Is this London's own political freebie scandal?
Plus: A tube train in the Channel Tunnel; the story of Maggie Smith's doppelgänger gets even weirder.
Welcome to London Centric, where the autumn chill is just starting to get into our bones – but I’m going to ask you to think about festival season.
There’s been a lot of chatter in recent weeks about the government’s issues with freebies. Every day there’s another story about Keir Starmer being fed, clothed, and taken to Arsenal executive boxes by political donors. It’s not always the gift itself that annoys people – it’s how it feels in an era when money for treats is tight and many people are banned from receiving presents by their workplace.
Today, a London Centric investigation reveals what could be the capital’s own political freebie scandal. This is the story of how local councillors are receiving VIP tickets worth thousands of pounds to attend private events held in public parks such as Mighty Hoopla, Winter Wonderland, and All Points East – sometimes just before the festival promoters ask the same councils permission to expand their operations.
It raises questions about who should control London’s public green spaces, how councils are using the income from events to plug budget shortfalls, and whether elected officials should do more to avoid conflicts of interests.
Over the coming weeks London Centric will be detailing the wider freebie culture at some London councils. But in today’s edition, paid subscribers can scroll to the end to find out which politicians have been partying in the VIP section – or (appropriately) you can take out a free trial.
A Piccadilly line tube train went through the Channel Tunnel
The first new Piccadilly line train, due to enter service next year complete with air conditioning and no doors between carriages, has arrived in the UK. While Transport for London is keen to emphasise that most of the trains will be built in East Yorkshire (levelling-up is still a thing!) the first few have been built in Vienna.
But how do you get a tube train from Austria to the UK?
The answer is by hauling it through the Channel Tunnel, Transport for London told London Centric. Sadly, this Eurostar-dodging service under the sea was achieved without any passengers on board, before being towed around London’s mainline railways. If you were awake early on Monday morning you’d have seen the strange sight (for south London) of a tube train being dragged through Lewisham, Peckham, and Clapham.
Impressively, within hours of arriving in the capital, the very first new Piccadilly line train had already been covered in graffiti tags. Welcome to London!
It’s ten days since the first proper edition of London Centric was published – and it’s already had an impact. Last week’s story about London hospitals charging for wheelchairs has prompted a petition signed by tens of thousands of people, been discussed on Jeremy Vine’s show, and been raised in the House of Lords by Green peer Natalie Bennett.
Meanwhile, Sadiq Khan’s team has requested a meeting with the owners of the Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club to discuss its future. Members of the club have also called an emergency meeting to discuss last week’s investigation into their proposal to sell the club – and to find out who leaked to London Centric.
In response to the London Centric investigation, a spokesperson for mayor Sadiq Khan said it was “hugely concerning” that the club’s much-loved queer-friendly events have been suspended. They insisted the mayor is committed to “securing a cultural future for the building”.
The five most expensive publicly-listed properties in London right now:
Five bedroom penthouse flat with a swimming pool in Knightsbridge, £80m
Six bedroom new-build terrace which claims to be “inspired by Georgian townhouses” in Chelsea, £47m
Two weeks ago MailOnline published the final pictures of the beloved actor Maggie Smith. Taken by a paparazzo outside the Lemonia restaurant in north London’s Primrose Hill, the news outlet described how Smith hit the wine list and even “slipped into character” to admonish some children. It helps that you can’t libel the dead.
The only problem, as Popbitch later noted, was that the pictures were really of a “random old woman”. The reporters at Camden New Journal have now done some actual journalism and tracked down the lady in question, who isn’t exactly delighted. It’s worth reading their report because – and this is apparently how life is in Primrose Hill – it turns out MailOnline accidentally photographed Charlie Chaplin’s daughter-in-law.
Austerity makes Scrooges of us all: Havering council has said it can no longer afford Christmas trees or lights for its outer London high streets due to ever-growing spending pressures.
I’m just about to send out the invites to the London Centric launch party. Founding members are guaranteed an invite – so if you are tempted and want to support high-quality local journalism for London, do consider buying founding status. It’s the support of paying subscribers that has enabled me to employ investigative reporter Cormac Kehoe to help on today’s story.
London Centric investigates: The councillors receiving free VIP tickets for the festivals they licence
Jim Waterson and Cormac Kehoe
If you take a trip down to Brockwell Park in south London today and walk over the ground then you’ll still see the bare patches of mud left behind after this summer’s Mighty Hoopla festival. The event took place in July, during one of the recent London summer’s interminable rainy periods, leaving organisers desperately shovelling bales of hay on the muddy ground in a bid to ensure it went ahead. Eventually they just about pulled off the two day festival – complete with a Rita Ora performance that went viral when no one knew her songs – but the ground has yet to recover.
Mega events in London’s parks are an increasingly contentious issue. Even now, though the warm summer days are gone, chunks of Regent’s Park have been given over to the Frieze art fair, while the enormous festive behemoth of Winter Wonderland will soon start to rise up in Hyde Park.
For many Londoners these events are one of the best things about living in the capital, seeing globally famous acts close to your home in giant venues such Victoria Park in east London, or Finsbury Park in the north.
For others, they’re another example of the privatisation of public spaces, ruining the environment with giant fenced-off areas containing the £80-a-ticket crowd drinking expensive pints of Madri, as the have-nots listen over the wall.
Ultimately, whether or not the events go ahead – and which promoters get to profit from the privatisation of public space – depends on licences issued by elected local politicians in whichever London borough controls the park.
What might surprise some Londoners is that, inside the cordon, they may find themselves rubbing shoulders with some of those same local politicians wearing VIP wristbands.
London Centric has found that festival promoters are giving free tickets worth thousands of pounds to local councillors for events. In some cases this was shortly before the same promoters applied to increase the number of people allowed to attend future events, or for variations in their alcohol licence – decisions that sometimes lay in the hands of the politicians on their hospitality lists.
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