Taking to the stage at the Handover Party in Beijing, his successful flag-unfurling and debut on the international stage complete, Mayor Boris Johnson finally returned to a theme he has occasionally expounded since his election in May: expanding the capital's lexicon. Having re-introduced us to the joys of "piffle" and "cripes" in his three months at the City Hall tiller, the Mayor used the opportunity of addressing London's bid team to discourse on the......

Ken Livingston's vision of driving a Routemaster to Beijing as a 2012 promotional exercise may have been ditched as a total waste of time and money because of the Sichuan earthquake but the bus itself is still in line to be the star of the handover ceremony at the end of this summer's Games. In fact, it's already on it's way in a container ship. As for the spangly ceremonials, as per the rumours,......

As the repercussions continue around the Premiership's shock announcement that it was going to take its brand of football around the world in a weekend, its chief executive Richard Scudamore is determined that the plan should survive in some way, shape or form. As we mentioned last week, FIFA's regional associations and its president Sepp Blatter himself have come out in opposition to the idea of our league matches encroaching on their territories at......

Another reason (as if one was needed) for Londoners to be interested in the US presidential race: Democratic hopeful Barack Obama has revealed that he is a West Ham fan.. The White House hopeful's love for all things claret 'n blue stems from a visit to England five years ago, when his Kent-dwelling extended family introduced him to the passion of the Boleyn Ground faithful, and he's been hooked ever since. If Londonist recalls......

The Mayoral race has been quiet recently. Londonist suspects that it is the calm before the shitstorm. According to a recent poll, Boris is only one point behind Ken. A sign that campaigning is going to start making a dent on the Winehouse news in the London Lite is that Boris, from the blue corner, has launched a new Back Boris website. The photo gallery shows us that recently the campaign trail has taken......

Banner week for SFist as the site's new editor introduced himself -- hooray for Brock! While the NY Times weighed in on SF's mayoral race, only SFist had the (insert tongue firmly into cheek) hard-hitting latest on candidate/activist Josh Wolf. Coverage of a protest vs. gentrification spawned a fantastic debate amongst SFist's readers. Finally, from the sublime to the ridiculous: video of a man that confused a Board of Supes meeting with "open mic......

We have to admit when we first saw this advertised we didn't have much of an idea what to expect. Henry VIII certainly knew how to cut it with the ladies, but we reckoned that a re-enactment of His Majesty's finest chat-up lines was unlikely, particularly in the middle of a river. It turns out that the Tudor Pull is run by the Thames Traditional Rowing Association and features crews of six oarsmen rowing......

The Bank of England have raised interest rates for the third time in five months. This time to 5.25%. After yesterday's confusing news from Real Madrid, it's been confirmed that David Beckham will leave the Spanish squad for LA Galaxy at the end of the season. It's Simon Amstell vs Preston. We know which side we're on. A police investigation has started after a mother and her two children were found dead in a......

...he's a very speedy boy. But that's about it for now. 22,500 England fans plus one England manager finally got to see Arsenal's Theo Walcott play last night in England's B international at Reading and the wonderful news was that the 17 year-old forward didn't do anything terribly wrong and, unlike the excruciatingly unlucky third choice goalkeeper Robert Green, didn't get hurt, so Theomania can continue to take the pressure away from the players......

On Saturday afternoon the whole nation, while not wishing injury on anyone, might have breathed a sigh of relief that the most goal-shy, undisciplined striker of England’s world cup qualifying campaign was unlikely to play more than a cameo role in this summer’s finals tournament. Instead the reaction has been more what you’d expect if the government announced all English telephone codes were changing at the end of the week. Such is the importance......

That's right, it's the news you were all waiting for - your favourite London multi-contributor weblog has come out in support of the FA's bid to hire Luiz Felipe Scolari as the new England head coach. SHAZAM! We do realise that this isn't the kind of announcement that will convince Big Phil to drop his extravagant pay demands and sign on the dotted line, we just felt compelled to speak up against all the frenzied......

Guns. A big issue with our cousins across the pond. The 2nd Amendment to the constitution means that people can keep assault rifles at home, and with Bush and his cronies in the White House, it doesn't look like there will be any changes to the law anytime soon. American Liberals, however, are increasingly using the media to get across their simple and sensible message: Gun crime will not decrease unless gun laws are......

As the Met begin their "swift" probe of the weekend's protests it turns out that the man who dressed up as a suicide bomber is in fact a convicted drug dealer who has been out of jail for less than a year. A British Airways flight heading for Heathrow from Newark, New Jersey was diverted to Boston's Logan International Airport after smoke was reported in the cockpit. It landed safely and there were no injuries.......

How many Londonist readers who've never thought of buying a lottery ticket in their lives before have found themselves tempted in the recent weeks by the obscenely escalating Euro Millions jackpot (estimated prize this week: £125,000,000). And how many of you have actually went out and bought a ticket only to have some high-minded killjoy let you know that your chances of winning are akin to playing a roulette wheel five times the size......

Maybe you don't have any children. Maybe you do. Do they like football? Maybe. If they do, then there will be no 'maybes' about it, they are going to be begging you to send them to the David Beckham Soccer Academy , which had its official opening in Greenwich (it's next to the Dome) today . This is the Disneyland of football academies, and every young lad or lass that dreams of one day......

It was reported over the weekend that the IOC have been busy putting together "a timetable of deadlines" to meet over the next seven years in the run-up to the Olympics. There isn't much detail on this "timetable of milestones" except for something about sponsorship plans and budgets. However Londonist can reveal that a section of the plan was leaked to us earlier today and we can now give you a sneak peek at......

Finally a bit of news involving the new Wembley Stadium that doesn't involve the word 'delayed'. According to the BBC today a new statue of Bobby Moore will stand outside the main stadium entrance on Wembley Way as of next year. The statue will be sculpted by Philip Jackson who was chosen from a shortlist of artists (sculptor idol?). Jackson's past work includes likenesses of Sir Matt Busby outside Old Trafford, the Queen in......

A couple of weeks ago we ran a couple of stories about BBC's London news reporter Matt Barbet and what seemed to be a growing legion of 'Barbettes' - Barbet groupies who were watching Matt on the telly for more than his incisive reporting skills. At the end of one of those posts we suggested that maybe we should interview Matt to try and get to the bottom of this phenomenon. Well it seems......

Forget David Beckham. Never mind Sir Steve 'ooh look at all my medals' Redgrave. If you want to get serious about hosting an Olympic Games then you have to go for the big guns. And when it comes to Olympics the guns don't get any bigger than Daley Thompson. Lest we forget, this is the man who not only won consecutive gold medals at both the 1980 and '84 Olympics, but also whistled his......

Poor (channel) Five. It comes across as Channel Four's idiot brother doing it's best to imitate and catch up, but not realising that the only reason that anyone gives it any attention at all is out of pity because it was obviously dropped on its head at birth (not a surprise seeing as midwife duties were given to the Spice Girls). We knew kids at school who were a little like Five; desperate for......

Wednesday night on Channel 4 and you can't really miss watching a TV programme with that title - specially when you know it's not going to be about pantomime Dames or David Beckham's latest "fashion" statement. The documentary was hosted by Turner Prize winning artist Grayson Perry who we probably all remember going to pick up his prize in a little baby doll dress, complete with puffed sleeves and full petticoats.......

Question: which major worldwide brand opened a flagship store in central London this month? Answer: Adidas. Maybe not the best scheduling decision the world has ever seen. After all, we don't recall seeing people queueing days in advance just to catch a glimpse of David Beckham, who (apparently) opened the new "Sport Performance Centre" on Oxford Street. The store was "conceived" by design consultancy Project-X and has a "wholly black interior" which actually makes it......

We haven't posted much about the Olympic bid recently. Mainly because you can read about it just about everywhere, but also because we're sick to the back teeth of it. When it gets to the point where they're using the DLR as a promotional tool then, to be honest, we just stop listening. But even we have to admit that the latest promotional release from London's 2012 team is pretty impressive. At four minutes......

Don't worry we're not going to go all Hello magazine on you. This isn't about "stunning interiors" and "fabulous hallways", it's about the curse of Chelsea football club. First up, Sven-Goran Eriksson, who has had a few 'connections' with the west London club, to say the least. On Sunday night the windows at the England manager's four-storey house were put through, and it happened again the following night. Plus the words "Sven Goran" were written......