It's not quite the same as having the local bobby back on the beat, but a scheme trialled in south London that addresses public unease with the remote, impersonal nature of modern policing is set to be rolled out across London. The £325 million Home Office plan will see each council ward assigned a team of police and community support officers, with residents given a mobile phone number and email address to contact their......

Jens Lehmann might be damaging his chances of playing in goal for Germany by allowing himself to spend an extended period on Arsenal's substitutes' bench since being dropped early in the season, but there's no way he's going to try his luck back in his native country, or probably even outside the M25. Speaking as rumours of a move to former club Borussia Dortmund surfaced, the often forthright custodian explained: Crime levels are really......

You wouldn’t think Jacqui Smith scares easily. In her time as Home Secretary she’s dealt with car bombs and blazing jeeps, and she’s lately been facing down a bunch of mightily annoyed cops. But in an interview appearing today in the Sunday Times, Jacqui revealed that she wouldn’t dare walk down a London street alone at night. Would she feel safe walking alone at night in, say, Hackney, east London? She looks alarmed: “No.......

The third of our interviews with the Tory candidates for London Mayor. Previously, Victoria Borwick and Andrew Boff. Warwick Lightfoot has, no doubt, spent a lifetime tolerating jibes about his Tolkeinesque name. He's also acquired an outstanding CV that includes stints as Mayor of Kensington and Chelsea, Special Advisor to the Chancellor and 20 years experience as a councillor. Most impressively of all, he's the first Tory candidate to admit to vomiting on the......

In the UK, public inquiries are used as a way of scrutinising our systems and making sure they work as they ought to. The tragic death of Victoria Climbié rightly triggered an inquiry which concluded that had timely action been taken on any one of twelve opportunities for intervention which were identified, Victoria might still be alive. More widely, the inquiry looked into how well – or how badly – public bodies work with......

A government official is interviewed about the villainous terrorist threat. In the background Christmas shoppers rush home with their treasures: "Deputy Minister, what do you think is behind this recent increase in terrorist bombings?" "Bad sportsmanship." Sorry. Got a little off track there. We at Londonist were recently rereading the screenplay for Brazil, one of our favorite movies. But in other news… Home Secretary John Reid tells us that it is highly likely the......

We can all now relax a little as the chances of a terror attack are merely 'highly likely' rather than 'imminent'. The threat level has at last been downgraded by the home office to its second highest flavour. The US Department of Homeland Security has correspondingly downgraded its threat level for flights from the UK from code red to code orange (that's Elmo to Ernie for those who favour the Sesame Street terror alert system).......

Well we finally got our own American style terrorist threat level and it's already gone all the way up to 4: The government today made public its official assessment of the threat of a terrorist attack, warning that it is "severe" - meaning an attack is highly likely. The five-level categorisation is published for the first time on the MI5 website, and is one degree short of the most severe rating - "critical", which......

Prescott Plays Away Oh yes, the most unlikely news. Prescott, the multiple-Jaguar owning, language-mangling trouser-stretching (yes, in THAT way too, evidently) Deputy PM has had an affair with a woman 20 years his junior. His lover, Tracey Temple, was at the time Prescott's assistant private secretary, and took on the role of diary secretary to Two Jags. They began an illicit relationship at an office party in 2002, and started meeting secretly in a......

Straw Defends Gaza Evacuation As Londonist writes, the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, is defending the decision to pull British prison monitors out of a prison in Gaza just days before Israeli forces stormed it, looking to seize a prisoner that the Palestinian authorities will not release. The question is whether this withdrawal amounts to an endorsement by the British Government of the Israeli actions. Jack Straw has said that this is not the case,......

Clarke Remains Defiant After Lords Defeat Home Secretary Charles Clarke has vowed to battle on with his proposed ID cards legislation after it was defeated in the Lords last night. Their Lordships, many of whom come from a law background, feel that making the cards compulsary, is an infringement of people's human rights, and as such, is beyond the power of Government. They duly voted 227 to 166 against the proposal last night. Whether......

Computer equipment belonging to the man investigating the death of Princess Diana has been stolen The stuff that conspiracy filled dreams are made of. The Met are on the case. A teenage girl arrested on suspicion of murdering a young man by stabbing him in the heart has been released on bail. Police appeal for witnesses. A 45-year-old man has been arrested following a raid on a "sophisticated" cannabis factory... police community support officers......

We never thought we'd miss David Blunkett but we're sorry to say that new Home Secretary Charles Clarke makes us look back on the fuzzy faced fascist with renewed longing. Say what you will about Blunkett but at least his guide dog liked him. Mr Clarke, after running into the same silly laws that used to wind up his predecessor, has decided to try and ram home his new "extreme measures" to stop those......

Those of you who hoped that the resignation of David Blunkett, the most right-wing Home Secretary this country has had for decades, would have seen a shift to more liberal tolerance and understanding will be disappointed to hear of Home Office plans to remove some registry offices from their official list. The reason behind the Home Office's action is that there are too many bloody foreigners getting married in London. Being born outside the......

(Well, we had to use that headline eventually) It seems Londonist just can't avoid sex today. The BBC has been telling us what a hotbed of raunchy activity Hyde Park was in the Sixties ("In 1962, 61 cases of prostitution, 181 of indecent behaviour and 27 of 'male importuning' were reported in the central London park" apparently); and now someone has just pointed us in the direction of Time Out's "sex survey" The Survey, designed......