New stop and search app could change the way we hold police to account
Wired reports:
“Users can upload information when they’re stopped by the police to the Stop and Search UK site, including the location of the stop, the badge numbers of the officers involved, and any feedback they’d like included. There’s also a guide to the law regarding being stopped and searched, to help educate people about their rights. The hope is that, over time, a wider picture of stop and search powers will emerge across the country, which will in turn increase accountability over a police power which has drawn controversy in the past.”
The app, which is initially available on Blackberry, with further versions promised, may or may not be any good.
But it’s a pioneer. Ten years down the line, you can imagine an app like this, having accrued several years of data, becoming a force for holding public bodies accountable. It empowers people to become engaged in their communities, and it takes data out of the hands of the authorities into the hands of the public. These are both good things.
Blackberry App – Stop and Search UK
Wired – ‘Stop and Search’ app aims to keep tabs on the police
Via – @jon_bartley
02 May 2012
Bad Men: Five offensive adverts from the ad industry's super-offensive Chip Shop Awards
The Chip Shop awards are held in London next month. They reward advertising creativity regardless of whether the adverts concerned were published, commissioned, or fall within the bounds of acceptable social discourse. As such, they are a repository for some of the baser instincts of the advertising world.
Here are five of this year’s finalists.
Considerate Suicide by Elvis Communications, theoretically for TFL (big image here)
Bucket by Big Communications, theoretically for KFC
No Jewish Passengers Allowed by Elvis, for the History Channel
The Face of JD by Marketecture, theoretically for JD Sports
Same Shit Different Day by Not News International, theoretically for the Sun on Sunday
See more here.
The winners will be announced on June 13 at a ceremony at Ministry of Sound.
01 May 2012
London agenda for Tuesday 1 May 2012
1. Watch Brit comedian Tom Basden and American short story writers Jarred McGinnis and Sam Taradash join Rich Fulcher, Nikesh Shukla and Craig Taylor for an evening of cross-ponding comedy at The Special Relationship [Le Cool]
2. Have an unhappy birthday with Amy Lame [Run Riot] Plus an exhibition of rare Smiths and Morrissey photos by Tom Sheehan
3. Watch a ‘town hall meeting and a radio broadcast, a public protest and the news of your world’ at Make Better Please [Don’t Panic]
4. Nanananananana na na Bat Walk! [Ian Visits]
5. Watch the Islington Milkmaids Garland [Tired of London]
01 May 2012
Reviewed: The London Burger App
London has a burger app. It’s been coming – meat may be murder but it’s also fashionable as hell. And let’s be honest most people find it delicious. So an app there must be.
The app (£1.49), is spin off of the witty Burgerac blog (anyone who calls country burger expeditions “Midsomer Burgers” gets a witty from me). It follows the traditional design: a map of selected burger dispensers, reviews thereof, and a superfluous TIPS section which advises you to cover the burger in ketchup or mayo.
But the map is what you’d pay for. Is it any good?
It’s kind of useful. There are 46 places listed at present, which obviously isn’t comprehensive, but nor is it insubstantial. And there are promises to add more.
But that number is less impressive when you realise that no fewer than 22 are Byron chain venues with identical reviews.
In short, if you’re the sort of person who owns an iPhone, loves burgers, and habitually finds yourself hungry in a strange part of town, £1.49 might just be worth it.
But the blog’s much better than the app. It’s sharp and funny and free.
Plus there’s a free burger map by a rival here which ain’t bad.
And seriously, think about your cholesterol, guys. That stuff kills.
30 Apr 2012
Boris Johnson's sweary tirade at BBC London reporter
Boris Johnson today told a BBC London reporter to “stuff [Tim] Donovan and his fucking bollocks” after he was asked a question about his links to News International.
Boris’s extraordinary on-camera outburst follows a report by BBC London’s political editor into the Mayor’s commercial and political links to the Murdochs.
It also follows a remarkable finger-jabbing interview between Boris’s deputy Kit Malthouse and Donovan on the Sunday Politics yesterday.
Boris had been repeatedly invited to appear on the show following similar interviews with other mayoral candidates, but refused citing a long-standing “private engagement.”
Tweets from supporters later revealed that he was in fact campaigning on the streets of Wimbledon as the show went on air.
The relationship between BBC London and the Mayor has long been a difficult one.
I understand that Boris’s campaign have refused to send out press releases to BBC London detailing where he will be during the campaign.
Even more extraordinarily their reporters have been asked to pre-submit questions by Boris’s campaign before they arrive at campaign events.
Predictably Boris’s supporters are now trying to smear Donovan as a biased “leftist.”
In reality Donovan was one of the biggest thorns in Ken Livingstone’s side during his mayoralty, and was one of the leading figures to investigate Lee Jasper.
Boris’s comments today, and Malthouse’s performance yesterday show an aggressive bully-boy side to his administration that has never before been seen publicly.
With the key factor in Boris’s re-election being his “likeability” over Ken, it is pretty risky for him to show it in public now.
UPDATE Mathew sent us a copy of Political Scrapbook’s version of the video.
30 Apr 2012
Polyphonic Spree to play one-off London show
Everyone’s favourite American hippy choir/cult The Polyphonic Spree have announced a rare, one-off UK date at the HMV Forum this halloween, playing a special Rocky Horror-inspired set. Also, people who show up in fancy dress get a drinks voucher. What’s not to like? It’s a late one, with the doors at 11pm, and you can get tickets here.
30 Apr 2012
Paddick's pamphlet porkies part 2: North London's rogues' gallery
Following on from this morning’s story about Brian Paddick using Lib Dem activists to pose as “Londoners” in his election leaflet, we’ve just been sent the North London version of Paddick’s pamphlet.
It’s very nice of Brian to print different leaflets for different parts of London, so what’s the thinking on the ex-copper north of the river?
Let’s take that chap on the right. “The Lib Dems have got plans to crack down on rogue landlords and get a fair deal for tenants.” Hold on, isn’t that what the fella in south London – Liberal Youth activist “Bobby Dean of New Cross” is saying? Oh yes it is. In fact, all the quotes are the same as the south London leaflet.
So who’s this keen convert to the Paddick cause? Ah, only Brian Haley, a former Haringey councillor who had a pop at the Lib Dem mayoral nomination himself.
The others probably didn’t need much convincing to back Paddick either. From the left is Crouch End-based activist Salim Mamdani (who does a nice
sideline in palm reading), former Lib Dem candidate in Bounds Green Cara Jenkinson and Craig Brown, campaign chair of the Haringey Lib Dems.
They make those Lib Dems work hard in Haringey, you know.
So that’s four out of four fake “Londoners” in Paddick’s North London leaflet – with not even an endorsement from a curry house like on the South London leaflet.
As I mentioned earlier, it’s not just the Lib Dems up to this trickery- thanks to Helen for reminding us that many of the bloggers on the Back Boris website are Tory activists. And there’s been some familiar faces around Ken Livingstone as he’s posed for photos while ticking each borough off his itinerary.
Maybe it’s just too much for the mayoral candidates to find any genuine endorsements? If you spot any other pamphlet porkies from any candidate, let us know.
UPDATE Adam just ferreted out this 13 April tweet from @LibDemLife:
Real choice, indeed.
Earlier today: Can Brian Paddick find any ordinary Londoners to back him?
With research and photo by Fiona Garden.
30 Apr 2012
Was Dr Crippen innocent? Meet the man staging a retrial who wants you to be in the jury
Dr Hawley Crippen is, by common reputation, one of the guiltiest men in British legal history. His guilt is canonical, so much so that when in 1946 George Orwell outlined his ideal of the “perfect murder”, he found Crippen to be a model killer.
“The [perfect] murderer should be a little man of the professional class…living an intensely respectable life somewhere in the suburbs…he should go astray through cherishing a guilty passion for his secretary or the wife of a rival professional man…the means chosen should, of course, be poison.”
That sounds like Crippen alright. And Crippen sounds like death. His name is synonymous with guilt.
Why then, over a century after Crippen hung in Pentonville prison for poisoning and dismembering his wife, is a retrial of his case scheduled at Islington Museum in autumn this year?
Greg Foxsmith, the legal impresario behind the event has the audience’s interests at heart:
“It’s entertainment first and foremost. I hope it will be a fun event and lots of people will come.”
Greg, a solicitor and local councillor, has form for this sort of thing, having already overseen a retrial of Joe Orton, the angry 60s playwright who was convicted of defacing books in Islington library. But now he turns to murder, and in Islington that means Crippen, who lived and killed, the story goes, in a now-demolished house at number 39 Hilldrop Crescent.
Greg has signed up a QC to defend Crippen, and a proper judge to provide oversight. But, this being 21st century entertainment, it’s the audience who will decide Crippen’s guilt.
“Everyone who comes will be given a number and twelve will be randomly picked as jurors,” he says.
But isn’t this all rather pointless, considering everyone from George Orwell to the History Channel knows that Crippen is as guilty as sin?
Perhaps everyone is wrong. In recent years, a case for the defence has begun to appear. New, but disputed, DNA evidence from the fleshy torso (head, legs and bones removed) dug up from Crippen’s basement suggests that it may not have belonged to his wife. It’s been suggested that his wife Cora, who had withdrawn her savings from the bank prior to her disappearance, might have used her money to escape her dreary husband for a new life in America. It’s said that the body in the cellar was not hers, but that of a woman who came to Dr Crippen for a backstreet abortion which went wrong, and which he tried desperately to cover up. This would make Crippen guilty of something different from cold-blooded wife murder, perhaps something we might be able to understand.
This is what Crippen’s descendants believe. They want him pardoned. The retrial might give their cause a push.
“I hope it will be a tongue in cheek airing of the issues, but one that’s sensitive to his relatives”, Greg says. “The barrister instructed to defend Crippen, John Cooper, is also instructed by the family seeking a pardon, so there is some overlap bewteen a real live issue and this macabre crime from the past.”
Without wanting to prejudice the trial, what with all these lawyers about, it’s worth noting that not everyone is buying this innocence guff. Responding to the new evidence, David Aaronovitch wrote a column in The Times entitled I’ll eat my hat if Dr Crippen was innocent, OK?
And if the new botched-abortion theory is correct, why didn’t Crippen say so? What he actually did might have been comic if it wasn’t the prelude to a hanging. For having shaved off his moustache, taken an assumed name and disguised his lover Ethel le Neve as his not-very-convincing son, he jumped on a ship for Canada. It wouldn’t be out of place in an episode of Blackadder.
These shenanigans, and the fact that he was the first suspected murderer to be caught by the new-fangled telegraph technology, ensured a bumper turn out at his trial. It was the reality entertainment event of 1910, and Greg Foxsmith hopes some of that drama has survived the 100 years that have followed.
Was Crippen innocent, or guilty? YOU DECIDE.
The organiser – @gregfoxsmith
His previous – Legal Am-Dram: Lawyers Retry Playwright Joe Orton
Full overview of the case and the new evidence at Crippen’s Wikipedia entry
Islington Tribune – John Cooper QC: My mission to prove Dr Crippen was innocent
George Orwell – The Decline of the English Murder
30 Apr 2012
London agenda for Monday 30 April 2012
1. Listen to directors Mathew Charles & Juan Passarelli and The Economist‘s International Editor Edward Lucas discuss Belarus president Aleksander Lukashenko, Europe’s last dictator [Le Cool]
2. Be positive with comedian Tony Hawkes [Run RIot]
3. In the only borough without a cinema, watch the New Cross & Deptford Free Film Festival [Flavorpill]
4. Hear comedian Barry Cryer rehabilitate Fatty Arbuckle’s reputation and watch some banned films [Ian Visits]
5. Visit the Guards Chapel [Tired of London]
30 Apr 2012
DNTEL - Bright Night
DNTEL, or James Tamborello to his mum, is back with a new album entitled “Aimlessness”, a title which leaves a bit of an open goal for any critics left unimpressed by his meandering electronic sound. This track has a certain buzzy energy, sounding like it might have been patched together from found city sounds – sirens, phone tones, rattles and buzzes and bastardized busker sax. It’s like Warp never signed Maxïmo Park, and dubstep never happened.
30 Apr 2012
Snipe Highlights
Some popular articles from past years
- An interview with Desiree Akhavan
- Summer Camp: Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days
- The five spookiest abandoned London hospitals
- 9 poems about London: one for each of your moods
- Nice Interactive timeline lets you follow Londoners' historic fight against racism
- Random Interview: Eileen Conn, co-ordinator of Peckham Vision
- Could red kites be London's next big nature success story?
- Silencing the Brick Lane curry touts could be fatal for the city's self-esteem
- Nice map of London's fruit trees shows you where to pick free food
- The best church names in London, and where they come from
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