Metapranking: Was famous historical hoax a hoax all along?

Great stuff this morning from Mike Paterson at the London Historians blog. It concerns the Berners St hoax of the early 19th century, which ran as follows:

A swell called Theodore Hook (playboy, writer, chum of the Prince Regent) made a bet with his friend Samuel Beazley (playwright, theatre architect, bon viveur) that he could make an ordinary address the most talked about house in London within a week. Hook then sent out thousands of letters requesting deliveries and visits from tradesmen and grandees alike to 54 Berners Street on a certain date. Chimney-sweeps were the first to arrive, so the story goes. They were followed by hundreds of visitors of all kinds including piano deliverymen, coal-men etc. The tale continues that the house was also visited by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Mayor of London and even minor royalty.

Ha ha jolly good jape etc etc. Except Mike is having none of it:

I suspect, frankly, that either they or friends of theirs made the whole thing up

A hoax hoax? Messrs Hook and Beazley, I salute you.

Unless of course Mike Paterson is himself pulling a hoax, in which case I give up.

Watch Mayor Johnson bluster away the dangers of cycling

Jenny Jones yesterday challenged the Mayor on cycling deaths (now 14 for the year). His response is a classic of its type: arrogant, dismissive, but also, and his more partisan critics will never admit it, completely bulldozing the questioner out of the way.

But many cyclists are concerned about Blackfriars Bridge. For Boris to simply dismiss them all on the basis that he rides over it and feels fine just isn’t good enough. “I feel safe so it must be safe” is not a message that’s going to wash. Jenny Jones was right to raise this issue in detail yesterday, and she’ll be right to raise it again. There are lives at stake.

How to date, by the police

Sutton police are trying to encourage people to take care and stay safe when going internet dating. We are fully supportive of their efforts, and urge you to take all reasonable precautions.

But this bit of advice…

Go with at least one friend and agree to stay together throughout the evening

…I really think you can safely ignore. Unless you’re a threesome-on-a-first-date kind of person. In which case, go for it.

Source: Met Police

Student protesters' tribal chants make them look like silly student protesters

Chants so far include ‘Daaayvid Cameron! Fuck off back to Eton’…‘Build a bonfire, build a bonfire, put the Tories at the top…’, ‘Tory Tory Tory scum scum scum’ and ‘the only cuts we wanna see TORIES ON THE GUILLOTINE’

Lord knows I’m no Tory but come on now. You can sing what you like, but if you advertise your visceral tribalism through wholly partisan lyrics, don’t complain when people dismiss you as immature. Because you are.

The following couple of chants are at least constructive, although the second one suffers slightly from inferior scansion.

‘No ifs, no buts, no education cuts’ and ‘Take away E-M-A we say no way’

But regardless of that they make the people singing them sound reasonable and deserving of respect and attention. A few people do the image, and thus the cause, of the whole movement no favours by spouting infantile drivel like that quoted above.

Source: East London Lines, which is an excellent place to find out what’s happening today.

The Olympics will ruin everthing

Remember when the Royal Wedding was going to completely fix the economy but then it completely screwed the economy? Well it looks like the Olympics are going to completely screw the economy, which probably means they’re going to completely screw the economy.

Olympic scaremongering source: Londonlovesbusiness

Please please please can we not call the new Routemasters "Boris buses"

“The Mayor’s new “Boris Bus” could make a surprise appearance in the next James Bond film, Transport for London chiefs revealed today.”

I feel a bit sick in my mouth.

Looking at you Evening Standard

Nigel Farage is angry and wrong. Again.

Lovable UKIP leader Nigel Farage is absolutely livid at David Cameron for letting the EU stifle The City through over-regulation. Because, you know, it was too much regulation that got us all into this mess.

“…a blizzard of EU regulations that led to a massive growth in the compliance culture. Everyone moaned about it but no-one worried too much. All that has changed.”

He says they’re worried now. Well, tough shit. To see why, compare his fulmination with this anonymous female stockbroker, interviewed in The Guardian for their fascinating series on women in finance:

“On the trading floor, men would chew paper into little papier-mache balls and try to shoot them up my skirt. They’d actually reach into the aisle to throw them. If this happened now, you could sue. Those times were different.”

Regulations can be good!

Farage rant: Londonlovesbusiness

A post in honour of sodden feet

Wharf profiled Sioned Morgan, a reflexologist. Here are the five most ridiculous sentences in the article.

5. “Your right foot is male and past and your left foot is female and future.”

4. “The skin around my toes was irritated, more on my right foot, which could be linked to emotional irritation with a man.”

3. “Your instep is where your digestive system lies.”

2. “Sioned…claimed it was possible to tell if someone was pregnant and also determine the sex of the baby just from the mother’s feet.”

1. “Sessions cost £73 for 50 minutes”

Some cracking birds around here mate

Anyone who doesn’t find birds wonderful and amazing is an embittered fool who’s probably just jealous of them being able to fly. It’s the migration season, so there’s lots of movement going on. Here are some recent arrivals to our city, please make them welcome.

Is there anything in the rumour about the Whitechapel dead body train?

“The documentary “Ghosts of the London Underground” mentions a train that once rumbled through a tunnel connecting Whitechapel Tube station to the Royal London Hospital – a train with no passengers, or no live passengers at least. It was known as the Dead Body Train, an ominous title that leaves little to the imagination”

When I heard this rumour, discussed in a nice post at Urban Ghosts, it was claimed that the train was still running! But it looks like that was just a brilliant lie.