Go to this: for the subversive gardener, there's a great-looking Chelsea Fringe

Starting tomorrow and continuing til 10th June. List of events here, map of events here, Twitter account @Chelseafringe, preview in the Independent here.

My favourite: Meadow up your Street

“Transforming urban spaces into bee-friendly urban meadows”

First image – The Pothole Gardener
Second image – Anne Carter, River of Flowers

18 May 2012

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

Chelsea supporting cow faces uncertain future

So the cow seems safe, albeit she’s probably feeling a little blue (that’s a her, right?). Chelsea are big in Nigeria, partly because of John Obi Mikel.

16 May 2012

Right now, Brent residents are trying to stop their council stripping Kensal Rise Library of its books

Here are some tweets which tell the story. The library has already been closed but today the council came for the books.

@SaveKRLibrary looks like a good place to follow this today.

16 May 2012

War-horse puppeteers to perform Ted Hughes' Crow in Greenwich

“Black is the earth-globe, one inch under,
An egg of blackness
Where sun and moon alternate their weathers
To hatch a crow, a black rainbow
Bent in emptiness
over emptiness
but flying”

This sounds great. Handspring Puppet Company, the puppet handlers behind War Horse, are turning Ted Hughes’ Crow into theatre for the Greenwich + Docklands Festival next month. Details here. The Independent have more here.

16 May 2012

Forget Kit Malthouse's scaremongering, here's some practical advice for dealing with urban foxes

See UPDATE at end of post

Kit Malthouse, the Deputy Mayor who you might remember from Adam’s Boris Johnson’s deputy interfered with hacking investigation story, popped up in the Ham & High earlier this week to slag off urban foxes. He said:

““People are afraid to let their small children play outside because of them. They are more and more worried about the number of foxes as numbers continue to grow.”

The story goes on to quote a resident on record claiming to have seen a fox “the size of a wolf” in St John’s Wood.

This is hysterical nonsense. For an adult response to the fact that humans and foxes live in overlapping territories, we must turn to Bristol City Council, who produced this leaflet which has since become something of a standard text. You can see why. It’s calm, authoritative, rooted in sound scientific study rather than hysterical gossip. It’s also full of useful advice rather than useless scaremongering.

If you are concerned about urban foxes, read it and follow the advice given. It’ll do you a lot more good a politician’s grandstanding ever will.

Urban Foxes Leaflet

UPDATE Kit Malthouse has been in touch to deny a declaration of war. An uneasy truce perhaps best sums up the situation:

Some extremely disheartening facts about housing in London

Last week the IPPR, a think tank from the centre-left, published a report (PDF) called Affordable capital? Housing in London.

It contains a lot of facts and charts about housing supply, renting, buying and benefits in London. Let me condense the current situation, firstly in my own words:

“It’s a fucking mess”

And now, more constructively, in the report’s words (my gloss in italics):

“London’s population of 7.9 million people, living in approximately 3.3 million households, is expected to increase by 1.02 million people (12 per cent) over the next 20 years.” Demand for somewhere to live is only going to rise

“While London’s population grew by 8 per cent between 1997 and 2011, the number of actual households cr eated increased by just 4 per cent.” Twentysomethings are house sharing for a long time

“There are currently no London boroughs in which the average rents are below £700 per month.” Even the cheapest boroughs aren’t that cheap

“The majority (22) of London boroughs have median rents that cost more than 50 per cent of median local full-time earnings.” Housing chairty Shelter calls that “unaffordable”

“In nine London boroughs, the average private sector rent is 65 per cent or more of the median take-home pay.” Ouch

Then the report considers housing benefit reform. I’ve written before that some reform to the status quo is necessary. The Guardian’s Dave Hill and Josh Hall on this site objected that reform will cause suffering to vulnerable people. The report makes grim reading for both sides.

“In the [private sector] in London, Local Housing Allowance is costing £1.6 billion a year, or 28 per cent of the nation’s entire bill for this allowance”. That’s money going from the taxpayer to private landlords. Supportable?

“The reforms are predicated on the assumption that, when faced with shortfalls in their rent, individuals and households will be able to renegotiate their rents with their landlords or move home. In the case of London, both of these assumptions may be flawed.” There aren’t enough cheaper homes to move in to

“While there have been a number of rather alarmist figures regarding likely mass evictions and an unprecedented migration of inner London households to outer London, it is more likely that a significant proportion of those households affected will have no choice but to stay in their current homes and reduce other outgoings”. People claiming housing benefit will be poorer when the changes hit

Either we continue filling landlords’ pockets with public money, or we force people on low incomes to live on even lower ones. Not good, is it?

So, more homes need to be built. But this isn’t easy, either. I’ve thought that we should be building upwards, and that local people objecting to new towers are helping keep rents high by stifling demand. But it’s not so simple:

“Much new housing development in London consists of one- or two-bedroom flats suitable for young, childless and mobile households: these properties offer advantages to developers and to public servants with targets to deliver specified numbers of units, but they do little to address the problems of overcrowding and council waiting lists associated with unmet demand from families.” Building towers of flats can’t solve underlying problems, though it might help provide some additional supply

If you’re still reading at this point, I commend you to read this blog post by the IPPR’s Phil McCarvill outlining some things he thinks the Mayor could do to help the situation. These include a separate housing benefit cap for London, and for the Mayor to take over repsonsibility for housing benefit in the capital. Devolved power is surely the way to go, but it’s clearly going to take a very long time to get out of a very big hole.

The Queen was hot, suggests new art exhibition

Cathy Lomax’s portrait of a youthful her majesty goes on show in the Diamond Geezer exhibition at WW Gallery.

From the curators:

“The exhibition explores the ‘guilty pleasures’ of Jubilee celebrations: street parties, memorabilia, and all the joys of revelling in the high-camp of that very British of institutions, the monarchy.”

Revelling in the monarchy’s hereditary wealth and power is undoubtedly where most people, even, perhaps especially, young progressive people, are right now. The Shoreditch Jubilee street party is a fine example. If John Lydon wasn’t so busy making adverts for butter, he might raise his eyebrows at how things didn’t turn out.

15 May 2012

The confusing world of Olympic brand partnerships

There’s something deeply amusing about the Soviet-style, monolithic imagery employed to promote Sir Steve Redgrave as the rather puffy face of these BP Olympic medallions. Forget for a moment that it’s the blameless Redgrave, and it’s imagery entirely in keeping with the authoritarian, banny state feel of the whole Games.

Two years on from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill which is still affecting the US coastline, BP is benefitting from the fuzzy warm glow that only a multi-million pound sporting event tie-in can provide.

On the other hand, the medallions possess a nostalgic charm, will be sold in petrol stations to 10-year-old boys whose hope-filled hearts are untainted by cynicism and doubt, and all profits will go towards supporting British Olympic and Paralympic athletes.

It’s going to be a challenging Olympics for the agonised, sceptical observer.

Full disclosure: I went to this Olympic fund raiser/gala at the invitation of the PR company promoting these medallions. In an auction to raise money for the athletes, people were bidding £1000+ for a week’s work experience at the BOA. It was weird.

15 May 2012

Who is going to run the new London TV channel?

“Ofcom today [that’s yesterday, May 10] invited applications for 21 local TV channels across the UK. This follows new duties given to Ofcom by Parliament to license local TV.”

Applications have to be in by 13 August. The channel will be subsidised and is expected to carry at least 7 hours of local news a week.

Sounds perfect for our friends at Londonist…

Ofcom – Ofcom invites applications for first 21 local TV channels

11 May 2012

How to avoid the crowds at London's galleries and museums this summer

Don’t go to the busy ones.

Here’s a chart from GLA Economics’ Tourism Report which shows the most visited atttractions in the UK, according to ALVA (Association of Leading Visitor Attractions). All are in London, you’ll notice.

So avoid the British Museum and Tate Modern unless you arm yourself with a particularly pointy umbrella for dispersing tourists. The V&A and Science Museum are good each way bets.

The National Portrait Gallery also offers a reasonable ratio of breathing space to exhibit quality, albeit it’s full of portraits of dead people. But at least they’re dead people you can see.

10 May 2012

London Weather

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