Boris Johnson’s private behaviour is public again this week, which is almost a pity, as some of the chickens stirred up by his public behaviour as Mayor of London are coming home to roost. For a start there is, or was, Wonga. Last weekend I was on the tube when I noticed something unusual –…
Read More Relics of the Johnson AdministrationDid you think Boris Johnson sucked? Try Ivan Massow, doyen of hipster Toryism (he was the nice version of Michael Portillo before Michael Portillo was the nice version of Michael Portillo) and prospective candidate for mayor of London. Somehow, the mayoralty has become a strange attractor for people who combine vacuous celebrity and a particular…
Read More You thought London mayoral candidates couldn’t get worseLook at this pitiful mess. People signed up for the shared ownership option on a block of flats in Streatham and paid deposits. Then the developer couldn’t get it built, so they were left waiting. Now, it’s finished, but the developer now wants twice as much money because, supposedly, the block doubled in value during…
Read More Every little helps, so we’re helping ourselves to every little we canThis post is a response to readers’ input to the open newslist Daniel Davies mocked this guy, as having placed his bets on Camden staying deeply cool and missed out on the migration east. But he has a point. Our startup moved to Shoreditch in 2008, making us a relatively early one although not first-generation.…
Read More Shoreditch twats: not quite as bad as property developersI fucking told you. Eric Pickles has signed up for the deeply dodgy Create Streets agenda, on the basis of a report drawn up by a bunch of estate agents. On which planet isn’t this an outrageous conflict of interest? Also, he wants to get rid of terribad concrete towers through….system building. But Mr Pickles…
Read More DEMOLISH ALL THE THINGS.So, it’s well known that I’m an obsessive about Create Streets, the flaky Tory wanktank that wants a whole succession of gimmes for developers who are in no sense their mates, except when they are. Single Aspect notes that the Urban Design Group is having a thing on Wednesday the 23rd of April, i.e next…
Read More Your chance to meet Create Streets.The “Create Streets” lot are being mithered by the very serious people again. Dave Hill of the Guardian and Faisal Islam from the Ha! Ha! Poors Channel have been at it since the turn of the year. London housing crisis: Create Streets? Fine. But who decides? http://t.co/Pz6x2ep2yG — DaveHill (@DaveHill) January 10, 2014 interesting: “@createstreets:…
Read More who you gonna call? the unacceptable behaviour teamThe Airports Commission is eventually going to opt for Gatwick. Prediction. How did I come to this conclusion? And how representative is the commission as an institution? Well, we can understand the decision-making process here with a simple model. There are various actors involved, who have preferences. To illuminate this, let’s play a game of…
Read More Boris Island: Shag, Marry, Avoid?So, Create Streets. Inside Housing has the story, pointing out that the thing campaigning for knocking down high-rise social housing in south London is basically a group of Tories. But there’s a bit more, or less, to it than that. Their wesbite won’t tell you whether they are a company, a charity, a lobby, or…
Read More A slightly less simple plan.Birdy! For it is he, back out of the woodwork to tell us that there might be a surge in homelessness, up or rather down to the depths of the 80s. Well, that’s grim, and only surprising in that the Tories took just two-and-a-half years to get back to mass homelessness. Unlike Birdy I promise…
Read More TYR Rewind: slip inside this house and fuel the fire