Sunny ‘Liberal Conspiracy’ Hundal is organising a follow-up to 2008′s successful ‘Blog Nation’ event. Details over at Liberal Conspiracy, but Sunny asks what we’d like to discuss; below the fold, then, are some thoughts. In terms of logistics, I would make three suggestions. Given the layout, it’s important that each table isn’t talking amongst itself [...]

BBC News report here. The fire seems to be out, and while there are still lots of people making the area safe, there’s only a few people using hosepipes on the building at the moment. It’s quite interesting to see everything being co-ordinated – fire, police, ambulance, water board, gas board, Hackney council and the [...]

Andrew Gilligan has an interesting article in today’s London Evening Standard, trailing a PolEx report that won’t be available until tomorrow, suggesting that a highly effective boat service could be set up for £30m. I will look for the report tomorrow, but in the meantime I make three points. Firstly, Gilligan says Yet this would [...]

Now, here’s an interesting one. Nick Griffin, MEP for the north-west, is going to run for Parliament in London, against Margaret Hodge in Barking. I was rather under the impression that Richard Barnbrook was going to be the BNP’s candidate there – he certainly seems to think so. Glad to see that Griffin has such [...]

I am told that bus ridership using PAYG Oyster in 2007/8 was 344,979,000. If you will allow me to assume bus ridership has remained level and remains level after the price increase for that segment from £1 to £1.20, it raises around £69m. That happens to be about the cost of scrapping the WEZ. Before [...]

A little while back, I wrote a piece arguing for a ‘Guardian London’ supplement to the Guardian, similar to Guardian America or Comment is Free, both here and at Liberal Conspiracy. Whether or not the Guardian read, let alone paid any attention to, my thoughts, I am very glad to see this: Guardian Local planned [...]

The London Evening Standard is to become a freesheet, the BBC report. thelondonpaper was pulled by News International last month. We are now down to three, non-specialist, London-wide newspapers, the ES, London Lite and Metro. I’m excluding things like Sport, Shortlist and City AM. This is not good. We will shortly only have two newspapers [...]

The fearmongering, lying, racist Richard Barnbrook should not be suspended from Barking & Dagenham council. As Adam ‘Tory Troll’ Bienkov reports, the decision was handed down by a joint standards committee between the GLA and B&D council. Barnbrook put up a mendacious video saying there had been three stabbings in three weeks in LB Barking [...]

In the middle of Leicester Square is a statue of William Shakespeare. It depicts him with a scroll with (as a quick Google reveals) a line from Twelfth Night IV ii: There is no darkness but ignorance Which strikes me as a pretty good motto. On the plinth is the legend This enclosure was purchased, [...]

I’ve spent a very pleasant evening in the company of the Sceptics in the Pub London, where the speaker was Dr. Aubrey de Gray, Chief Scientific Officer with the SENS Foundation. In brief, de Gray (Wikipedia article) set out the work of the SENS foundation which, as I understand it, looks at ageing as a [...]