London

So is Moro a Tory restaurant now?

Moro (‘moorish’ or ‘sexist’) is a Spanish restaurant on Exmouth Market, near the bones of the old Guardian and Observer building on Farringdon Road. I don’t mind telling Spectator readers (‘you people’) that I once kissed the bricks of this building, quite seriously, like Jews kiss the tarmac at Ben Gurion Airport. (At least that is the story; but I have never seen anyone do it. Kiss some dirty tarmac. What for?) Moro is distinguished as the restaurant in which Guardian journalists first realised Julian Assange is mad. He stood up near an olive and announced he didn’t care if the leaks led informants to be murdered, which is a

Hugo Rifkind

Why are we turning London into Dubai?

If you’ve ever wondered what it will look like when we colonise Mars, the answer is ‘Dubai’. I was there the other week. Bloody hell, what a place. You sit there on your unabashedly fake beach on your un-abashedly fake island, perhaps basking in the shade of a palm tree that plainly wasn’t there a decade ago, because this used to be the sea. And across the bay, which is of course a fake bay, you can see skyscrapers. Pleasure zone, business zone, shopping zone. You half expect to find Richard O’Brien prancing around in a leopardskin top hat, urging you to collect crystals. It’s a great place for a

Very bad poems on the Underground

My husband was surprised by quite a bit when we travelled by Underground in London the other day. Although he has a Nelson Mandela Memorial Freedom Pass, he seldom chooses to join us Morlocks down below. ‘Is this the work of a Chinaman?’ he asked, nodding towards a poster. ‘You mustn’t say “Chinaman”, dear,’ I said firmly. The poster showed people with vertical slits for eyes and no noses. They stood hunched in an Underground carriage, dressed in T-shirts, as if in a scene from some dystopian film like Idiocracy. Above the image, words were arranged in lines: ‘We really don’t mean to chide / But try to move along inside,

Say it loud, say it proud: UKIP are a party for reactionary xenophobes

Sometimes what doesn’t occasion interest or drama or controversy is more interesting – or at least more telling – than what does. So perhaps it is a tribute to the extent to which Nigel Farage and UKIP are now entrenched in the body politic that Farage’s speech to the party’s latest conference appears, as best I can tell, to have been treated as just another routine appearance by just another politician. Move along now, not a lot to see here. Not much news, not many dead. That is, the reaction has been There he goes again. We know Farage’s thing these days and it no longer shocks or even, I

Standard Life becomes the latest firm to bully Scotland. But is it bluffing?

No-one should be surprised that Standard Life has warned it might leave Scotland should the country vote for independence later this year. It is not exactly a secret that Edinburgh’s financial services industry is concerned by the possible – indeed plausible – implications of independence. The suggestion – sorry, the threat – that it might leave Scotland is already being characterised by nationalists as yet more bullying, this time of the corporate rather than political kind. No doubt this is a blustering bluff too.  But what if it isn’t? The sorry truth is that Edinburgh’s financial sector is not quite what once it was. The Bank of Scotland is a small part of the

Four artists you ought to know — and a famous one you can know better

In this round-up of exhibitions in London’s commercial galleries, I feature three shows of little-known but mature contemporary British artists. There is a great deal of interesting and worthwhile art being made out there, but not enough of it comes to public attention. Most museums won’t show it, and there are only a handful of commercial gallerists who are prepared to back quality over proven popularity. In such a world, the quieter talents tend to get overlooked, so it is a particular pleasure to be able to draw your attention to the subtle small paintings of Liam Hanley (born 1933). Hanley paints in oil and draws in pencil on linen

Tanya Gold

The Fable would do better as an American Psycho theme bar

The Fable is three floors high and two days old, a monster newly hatched on the Holborn Viaduct; deep below is the valley of the River Fleet, which is genuinely fabulous, but absent from sight. The Fable has the following interesting schtick — fairytales. The question, of course, is whose? Here, cries the PR nonsense, lie the breadstick fairies, who I thought were all dead and lying at the bottom of the Thames, poisoned or just killed by ennui. ‘Inspired by the wit and wisdom of Aesop, the fantasy world of fairytales and our spellbinding adventures around the globe, the Fable is a dynamic all-day bar and restaurant,’ it babbles. Really?

Investment trusts – the way the City saves

After years in the doldrums, investment trusts — those venerable pooled funds with names like Foreign and Colonial and City of London — are in danger of becoming fashionable. There are good reasons why they should be better known. They offer the possibility of high returns at low cost, as well as access to exotic asset classes that would otherwise be out of reach. They can be a way of spreading risk, if you do not have the time or the inclination to pick individual stocks for yourself. And they are generally cheaper than other vehicles for collective investment, such as unit trusts; the idea is that as little of

What’s Lord Adonis up to?

Lucky Lord Adonis has spent the last few days travelling around London by bus as part of his ‘London By Bus’ campaign. He’s been chatting to commuters and sharing interesting facts like bus route 25 carries 64,000 passengers a day which is equivalent to the population of Crewe. As the picture above shows, he’s setting the town on fire. Now, I’m sure that his lordship takes his role as Shadow Infrastructure Minister very seriously (who wouldn’t); but is there more at play here? The sheer volume of pictures of him meeting concerned parties and pointing at various things might indicate the imminent launch of an election campaign. Mr S has

Lanes of London is dining for Martians

Lanes of London serves street food to people who hate streets; that is, it exists to soothe the still-curious mouths of lazy, wealthy paranoiacs. This is the character of the dishonest age: you can ride in a gondola in Las Vegas, ski down a mountain in Dubai, visit a wizard’s castle in Watford Junction, and enjoy the Notting Hill Carnival in Mayfair while sitting down. (Other options include staying in a five-star faux shanty-town hotel in South Africa, complete with corrugated iron shacks and authentic ‘poor people’s rubbish’). It is not for me to call this madness, or to say that as funds grow more grandiose, worlds invariably shrink; or

Why you shouldn’t keep elephants

On 15 September 1885, the world’s most famous elephant, Jumbo, was killed by a train. Jumbo, the star attraction at P.T. Barnum’s travelling circus, was crossing the track at a station in Ontario, Canada. His handler, Matthew Scott, saw the danger. But ‘the elephant, fatally confused, trumpeted wildly and ran towards the oncoming train’. The force of the locomotive crushed Jumbo’s skull and drove one of his tusks ‘back into his brain’. But was this really an accident, or had Barnum, or Scott, or both, committed  elephanticide? When the engine hit him, Jumbo was dead within minutes. A bull African elephant is no match for a freight train. But if,

Sorry RMT, there’s no proof the public support the Tube strikes

Statistics can be used to prove anything, a wise man (Homer Simpson) once said. It looks like the RMT union are trying to do just that, with a new poll they’ve published with the claim the public supports the Tube strikes. According to a press release entitled ‘Poll shows strike action against cuts justified and continued opposition to ticket office closures’: ‘The survey carried out by the respected polling organisation Survation found that almost two thirds (65%) of tube users felt that lawful industrial action as a last resort was justified, with only 29% not sharing that view. A similar number (66%) were concerned at the Mayor’s closure plans.’ Half of

Could we move all politicians to Manchester?

The Ukip candidate for Wythenshawe and Sale East has come up with a rather interesting idea: he wants to move the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to Manchester, bringing 700 jobs to the city. I imagine that a lot of Ukip supporters would be quite happy to see the department metaphorically sent to Zurich for an appointment with Dignitas, but it’s a valid point. Why shouldn’t we send more civil servants out of London, where the cost of office space and decent housing is much lower, compared to the capital with its chronic shortage of affordable homes. Lots of countries have separate political and financial centres; Italy has Rome/Milan,

Why I’m on board for the homophobic bus

London has long since lost its allure for me — altogether too many cars, foreigners, cyclists, middle-class liberals and people who, like me, work in the media, as they call it. I was born in London but only feel truly at home in the north-east of England, an area of the country within which the constituents of that list I quoted above are almost nonexistent. But I am thinking now of moving back to the city — it’s possible that I could afford a flat in somewhere such as Brockley, or perhaps Catford — to take advantage of a radical new development in our capital. Because rumbling along the streets

The case against London cabbies

I lost my misguided faith in black cabs last week, on the corner of Royal College Street in north London. It was the tiniest trip — 2.4 miles from Bloomsbury to my Camden flat at 11.30 in the evening. Hard to mess up, too: empty roads, good weather and the easiest of routes — practically a straight line to my flat. To my horror, the cabbie dodged the obvious, straight route and embarked on an extended loop through the traffic-choked hub of Camden Town tube station and Camden Market. I pointed him in the right direction and he reluctantly did a U-turn and headed up Royal College Street. Not a

Mayor’s Question Time: Boris’ budget day

A tax-cutting budget to support growth — that’s the central, very Conservative message of Boris Johnson’s 2014-15 budget for London. At Mayor’s Question Time today, he bombarded members with all the positive things to have come out of his mayoralty. Unemployment down by 18,000, employment up by 54,000, bus crime down 40 per cent, Crossrail still on time and on budget while the redevelopment of Battersea Power Station and the Northern line expansion are on track. Boris has decided to keep his voters happy with a tax cut. Despite ever decreasing government grants, it’s the second consecutive year he’s cut City Hall’s share of council tax — the Mayor claims

To fix the north-south divide, revive the Council of the North!

These, ranked from first to tenth, are the urban areas in Britain with the highest average weekly earnings in 2012: London, Reading, Crawley, Aldershot, Edinburgh, Cambridge, Milton Keynes, Aberdeen, Southend, Brighton. That’s from the latest, fascinating, report (pdf here) published by the Centre for Cities. It can be summarised easily: if you want to make it, head to London or the south-east of England. Or to Scotland. London, as Jeremy Warner observed this morning, is still driving the British economy. Financial services remain vital both to economic recovery and the country’s long-term future. Strengthening other sectors remains important; so does the City. But strengthening Britain’s other cities is – or should

Dear Mary: How can I escape my neighbour’s spy cameras?

Q. I have a problem with what might be called location blindness. I live in Balham, but when I arrange restaurant lunches with friends, most of whom live in west London, they tend to assume I will be happy to make three times as long a journey to meet up as they will have to make themselves. A good midpoint for me would be, for example, Green Park, which takes only 15 minutes by Tube from Clapham South, but often, when someone has agreed to meet there, they ring at the 11th hour to suggest Notting Hill instead (50 minutes by tube for me, ten minutes’ walk for them). Or else

One solution to the housing shortage – build on Hampstead Heath

If I was going to measure possible reasons to desert the Tories at the next election, and I can think of a couple, plans to concrete over the countryside would score pretty highly. As a theoretical idea about something happening miles away from my home it almost makes me want to write letters to the Telegraph; if it were in my backyard I’d be shaking my fist at passing traffic or whatever people in the countryside do when they’re angry. This is moderately dangerous to the party, because what’s different now to, say, five years ago is that disaffected shire Tories have a plausible alternative to turn to, one that isn’t

Vince Cable: London is ‘becoming a kind of giant suction machine’

Vince Cable’s Today interview was remarkable for two reasons. The first was that the Business Secretary announced that he doesn’t want to ‘rush into legislation’ on zero hours contracts and instead wants to have another look at exclusivity agreements, where an employee is forced to work for one company only, even if they offer very few paid hours from week to week. This isn’t that surprising to those who have been following the debate: the Lib Dems found at their conference that their members were quite wary in Q&A sessions of outlawing these scary-sounding examples of labour market flexibility, and the Tories working on this are quite relaxed about tackling