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

City Art: Sinister grotesqueries visit @WWgallery in All the Dead Dears

This face, if a face it is or was or will be, is grotesque. It fascinates me, but then grotesques usually do. Nothing quite excites as something not quite right.

The piece is by Mindy Lee and entitled John’s Overfaced. It’s part of an exhibition called All the Dead Dears, which Mindy is co-curating with Sarah Gillham at the WW Gallery near Chancery Lane.

More details at the WW Gallery website.

What Can I Do by Sally Shapiro

Homely Swedish duo Sally Shapiro has consistently and resolutely refused to play the game since the release of their debut album back in ‘06. Not for them the musician’s life of endless touring and stupid stuff like making regular records. Their forthcoming third long-player – Somewhere Else, released February 26 on Paper Bag Records – is their first new material since 2009’s My Guilty Pleasure and picks up pretty much where that record left off: pure electro-fied pop, sprinkled with a liberal helping of St Etienne’s melodic genius. New single What Can I Do is streaming below.

12 Nov 2012

London cycle hire stations left empty for longer

London’s cycle hire stations are being left empty for increasingly long periods of time as operators struggle to manage demand.

Figures released by TfL show that the amount of time stations are left empty has almost doubled over the past year.

In August 2012, docking stations were left empty for an average of three and a half hours each day. An increase of 45% on 2011.

In January, when demand was much lower, stations were left empty for almost one and a half hours each day on average. An increase of 138% on the year before.

The figures suggest that operators Serco are struggling to redistribute the bikes efficiently across the network.

The news comes as TfL announce a doubling of fees for the bike hire scheme.

On the London edition of the Sunday Politics yesterday, the Mayor’s advisor Isabel Dedring claimed that cycle hire users were currently getting an “overly good deal.”

Host Tim Donovan asked why the scheme is being subsidised by £9-10 million each year whilst sponsors Barclays only contribute a fraction of the overall cost.

London boroughs are also being asked to spend millions of pounds to help expand it across London.

When Boris Johnson first promised the bike hire scheme, he pledged that it would come “at no cost to taxpayers.”

Dedring said that funding of the cycle hire scheme would be kept under review.

12 Nov 2012

Yer Boots by Ghost Carriage Phantoms

For Prince, author of The Bangles’ mega-hit Manic Monday, Sunday was his fun-day. He is now, however, a Jehovah’s Witness and Sunday is no longer a time for messin’. Well here at Snipe – and beware, this link is award-winningly tenuous – Friday is our fun-day. Thus, today’s MPFree is a really cool little track from Ghost Carriage Phantoms, aka Merthyr Tydfil born songwriter Michael James Hall and producer Mark Estall. This is pure bedroom pop with a satisfying Casio keyboard line running through it like the name of a seaside town through a stick of rock. Debut album The Boy Lives – out now on Marketstall Records – draws predictable but accurate comparisons with the likes of Euros Childs and Gruff Rhys, though Hall does slip in touches of Perfume Genius and Badly Drawn Boy.

09 Nov 2012

"For £30 they've destroyed three years work." Thieves devastate Clapton canal boat which runs trips for disabled children

Just an awful story coming out of Clapton last week.

On the canal at Lea Bridge, just near Hackney Marshes, is moored a handsome green canal boat called the MV Challenge. This is a charity boat, it runs trips for disabled people up and down the waterways. The charity has a blog, which over the last few months has been chronicling the refurbishment of the boat through a lottery grant. Friday’s entry begins:

“Over the past three years the volunteers at Docklands Canal Boat Trust, who all have disabilities, have worked all hours to modernise our community boat. Over the past few weeks we have shed blood to put in a place an energy management project which is funded by the Big Lottery Fund.”

But then, on sometime on bonfire night, thieves got in. The sinks were ripped out, as was the boiler, the newly laid cables and the copper pipes.

I spoke to Brian Devlin, the chairman of the Docklands Canal Boat Trust who own the MV Challenge.

“At a scrap yard, they’ll probably get £30-40,” Brian says.

The damage to the boat runs into thousands of pounds. The charity is insured, but months of work, just finished, will have to be re-done.

“It’s very sad. It’s put us back. The sad thing is that for three years the volunteers who put the work in are all disabled…we offer them volunteering opportunities on the boat, and [they] get the feel for working with people…we’ve worked so hard on that boat…it’s put us back for months. For about £30 [they have] destroyed three years work undertaken by disabled volunteers”

It’s hard to think of a less deserving target.

“Our main aim is to provide day trips and holidays for disabled people. Some of those are quite severely disabled. We take groups out and teach them about the river and environment.”

There’s no great moral to this tale, no bigger picture to draw. It’s a random crime. It happens all the time.

Brian and his team just have to deal with it. Their latest blog post, somehow, ends on the up. You sense that this is one challenge that is going to be met, whatever it takes.

“Our boat was named Challenge because it was a major challenge to raise the funds and get the boat built in the first place. This is just another challenge in our long history and we will WIN…”

08 Nov 2012

Previewing the next decade in London housing: the landlords are winning

Here’s Property Wire’s breakdown of this (PDF) report forecasting no improvement in London’s housing situation over the next decade.

“The UK government forecasts a rise in household numbers in London of between 34,000 and 38,000 annually up to 2028, however, based on development levels over the last 10 years, an optimistic estimate of the number of homes which will actually be delivered each year is 21,000”

The report was commissioned by Cluttons, a property consultant. Bear in mind they’ve got a reason for doing that.

But this government chart quoted in the report is useful. Fewer new homes for the private market are being built than was the case four or five years ago. Building of new social homes remains at a steady, low level.

In other words, demand is predicted to outstrip supply. And we know what that means.

Conclusion: the landlords are winning.

08 Nov 2012

It's not the 100% bike hire fare rises, it's the 4.2% tube and bus rises that really matter

Adam has a post up at The Guardian reacting to yesterday’s transport fare increases. He compares the news with what Mayor Johnson said he would do during the election campaign earlier this year:

“[Johnson] promised Londoners that he would “bear down on fares” this year. He went on to insist that they would “go down in an honest and sustainable way” if he was re-elected.”

TfL fares are going up by an average of 4.2%, while cycle hire charges are going up 100% – to £2 a day for access, and £90 a year for membership.

The 100% cycle hire rise might sound like the bigger deal, but it is not.

For a start there are about 1m cycle hire journeys a month.

But there are about 300m bus and tube journeys.

A (PDF) survey in September 2011 showed 39% of cycle hire users had a household income over £75k.

A (PDF) survey in 2008 showed bus users to be “broadly representative of Londoners in terms of income.”

We need to focus on that 4.2% increase in bus and tube fares. That’s what affects the overwhelming number of Londoners across the income scale.

Diamond Geezer has a good post up explaining the background

“The pay-as-you-go bus fare rises by 3.7% in January [to £1.40]. That’s a whopping 56% rise since Boris came to power.”

He predicts that more rises in future are inevitable if we are to properly fund the transport network.

“If London’s to have a better transport network, then fares do have to rise. That’ll be cold comfort if your pay’s been frozen or your benefits cut, and maybe more could have been done to keep these increases down. But if we’re all to get around town in the future, the annual fare rise charade will go on.”

But here’s the sting in the tale. According to the Mayor’s announcement

“The revised changes to fares are expected to raise around £134m per year.”

Against which we must set this:

Based on the figures I can find Anthony Davis is overstating the case. But half a billion on those three projects may be about right.

New bus cost (£180m to buy 600 buses, £40m p.a. for extra conductors) here.

Cablecar cost (£60m construction, plus running costs, minus £36m in sponsorship over 10 years) here.

Bike hire scheme costs (c. £225m) here

Under the current Mayor, bus and tube passengers, a broadly representative cross section of Londoners, are year on year being handed above inflation fare rises which cause their living standards to drop. Why? Well in part to secure TfL’s investment plan, no doubt. But also in order to finance a cable car used by nobody, hire bikes used by the few, and overstaffed buses which many have yet to see at all.

Is this right?

07 Nov 2012

I Can't Talk About It by His Clancyness

The excellently named His Clancyness is Ottowa born, Bologna based songwriter Jonathan Clancy. He’s previously worked with the likes of Vivian Girls and Woods and has just put out a rather lovely cover of El Perro Del Mar’s I Can’t Talk About It, below. His debut album proper is due in 2013 (Always Mist, a collection of earlier bedroom recordings has just been remastered and re-released by Norwegian label Splendour); there are also shows this coming Saturday (Nov 10) at Electrowerkz and Monday (Nov 12) at the nearby Rattlesnake.

07 Nov 2012

The Wheel by S O H N

Following on from yesterday’s Q&A, here’s the video to accompany S O H N’s stunning debut single The Wheel.

06 Nov 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

London Weather

11°

scattered clouds

Snipe Highlights

Some popular articles from past years