London

Wednesday

Steerpike

Dippygate: Natural History Museum's diplodocus sacrificed on the commercial altar

There was outcry last month when it was announced that ‘Dippy the Diplodocus’ is to be removed from the Natural History Museum’s vast Hintze Hall, where he has been greeting visitors for the last 35 years. Instead a giant skeleton of blue whale will be suspended from the ceiling, in what they spin as an ‘important and necessary change’. Officially, ‘the blue whale symbolises’ the museum’s ‘desire for people to be completely engaged in current issues about humans’ impact on the natural world and our chance to build a sustainable future.’ Or so a spokesman of the museum says. However, a source tells of a more cynical explanation for the

Saturday

Steerpike

Tory Black & White Ball tempts Nancy Dell'Olio into politics

One of the more glamorous attendees of this week’s Tory Black and White ball was Nancy Dell’Olio. The former girlfriend of Sven Goran Eriksson attended the Conservative fundraiser as the guest of Ivan Massow, the London mayoral hopeful. When Mr S caught up with Dell’Olio after the ball, it seemed the presence of political leaders was starting to rub off on her. ‘It was good to be there, I enjoyed David’s speech,’ the Italian lawyer told Steerpike at the Fernando Botero Private View at the Opera Gallery, before talk turned to her own career. ‘I’ll tell you what, I could apply to change my passport, one of my passions is politics. My friend

Thursday

Toby Young

Immigration, not money, will improve Scotland's most deprived schools

I suppose we should be thankful that Nicola Sturgeon has acknowledged there’s a problem with Scotland’s public education system, even if she’s hit upon the wrong solution. Earlier this week, the First Minister announced that the Scottish -government would be trying out its version of ‘the London challenge’, a programme carried out by the last government, to address the chronic underachievement of Scotland’s most deprived children. In the past, the SNP has deflected criticisms of its education record by pointing out that Scottish 15-year-olds did marginally better than their English counterparts in the 2012 Pisa tests. But the difference between the two groups is minuscule and both have declined dramatically

Sinclair McKay

EastEnders wanted to show Thatcher’s Britain. These days it would make Maggie proud

Albert Square full of Thatcherites? You ’avin a larf? No, it’s true. EastEnders, conceived 30 years ago partly as a means of enraging the Conservative party, has blossomed into a Tory commercial. Iain Duncan-Smith could watch all the wealth-creating activity in Albert Square with a syrupy smile; George Osborne could visit Phil Mitchell’s garage in a hi-vis jacket and look perfectly at home (Boris Johnson has already had a cameo pint at the Queen Vic). EastEnders portrays small businesses built up through hard work; it implies that turning to the state won’t get you anywhere; they even sent swotty teenager Libby Fox to Oxford. Never mind the affairs and addictions,

Andrew Taylor

Cybersex is a dangerous world (especially for novelists)

Few first novels are as successful as S.J. Watson’s Before I Go to Sleep, which married a startling and unusual premise to a tightly controlled and claustrophobic thriller. Its only drawback was that it was a hard act to follow. Novelists tend to dump all their brilliant ideas into their first book, and the white heat of originality compensates to some extent for any want of craft. Second novels lack both advantages, and have the additional problem that readers come to them laden with expectations. Like its predecessor, Second Life is a slice of domestic noir with a woman narrator. It is set mainly in affluent corners of London, with

Thursday

Tanya Gold

Rivea: a London annexe to the world’s maddest expensive restaurant

Rivea (stupid name) is in the bowels of Bulgari in Knightsbridge, a hotel which looks like a vast Virgin Upper Class lounge. It sits opposite One Hyde Park (stupid name), an apartment block which looks like a vast Virgin Upper Class lounge and which I am fairly certain appeared two weeks ago in a very silly television show called Silent Witness, in which a plutocrat was murdered with scented gas after being chased by the FSB. Was he Litvinenko, or Berezovsky, who I think was murdered for suggesting that Vladimir Putin is really Dobby the masochistic elf from Harry Potter? Who knows, but it is always gratifying when the BBC

Melissa Kite

The Tooting poisoner and the relentless rise of the urban fox

Cowering in the corner of a pet shop, I edged towards the door to try to escape as a stranger yelled at me. The man’s face was so puckered up and puce with anger that I feared I was moments away from being beaten to death with a ball-thrower or ham bone. I had only popped in to buy some dog food for the spaniel and now the spaniel was hiding behind me as a fellow customer shouted abuse. The lady who owned the pet shop was trying to appease the shouting man, who had his own dog with him, a scrappy little terrier who looked as terrified as the

Charlotte Moore

Powers of persuasion: how Churchill brought America on side

In time for the 50th anniversary of Churchill’s death comes this pacy novel about his attempts to persuade the Americans to join the war. It is January 1941; President Roosevelt’s special envoy Harry Hopkins arrives in Blitz-torn London and is subjected to Churchill’s charm offensive. Hopkins, a chain-smoking, hard-drinking man of principle with a dislike of hereditary privilege, finds himself guided down every corridor of power. It’s port and cigars at Downing Street, roast pheasant at Chequers, even champagne in the prime ministerial bathroom while the great man fires questions at him from the tub, ‘a pink, round, gleaming Michelin man’. In between times, Hopkins drinks at the Black Cat

Wednesday

Fraser Nelson

The implosion of Scottish Labour means the battle for Britain has only just begun

Gordon Brown is holding an adjournment debate on the union this evening, which comes after an Ashcroft poll which shows precisely what danger the union is in. If today’s polls were tomorrow’s election result, the SNP would have 55 out of 59 seats in Scotland. It’s even set to lose Coatbridge, where it picked up 67pc of the vote at the last election. Yes, all this will help the Tories in the short term: Cameron needs the SNP to destroy Labour in the north and the SNP need Cameron in No10 – remember, their political model is based on grudge and gripe. Without a villain, Alex Salmond won’t have a pantomime. But back

Thursday

Ismene Brown

London International Mime Festival review: on juggling, dance and Wayne Rooney's hair transplant

January is something of a palate-cleanser for the year, as the London International Mime Festival flies in plane-loads of companies bearing gnomic names in a kind of dance-world Desperanto that’s equally incomprehensible in every language. Like cars or tourist T-shirt slogans, titles like Plexus or Ephemeral Architectures label what’s now called ‘visual theatre’, with copious explanatory notes translated between four languages, gaining comic value at every stage. I don’t know why they don’t just write, ‘We’re playing. The sponsor paid.’ (Mark Morris is the only choreographer I know who says, ‘I make up dances and you watch ’em.’) In LIMF you get acrobats, puppetry and circuses, but also some pretty

Thursday

Tanya Gold

Quaglino’s, the vampire brasserie

Quaglino’s is an ancient subterranean brasserie in St James’s, a district clinging to the 18th century with cadaverous fingers. It was founded in 1929 by -Giovanni Quaglino, who once wrote a book called The Complete Hostess; do not buy a haddock that weighs over 2lbs, he counsels, among other things. Quaglino’s is called a ‘grande dame’ by the sort of critic who confuses ‘grande’ with louche. Quaglino’s initially catered to posh idiots who thought they were ‘edgy’ because they listened to jazz during the abdication crisis. The Queen came once — the first time a reigning monarch had dined at a restaurant — and Princess Margaret repeatedly, but the Queen

Martin Vander Weyer

Why Switzerland should have listened to Hong Kong on currency pegs

The Swiss National Bank usually ticks away as quietly as one of its nation’s more expensive timepieces, but when the cuckoo does occasionally burst out of the clock, all hell breaks loose. After a policy was introduced in September 2011 to depress the Swiss franc against the euro (as traumatised investors continued to pour money into safe-haven Switzerland), governor Philipp Hildebrand resigned when it came to light that his wife Kashya had sold a huge bundle of francs ahead of her husband’s market intervention, then bought them back at a handsome profit. Now, weeks after Hildebrand’s successor Thomas Jordan called the informal fixing of the franc at €1.20 ‘absolutely central’

Thursday

Toby Young

David Sedaris was right: litter is a class issue

David Sedaris is my new hero. Not because he’s such a funny writer, but because he’s obsessed with litter. He told a group of MPs last week that he spends up to five hours a day picking up fast food containers and fag ends around his home in Pulborough, west Sussex. Thanks to his unstinting labours, he’s become a local hero and has had a rubbish lorry named after him. I’ve some way to go before I qualify for such an honour, but I do my bit. For instance, on Monday I spent an hour clearing the litter from the flowerbed outside the West London Free School in Hammersmith. This

Nick Cohen

How long will it be before the climate forces us to change?

This time last year, homeowners in Oxfordshire and Berkshire were recovering after storms had brought down power lines and blocked roads. Soon, power cuts were the least of their problems. The Thames flooded. In the south-west, the emergency services evacuated the Somerset Levels, and the sea wall at Dawlish in Devon collapsed — cutting the rail line to Cornwall. Political Britain burst its banks. Ed Miliband demanded action. David Cameron convened emergency committees. TV reporters brought us urgent reports as water lapped their boots, while newspaper correspondents named the guilty men. As in twenty20 cricket, you enjoy a quick intense hit with 24/7 news, then move on to the next

Tuesday

Sebastian Payne

Today’s strikes in London highlight why we need trade union reforms

Londoners were not a happy bunch this morning. Aside from the cold, wet weather, two-thirds of the capital’s buses were not running — thanks to a strike arranged by trade union Unite. Bus drivers are protesting over pay, as they believe the lack of a collective deal across all bus operators is unfair. Currently, there are 80-odd different pay rates, as this Unite infographic shows: Time to end the chaos on London’s bus network – one rate for all: http://t.co/fRCLv5FKXt pic.twitter.com/WWESxlbNI9 — Unite the union (@unitetheunion) January 13, 2015 27,000 striking bus drivers causing traffic and commuting chaos is annoying — but this strike comes at a sensitive time as the Tories

Thursday

Nicky Haslam

Nicky Haslam’s diary: Marie-Anna Berta Felicie Johanna Ghislaine Theodora Huberta Georgina Helene Genoveva and other big names

I was once bundled into a police car in Palm Springs to explain why I didn’t have snow-tyres on my pick-up in the red-hot California desert. I don’t remember the outcome of the ‘arraignment’, but will never forget the lady cop’s name, L. Nevada Yonkers. Other weird names have stuck with me. Reading The Most of Nora Ephron, whom I met once and immediately fell in love with, I realised that when I was working on Vogue in New York in the 1960s, she had been on the staff of Newsweek. I used to be obsessed by the weird names of the girls on Newsweek’s masthead. I would reel them

Tanya Gold

The real reason there’s a queue outside the Cereal Killer Café

The Cereal Killer Café is a temple to cereal on Brick Lane, east London. It serves only cereal — and also Pop-Tarts, which taste like pavements smeared with chocolate — and flavoured milk. It has been open for one month and is already famous for its monomania, its whimsy — look, cereal! — and its co-owner’s on-air fight with a Channel 4 News journalist about the morality of selling £3.50 bowls of cereal in a ‘poor area’. (The Channel 4 reporter did not notice the bespoke chocolatier next door or the boxer-short boutique nearby, in which golden boxer shorts hang on hangers. He did not notice that the East End is

Tom Stacey

The deep instinct that Britain’s immigration debate still ignores

The issue of immigration won’t go away, because it threatens the soul of the nation. Nobody in political authority uses such language today, because they are unsure of the validity of ‘soul’ and of the political safety of the term ‘nation’. They will use the term ‘we’ in the context of Britain and its people, but would surely dodge defining it. Try as he might this election year, neither Cameron nor Miliband can do anything to persuade anxious voters they care about immigration, because they don’t use language which reaches the soul. No one else does either, not even Nigel Farage — it just won’t do. Yet only this abandoned

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Does anyone in London actually know how the Barnett Formula works?

We’ve just had two years of intensive constitutional politics. Time enough, you’d think, for even London-based politicians and commentators to work out how British politics actually works. But if you think that you’d be wrong. Very wrong. Consider our old friend the Barnett Formula. Antiquated and not entirely fit for purpose – it being a 1970s convenience that was itself an updated version of the 1880s Goschen Formula – but hardly a mystery or a terribly complicated piece of financial wizardry. And yet it seems that almost no-one in the Westminster village actually understands how Barnett works. Yesterday, you see, Jim Murphy promised that he would use Scotland’s share of

Monday

Ed West

A radical plan to ease Britain's housing shortage – double the population of London

Roger Scruton writes in today’s Daily Telegraph, a sentence that in itself fills me with a sense of Wa – harmony, order. He writes: ‘Whether or not our political class has the ability or the will to control immigration, we have to accept that many of the millions who have come to this country in the last two decades are here to stay, and will need to be housed. Without a massive expansion of the housing stock, prices will continue to rise and the pressure on planning laws and infrastructure will become increasingly difficult to manage. As a result we face a question that concerns every resident of Britain, and