Kensington and Chelsea councillors refuse to pay staff London living wage

They voted on it and everything. It’s pretty disgusting when you think about it.

Conservative Cllr Warwick Lightfoot, the head of finance, had this to say:

“The council does not support the adoption of the London Living Wage…It is the role of the national government through the social security system to top up earnings in relation to family circumstances.”

The London Living Wage is set at £8.30 an hour.

Kensington and Chelsea Chronicle – Council against London Living Wage

Why the Europe furore matters to Londoners

Money, of course.

The city sells more than twice the value of stuff to Europe (the top line in the chart) as it does to North America or Asia. If Europe goes tits up, we won’t be far behind.

For example, over £1bn worth of clothes are shipped out of London each year. 11% of that goes to Italy, and 5% to Greece. If they stop buying there, jobs start going here. This is why this stuff matters, because it will ultimately affect how much money you have to spend on beer and boxsets.

Chart and data taken from Melisa Wickham’s paper for GLA Economics – An analysis of London’s exports (pdf)

Bonus fact – the European country which spends the most money buying London’s goods is Belgium. Diamonds mostly, I suspect. Good old Belgium.

We're all doomed/fine [delete depending how drunk you are]

“Shoppers spent an estimated 10% less than last year on the first day of a traffic-free weekend in central London, figures have suggested.”

Oh good god no! We’re for it now, everyone knows our economy is overly-reliant on consumer spending. Oh look here’s another story about the same thing.

“Christmas shoppers hunting technology goods and winter clothes helped to give the West End a £280 million sales boost over its first traffic-free “VIP Weekend”…Total takings were £50 million up on last year’s one-day closure”

What? That doesn’t…but I though you said…oh well…Huzzah! Everything’s fine thanks to the plucky British consumer with his unquenchable thirst for electronic goods and his trusty credit card. Let’s all keep drinking and borrowing and stop trying to understand the news. I’m sure everything is absolutely fine and there’s no need to worry because everything is just fine.

BBC News – Christmas shopping: London West End retail takings fall
Evening Standard – Tills ring out on Oxford street for traffic-free weekend

Beware the votes of cyclists

An exhaustive, excellent post at Cyclists in the City synthesises a lot of recent developments. It’s worth reading in full. The conclusion is ominous for Mayor Johnson.

There are upwards of 500,000 cycle journeys in London every day, according to TfL. That’s an awful lot of us when it comes to the Mayoral election. I think it’s time everyone who cycles thinks carefully about how they exercise their vote at the election next year.

As a keen classicist the Mayor will no doubt appreciate the tragic patterning at work here. The encouragement he gave people to take to their bikes has helped create an army of cycling voters. So his own public support for cycling, coupled with the hubris he has displayed in office when it comes to dealing with cyclists’ concerns, may ultimately lead to his electoral downfall.

It makes you think.

Context: Sixteen people have been killed while cycling in London this year.

Cycling in the City – Transport for London letter last week rejects safer Blackfriars scheme, claims killer roundabout at Bow is not a risk for cycling & walking. Mayor now completely out of step with most other cities?

Who gets chosen to switch on the Christmas lights says a lot about a place

Those playing to their own stereotype
Hampstead – Michael McIntyre
Camden Square – Mitch Winehouse
Tottenham – Chipmunk

Those with no imagination and lots of money
Westfield West – Justin Bieber
Westfield East – Justin Bieber
Oxford St – The Saturdays

Those with no imagination and not much money
Bluewater shopping centre – X Factor finalist Kitty Brucknell
Fulham – X Factor finalist Sami Brookes
Harrow – X Factor finalist Johnny Robinson

Those with no imagination and no money
Bromley – Cast of the pantomime Snow White
Greenwich – Cast of the pantomime Aladdin
Victoria – Cast of the musical Wicked

Those that didn’t even try
Dagenham – Mayor of Barking and Dagenham, Cllr Milton McKenzie
Archway – Mayor of Islington, Cllr Phil Kelly

Those that hired Larry Lamb
Angel – Larry Lamb
Croydon – Larry Lamb

The Thames is terrifying. Don't fall in

Sally Adee fell in the Thames and went to hospital.

I revealed that I’d taken a dip in the Thames. Then, even hardened nurses blanched and rushed off to confer with other medical professionals. As the morning wore on and I kept seeing those expressions of pure horror every time I pointed at my leg and said the word “Thames,” I started to get pretty well creeped out.

Read her piece for more. It’s interesting.

Sally Adee at The Last Word on Nothing – Pro Tip: Don’t Fall in the Thames

See this tonight: The London Underground Film Festival

The London Underground Film Festival celebrates opening night with some of the best underground film, music, and performance art Europe has to offer, compered by Princess Julia.

GERTRUD STEIN
Synthpop chanteuse Gertrud Stein will be gracing our stage, accompanied by her virtual backing dancers.

SOFT RIOT
Soft Riot is JJD of Savage Furs: one person with a lot of antiquated equipment and lighting performing sinister, minimalist electronic “pop” songs equally influenced from dystopian film, soundtracks and various types of “wave” music. A forthcoming EP, “Another Drone In Your Head”, will be released on the US label Tundra Dubs in early 2012.

PARDON MY EARLY EXIT; HOPE YOU SURVIVE!
A rare performance by the gender bender-sound-art-project – pardon my early exit; hope you survive! , an open multimedia platform to experiment with sound, vision, touch, smell, taste, and the six and SevEn senses, an obsessive/compulsive collector interested in what others reject or can’t find use for, to give it a new life, a new name and a different meaning. Loud or quiet, clean or distorted, no preconceptions, restraint is a tool to reach further, sink deeper, spread out wider and shrink. For this special occasion expect or unexpect deep sea creatures and aliens … as above, so below!

EMERGENT BEHAVIOUR
Performance art duo Emergent Behaviour will be presenting a new piece devised especially for the London Underground Film Festival.

MILKandLEAD
Theatre and body art performer MILKandLEAD will be performing “The Red Virgin Mary”, exploring the sacred and profane in a re-reading of the traditional self-immolation rituals performed by sacristans in some southern Italian villages.

Plus DJs:

HEIDI HEELZ
Creator of Dice Club and erstwhile bass player in The Guillotines, Heidi is now on a mission to instigate a glam rock resurgence. It is going quite well. Catch her at GlamRacket every first Saturday of the month at The Buffalo Bar or at her residencies at Aces & Eights, The Lexington and The Retro Bar. And while you’re at it check out her Roxy and Eno tribute band “Proxy Music” (next gigs: Dec 20th at The Buffalo Bar and Dec 31st at The 100 Club).

BRAVE EXHIBITIONS
Brave Exhibitions is cold/minimal/no(w)-wave muzak club renowned for the avante-garde and the “unexpected”. Established in the notorious darker corners of Shoreditch, London, and now expanded to Berlin – Brave is a rookery for precocious bands, performance artists, and DJ’s that will compel and disturb you.

NEVER COME BACK
Founded by Emily Rose England and Alison Lewis, Never Come Back is London’s newest experimental dance party. The club featuring some of the most exciting performers to grace the scene and spinning classic and new minimal wave, NDW, coldwave, queerwave, post-punk, synth pop, new beat and old EBM.

PROJECTIONS:
Carmen Burguess is an Argentinian artist who works with several techniques, including collage, video, installation, drawing, and fotonovel. Her graphic work has been published around the world and used for novels and magazine covers. She illustrated writers such as H.P Lovecraft. Based in Berlin since 2008, Carmen is half of the band Mueran Humanos.

MOMENTO MORI
The Opening Night Party will also be the launch of an exhibition of new works by Emily Rose England, called “Momento Mori”.

Advanced tickets are available at: We Got Tickets”

January's Tfl fare rises downgraded from "wallet-busting" to "eye-watering"

George Osborne’s Plan A version 2 (Plan B? Not at all, old bean) means that next January’s Tfl fare rises will average 6% rather than 7% for Oyster PAYG, and 7% rather than 8% for Travelcards.

Woopdeedoo. This is still a hefty whack to put it mildly. And as we showed in graph form Mayor Johnson’s record as a fare riser is undeniable.

But what Osborne’s bail out does do is mitigate the effect of Ken Livingstone’s fare deal pledge, which was already shaping up to be a key part of his election campaign.

It still is, and Mayor Johnson is still vulnerable here (again, the chart!) But the fact that there’s been movement to limit the rises, albeit not much, albeit driven by central government, is going to muddy the waters a little. Sometimes in politics a bit of mud is all you need. Ken Livingstone is going to have to work a lot harder to get his message across.

So all in all, Mayor Johnson probably owes Gideon a bottle of Bolly.

Andrew Gilligan – Boris Johnson: Tube, bus and Travelcard fares will go up by less
Snipe – Those Tfl fare rises in handy chart form
Dave Hill – Ken launches ‘underdog’ campaign as Boris provides fares hike comparison

Watch this poor lady complaining that the country is being stolen from her forget that people have videos now

This lady on the Croydon Tram is awfully upset about the Poles and others who are stealing her country from her. Her fellow passengers don’t seem to agree.

2012 volunteers uniforms are out: at least the cuffs are nice

Meh.

Quite like the button details on the red cuffs. They save the whole ensemble from looking too much like a university orienteering club on their annual trip to Norway.

In fairness this is an impossible design job. It’s fine.

Delighted to see the technicians will be wearing blazers, shirt and tie. Quite right too.

See all the press pictures here.