunday, the Standard’s taking on a familiar tone once again. Predictable? Negative? Out of touch, perhaps?
The new hand on the tiller of the Standard, for now, at least, is Sarah Sands. Her CV includes a short and unsuccessful spell in charge of the Sunday Telegraph. It also includes a notorious 2006 Daily Mail feature linking emo bands with self-harm.
More recently she was Grieg’s deputy at the Standard, in charge of its features pages, although her influence has been seen throughout the paper in recent months.
“She’s only interested in something if it’s a trend,” one journalist notes. Paying someone to walk the dog is, apparently, a trend, so gets in. Anything weightier isn’t even considered.
Her columnists included “gay party animal” Richard Dennen – “I came back from the Buddhist monastery in the Himalayas I’d been holed up in for the past few weeks to the little yellow house on Westbourne Grove that I share with my flatmate” – and burlesque performer Millicent Binks, who droned on about a boyfriend called Neanderthal.
Most importantly, though, is who she counts as her friends. They include one Boris Johnson. and his sister, Rachel.
She’s not shy about it, either. Quoted eight times in Sonia Purnell’s biography Just Boris, she can be seen talking approvingly of his wife, Marina – “she provides humanity”, she notes.
The Standard has been pretty consistently pro-Boris for some months now, with City Hall reporter Peter Dominiczak faithfully toeing the mayor’s line. Now she’s in the editor’s chair, Sands is already starting to personally deliver for her old friend and colleague.
Last week he granted her and Dominiczak a barely-probing interview for the paper, where he wheeled out the same old lines about curbing Tube unions that he used in 2008.
And on Monday, the paper screamed about the City’s disapproval of Ken Livingstone’s plans to cut fares. Apparently ratings agency Moody’s has only just noticed, after 12 years, that TfL operates “in a highly politicised environment”.
It’s no wonder that Boris’s sister Rachel wants Sands to get the job full-time:
In any other major city in the world, this closeness between the mayor and its only evening newspaper would be a matter of concern. Even diary editor Sebastian Shakespeare is, yes, another old pal of the mayor.
But it’s a sign of how badly the Veronica Wadley years degraded the Standard that all this just seems to come as no surprise.
Will the Standard win it for Boris once again? The paper certainly isn’t as influential as it was – it’s barely seen outside zone 1 these days, while in 2008 its billboards made sure it’s anti-Ken message was seen by millions, even if hardly anyone bought it.
The return of its highly-respected City Hall editor Pippa Crerar could also turn the tide – last week she delivered a story about Boris’s banker backers which you couldn’t imagine anyone else at the Standard writing.
What happens in the race to become the Standard editor will decide. Proprietors Alexander and Evgeny Lebedev have spoken of their desire to promote a free and fair press around the world.
Will they give London a free and fair evening paper, or will they give it one run by mates of its mayor? Watch this space.
13 Mar 2012
Trounce by Jonathan Boulet
Today’s MPFree is the oddball pirate pop of Sydney’s Jonathan Boulet. Trounce is taken from his forthcoming second album We Keep the Beat, Found the Sound, See the Need, Start the Heart’ – surely the definition of a ‘bloody mouthful’ – released May 14th via Modular Recordings. Download Trounce for free, in exchange for an e-mail address, here.
12 Mar 2012
Londoners on bikes tour the city's bike shops
Tour des Bikeshops from martinib.eu on Vimeo.
Londoners on Bikes have created this video put cycling on the Mayoral Election agenda.
H/T Patrick Riot
12 Mar 2012
A big list: Here are the London bands playing at SXSW
The music bit of the big Austin show begins tomorrow morning. We’ve compiled a list of the London acts that hope that the trip was worth it.
16Bit
2:54
Big Deal
Bitches
Breton
Cardinal
Chapter 24
Charli XCX
Charlie Simpson
Daughter
Django Django
Dry the River
Fiction
Films of Colour
Foreign Beggars
Hatcham Social
Ilona
Kwes.
Marcus Foster
Native Sun
Natty
New Build
Plastician
Shuga
Skinny Lister
Slow Club
Son of Kick
Spycatcher
The Defiled
The Last Skeptik
The Temper Trap
Treetop Flyers
ZULU Winter
12 Mar 2012
London agenda for Monday 12 March
1. Head to the Victoria for the kissing booth, bake sale, and s*e*x*y music of Tits & Giggles [Le Cool]
2. Listen to dirty and hypnotic psychedelic multi-tracked droning guitars from Shinji Masuko at Cafe Oto [Run Riot]
3. View a ‘ bloody, knife-wielding Lindsay Lohan’ and ‘Mischa Barton biting raw meat’ at Imitate Modern [Flavorpill]
4. Presumably end all human rights atrocities after having a Q&A with Noemi Weis, producer and writer of Desert RIders [Don’t Panic]
5. Talk about linking London and Essex by train [Ian Visits]
6. Buy books at My Back Pages [Tired of London]
12 Mar 2012
Don't mention the K-word - TfL deletes Ken Livingstone from its website
With Boris Johnson using Transport for London’s mighty publicity machine to help him secure re-election, there’s always been one reliable source around to help check some of his claims.
TfL’s website contains eight years’ worth of the organisation’s press releases. That’s four years under Ken Livingstone, four years under Boris Johnson. More than enough for the armchair fact-checker to work out if the mayor’s living up to his promises.
But not any more. Quietly, six years of TfL press releases have been taken off the website – wiping out almost all mention of the previous mayor, and the early months of the current occupant of City Hall.
Instead, users are asked to write to TfL’s press office for copies of old releases.
The deletion’s a recent one, so copies are still lingering on Google’s cache, while the ever-helpful Wayback Machine is there for the really dedicated.
Among the Ken-era pages deleted include his launch of London Overground in 2007, news of his 2008 fares freeze, the first double-decker hybrid bus, and Ken’s map of how he hoped London’s transport network would look in 2016.
You can search for yourself if you like – the headlines remain on the site, but most of the stories have gone.
It’s not unusual for governing bodies to hide past adminstrations’ work – all central government websites were archived when the coalition took over in May 2010.
But deleting great chunks of TfL’s website altogether, just before an election? If anything, it’s a reminder just how important transport is going to be – and maybe a sign of how jittery City Hall is.
Update 11.10am Monday: The deleted pages re-appeared on the TfL website on Monday breakfast time. Mayorwatch reports that TfL is blaming a “technical error”.
11 Mar 2012
Ronika - Automatic
I often get accused of being an indie snob. I’m not, it’s just that most pop music is fucking terrible. Ronika bucks the trend with this sexy, fresh, catchy, seductive electronic funk track.
11 Mar 2012
Snake & Jet's Amazing Bullit Band
I thought from their name that Snake & Jet’s Amazing Bullit Band was gonna be a bunch of distorto-bikers an acid. Turns out they’re more like push-bikers, and rather than hectic blues-metal they play accomplished, tuneful, nonchalantly amazing college-rock. Hear “Black Egg”, the near-flawless first single from the forthcoming album “Stuff That Rotates”, below.
10 Mar 2012
Snipe Highlights
Some popular articles from past years
- Peter Bayley has worked for 50 years as a cinema projectionist in East Finchley
- Nice map of London's fruit trees shows you where to pick free food
- Punk brewery just as sexist and homophobic as the industry they rail against
- The five best places in London to have an epiphany
- Nice Interactive timeline lets you follow Londoners' historic fight against racism
- London has chosen its mayor, but why can’t it choose its own media?
- Number of people using Thames cable car plunges
- Random Interview: Eileen Conn, co-ordinator of Peckham Vision
- The five spookiest abandoned London hospitals
- Silencing the Brick Lane curry touts could be fatal for the city's self-esteem
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