Category Archives: London

English National Opera to receive £11.46m from Arts Council England

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Investment will sustain its work in London for another year after ENO was removed from ACE’s national portfolio

The English National Opera (ENO) has announced it will receive an £11.46m investment from Arts Council England (ACE) to sustain its work in London for another year.

The ENO is one of a number of organisations that have been removed from ACE’s national portfolio, losing its £12.8m annual grant and told it must move outside London if it wants to qualify for future grants. ENO chiefs have said the 100% funding cut would decimate the 100-year old company, while many big names across the arts world called the decision a “simplistic move”.

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Family of boy thrown from Tate Modern tell of improving condition

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French boy is practising a gentle form of judo and adapted archery as he continues his recovery

The family of a boy thrown from the 10th floor of London’s Tate Modern art gallery has said he is practising a gentle form of judo and adapted archery as his condition slowly improves.

The French boy was six when he was badly injured in an attack by Jonty Bravery at the tourist attraction in August 2019.

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Girl, 7, critically injured in shooting at double memorial service in London

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Another child and four women also injured in incident close to Euston following joint service for a mother and daughter

A seven-year-old girl is in hospital with life-threatening injuries after a suspected driveby shooting outside a memorial service in north London, the Metropolitan police have said.

A second child, a 12-year-old girl, was taken to hospital with a minor leg injury but has now been discharged.

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Government has broken pledge to get UK fitter after 2012 Olympics, says report

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Cross-party committee has also accused Sport England of not knowing the destination of millions of pounds in grants

It was supposed to “inspire a generation” and leave a legacy of a healthier, more active population. Yet the promises that the 2012 London Olympics would boost sporting participation have not been kept, according to a new parliamentary report.

A lasting legacy of participation was a key part of the government’s pitch for the £8.8bn Olympic and Paralympic Games, including pledges to increase the number of adults participating in sporting activities. However, the cross-party public accounts committee said the promised benefits had failed to occur, with the proportion of adults participating in sport at least once a week actually falling in the first three years after the Games.

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Met chief says London is ‘fantastically safe’ as homicide rate falls

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Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley says UK capital is a place to ‘live, work and enjoy yourself’

The Metropolitan police commissioner has described London as a “fantastically safe” city as the force announced a drop in homicide rates last year.

Sir Mark Rowley said the capital was a place to “live, work and enjoy yourself” as he visited a boxing gym in Ilford, east London, on Thursday.

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Briton shot dead in Jamaica was victim of contract killing, police say

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Jamaican police say fatal shooting of Sean Patterson, 33, was ‘contract killing that emanated from Britain’

A British man who was shot dead in Jamaica this week was the victim of a contract killing ordered in Britain, according to local police.

Sean Patterson, 33, a personal trainer from west London, was found with gunshot wounds to his upper body and head at about midday on Monday in Bogue Hill, St James, police said.

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Newly released files reveal plan to move Millennium Dome to Swindon

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Labour government received bid to relocate controversial London building before it was rebranded as the O2

The “Swindon Dome” does have a ring to it.

It has emerged Tony Blair’s government received a proposition to move the Millennium Dome – later redeveloped and rebranded as the O2 – to Swindon.

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Qantas flight recovering stranded passengers from Azerbaijan finally lands in London

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It comes as another Qantas flight leaving Sydney for London on Christmas Day was delayed from taking off due to a technical issue

A Qantas plane that was sent to Azerbaijan to recover passengers stranded after an emergency landing has finally arrived in London on Christmas morning, but a string of challenges has frustrated holiday plans for those onboard.

As relieved passengers queued at Baku airport to board what would be a six-hour flight to London on Sunday morning, the original Qantas plane that flew them to Baku remained on the ground, as engineers continue to be puzzled by the cause behind smoke detection alarms that forced the plane to make an emergency landing.

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Partner of Brixton crush victim says someone must be found accountable

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Phoebie Turley pays tribute to Gaby Hutchinson, saying they ‘would have done anything for anyone’

The partner of one of the people who died after the O2 Brixton Academy crush has demanded justice for the victims of the disaster, insisting someone needs to be “accountable” for what happened.

Gaby Hutchinson, 23, died after fans tried to get into a show by the Nigerian artist Asake at the south London venue on 15 December.

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London extends lead as most searched UK location on Rightmove

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Capital now top location by some distance after Cornwall led for several months during pandemic

The lockdown dream of leaving the city behind and owning a spacious house in the countryside or by the sea faded in 2022 as homebuyers picked up where they left off before the pandemic: house hunting in London.

Rightmove said the capital was 2022’s top location by some distance with searches 9% higher than last year. Meanwhile the number of searches for homes in Cornwall and Devon fell sharply although the counties, famous for their spectacular coastlines, hung on to second and third place on the property website’s annual list of most searched for locations.

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Second person dies after Brixton concert crush

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Gaby Hutchinson, 23, was working in security role at London venue on night of Asake gig

A security guard has become the second person to die after a crowd crush at the O2 Academy Brixton last week.

Gaby Hutchinson, 23, was working as a contracted security provider at a performance on Thursday by the Nigerian Afrobeats singer-songwriter Asake.

A previous version of this story was launched on Monday 19 December 2022. This version reflects updated information released by the Metropolitan police.

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Witnesses to Brixton concert crush say many fans outside had tickets

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One concertgoer claims security guards ‘kettled’ fans into a confined space outside Asake gig

Witnesses to the deadly crush outside the O2 Academy Brixton last Thursday have insisted many fans in the crowd outside had tickets, rejecting reports of a ticketless mob storming the venue.

After the death of 33-year-old Rebecca Ikumelo was announced on Saturday, fans criticised the security and organisation at the event.

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Three people still in critical condition after suspected crush at Asake gig in Brixton

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Met police begin investigation into ‘extremely distressing’ incident after large crowd gathered outside O2 Academy

Three people were still in a critical condition on Friday night after an apparent crowd crush at a concert at the O2 Academy Brixton in London on Thursday.

The Metropolitan police launched an investigation into what they said was an “extremely distressing” incident at a performance by the Nigerian Afrobeats singer and songwriter Asake.

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PMQs live: Rishi Sunak quizzed by Keir Starmer over nurses’ strikes

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Latest updates: prime minister faces Labour leader ahead of industrial action by nurses on Thursday

Yesterday Mark Harper, the transport secretary, claimed that public support for the rail strikes was declining. Today Ipsos has published some polling that backs up this claim, although support for the RMT has not collapsed, and public opinion is still divided. It puts support for the strikes at 30%, down from 43% in September. And opposition to the strikes is at 36%, up from 31%.

Yesterday Savanta published polling showing a similar trend. It said that net support for the rail workers on strike was +21 in October (those supporting them, minus those not supporting them), and that now it was down to +13.

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London fire brigade put into special measures over misogyny and racism

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Watchdog to monitor force closely after damning report revealed deep-seated behavioural problems

London fire brigade (LFB) has been placed into special measures by the chief fire inspector after a report revealing incidents of misogyny, racism and bullying.

The watchdog moved the LFB into an enhanced level of monitoring on Wednesday, citing concerns about “culmulative evidence” from its last inspection and later of unacceptable behaviour within the brigade.

His Majesty’s inspector of fire and rescue services, Matt Parr, said: “We should recognise that London fire brigade’s recent cultural review was commissioned by the brigade, whose leadership has accepted its findings without reservation.

“However, it is clear that the behavioural problems we highlighted earlier this year are deep-seated and have not improved. We will now examine London fire brigade’s improvement plans more frequently and more intrusively, and work closely with the brigade to monitor its progress.”

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Safety fears force Ngozi Fulani’s charity to pause work after palace racism incident

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Sistah Space says many domestic abuse services temporarily halted after founder spoke of encounter with Susan Hussey

A charity led by a black domestic abuse campaigner who was asked where she “really came from” by the late queen’s senior lady-in-waiting has had to pause its operations because of safety fears.

Sistah Space said it was “forced to temporarily cease” working after its founder, Ngozi Fulani, spoke out about her treatment by Susan Hussey at a reception at Buckingham Palace. The charity supports women of African and Caribbean heritage who have been affected by domestic and sexual abuse.

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Delighted Morocco fans dance in the streets of London after World Cup win

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Crowds mass joyfully in centre of capital after 3-0 victory on penalties against Spain puts team in quarter-finals

Elated Morocco fans celebrated on the streets of London on Tuesday night following their team’s triumph over Spain in the last 16 of the World Cup.

Footage showed crowds of people around Oxford Street, Piccadilly Circus and Edgware Road chanting, dancing and waving Moroccan flags after the result.

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Europe’s largest Middle Eastern bookseller to close

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Al Saqi Books in London, which was established in 1978, blames closure on rise in prices of Arabic-language books and ‘detrimental’ effect of Brexit

Europe’s largest specialist bookseller for Middle Eastern books, based in London, has been forced to close because of the hike in prices of Arabic-language books and because Brexit has been “detrimental” to its business.

Al Saqi Books in Bayswater opened in 1978, and sells books on the Middle East and north Africa in English, and on all subjects in Arabic.

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‘A gift of life’: the NHS double lung transplant that saved Covid patient

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After months in intensive care, Cesar Franco became the first person in Britain to have the operation because of the virus

“When I woke up I was confused. I remembered the doctors in St George’s hospital deciding to intubate me. But when I woke up from the intubation, I’d been transferred to another hospital, St Thomas’, and was on a machine that was keeping me alive. I wondered how things had gotten so bad and how I’d gone from being just ill to being, you know, very close to dying.”

Cesar Franco is reliving how he fell gravely ill with Covid-19 late last year and ended up in the intensive care unit (ICU) of St Thomas’ hospital in central London, helpless, struggling to breathe and only still alive thanks to the quiet pumping of an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (Ecmo) machine. It was the start of what became five arduous, precarious months in ICU on Ecmo. That is an unusually long time, even for a Covid patient, to receive what, for some but not all, proves to be life-saving care.

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