A 12ft Dick Cheney puppet helped War on Want protest today against US and British pressure to hand control of Iraq’s oil to UK corporations. Iraq’s oil minister, Husayn al-Shahristani, is in London on Monday. Image taken on Embankment by McTumshie.......

Festival season embeds itself in our social life this week and makes a mockery of our diary – it’s all illegible scribblings, strike-throughs, and exclamation points. Whilst we attempt to sort ourselves out, let’s see what sense we can make of the week ahead in literary London for you... Monday: Bebop hep-cats (that’s right, hep-cats) converge on the Troubadour tonight to celebrate the 1950s poetry scene (8pm, £6/£5 concessions); biographers Anne Sebba and Andrew......

Honestly, what kind of topsy-turvy world is it where a man can't keep for himself the spoils of war he half-inched on a foreign lark? That's just what Boris Johnson is wondering. The mayor has been forced to hand over a cigar box that he pilfered from the charred remains of Baghdad to Scotland Yard. Boris was in Iraq in 2003, shortly after the fall of Saddam Hussein's government, when he visited the home......

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon will today unveil a memorial to casualties of war often ignored by the general public: reporters, journalists, photographers and their attendant translators killed whilst working. The memorial, a glass and steel cone atop the new wing of Broadcasting House in Portland Place, will shine a beacon of light into the sky at 10pm every evening. The International News Safety Institute estimates that two reporters are killed each week. Despite the......

When it comes to cons, John Wilmot, a City barrister, didn't just go big, he went jumbo. He attempted to get £17.5 million in VAT repayments by claiming he bought and sold four Boeing 747 engines for £100 million. What a barrister would be doing with a set of jumbo jet engines, we're not sure. If the story sounded suspicious enough already, it gets weirder. Wilmot apparently drew up some fake documents about a "business......

We began this week with a great big gaping void: the very excellent London Word Festival has come to an end (though you can watch highlights here), and our nearly 40-day-long combination chocolate and carbon dioxide fast has left us, well, a bit snippy (we’ll certainly be biting the heads off those cloyingly cute Lindt bunnies come this weekend). In short, we didn’t have great expectations for the week. Yet, after taking a look......

Decades ago, Notting Hill/Ladbroke Grove was the hippest part of London: a warren of squats, not quite legal after-hours drinking dens, hippies, proto-punks and political activists. This exhibition at London Print Studio is a commemoration of the posters and printed ephemera of this scene shown along side similar artwork from around the world and from more recent times. This is art born out of necessity; work that says it doesn't actually have to be......

Media regulators Ofcom have finally come to a conclusion about one of George Galloway's inappropriate outbursts on radio station TalkSport. As a sitting MP and representative of Bethnal Green and Bow, it was not acceptable for him to have hijacked the morning show for promoting himself as a better candidate for Poplar and Limehouse. Called to stand-in for regular hosts on the morning of 10 August, Galloway proceeded to outline his plan to pitch......

The London International Comics Festival is halfway over, so if you haven’t seen any of it yet you owe it to yourself to investigate some sweet action with paper, ink and speech bubbles. The festival continues to tackle a nicely wide range of topics, so this week the highlights we’ve chosen offer Halloween horror, an indie invasion and germane geopolitics. If the festival were a comic book itself, it would be coming to the......

Londonist was privileged enough to be able to sneak a quick interview with Gavin Pretor-Pinney in between his cloud-gazing activities and his idling. Actually, that was a very weak attempt at a clever introduction. Let’s try again with a drum roll this time. Meet Gavin Pretor-Pinhey, the iconic founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society, and the co-founder of The Idler. Oh, and proud London resident. Gavin, Londonist can easily understand idling (what is blogging except......

Naomi Klein, in conversation with Madeleine Bunting Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, 13th September 2007 "I am not a conspiracy theorist", insists Naomi Klein. Twice, in quick succession. Followed each time by a nervous laugh; a telling laugh. We are in the spacious surroundings of the Queen Elizabeth Hall on the South Bank, where Canadian journalist and activist Klein, whose 2000 book No Logo became a minor phenomenon in the halcyon days between the Seattle riots......

….you’re just pootling along the high street, minding your (or everybody else’s, if you’re a Londonist) business, when what do you espy? A piano. Just perched there on the pavement. You rub your eyes, and make a vow to cut back a bit on the old Lambrusco/JD/what you will. It cannot be. Ah, you think, it’s a practical joke: there’s a hidden camera somewhere…. Well, this slightly Python-esque scene is likely to be played......

It looks like summer might actually have arrived in London this week, but if you're determined to stay inside, here are a few things to help you bide the time. On TV, Londonist likes: Monday, 3 September – Wednesday, 5 September Dumped (Channel 4, 21:00-22:00) We’ve already told you about this interesting concept involving contestants living on a rubbish dump, and since you’re no doubt looking to fill the Big Brother void in your......

Happy first weekend of September - and happy Labor Day weekend, too, for our American cities! Let's take a look at what's been happening around the Ist-a-verse. The deaths of two firefighters shook Bostonist this week. Boston's firefighters bent over backwards all week long - first, they fought flames pouring from the Boston Tea Party museum, and then a restaurant fire killed two and injured many more. Their efforts make everything else - like Tom......

Surrey towns have always been known for being a bit lacklustre, but one is taking on the distinction of being heartless as well. In an act that would’ve made Jerry and Margo proud, more than 100 residents of Ashtead, near Epsom, have objected to a request by the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Families Association (SSAFA) for planning permission to convert a local property into a six-bedroom guest house. The house would be used by......

A classic piece of political theatre was played out yesterday in the Commons when George Galloway, the raging MP for Bethnal Green & Bow, was suspended for some decidly murky funding links to Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq. In the debate leading up to the decision, 'Gorgeous George' made his case in his ususal fiery style - citing everything from short-sword fighting to Julius Caesar's legions in his defence (defiance?). While everyone already knew......

Fresh this Week: Amr Gharbeia and Hari Kunzru consider the internet as a space for free expression and censorship at this event tonight. Amr Gharbeia is a leading Egyptian blogger, currently facing a legal campaign to block his website along with other blogs and human rights sites in Egypt. Hari Kunzru's novels and non-fiction engage with the theme of new technology and his recent writing highlights the complexities of internet censorship as a source......

This is a new weekend column brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 2. The difference a few metres of tarmac makes Last week, Liz mentioned our meeting with Jacqui Lait, the Shadow Minister for London. Having left her office, we went in search of a pint but got sidetracked at Parliament Square. As you may know…on 2nd June 2001 Brian Haw set up a demonstration......

This week – rage causes a lot of trouble in 28 Weeks Later and the memoirs of Nelson Mandela’s prison guard are opened in Goodbye Bafana. In 28 Days Later the Rage virus spread throughout Britain leaving it full of dead people and those that had killed them. Now, in 28 Weeks Later, the US Army has come to restore order, repopulate the city of London and, during the same process, also reunite families. Among......

Today the spotlight is firmly on Tony Blair. As he heads off into the political sunset, he may consider the high point of his premiership to be the securing of the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games for London - and the low point to be the war in Iraq. So it's fitting that the Olympic Park right this moment looks like a bomb-site. But this is not ordinary rubble, oh no - it is......

Fresh Next Week: This years T.S. Eliot Memorial Lecture is titled Lachrymae rerum: writing about loss. Dannie Abse reads both from Running Late, his latest collection of poetry, and from The Presence, a journal he has been keeping since his wife’s death in the summer of 2005. Alan Jenkins, Deputy Editor of the TLS, reads from his collection A Shorter Life, which includes poems about his mother’s illness and death that have been described......

This Day In London’s History 1937: A Japanese aircraft lands at Croydon Airport, setting a world record for the fastest flight from Tokyo to London. In the 1930s there had been considerable interest in establishing records for long distance flights, and a prize had been offered for the first flight between Paris and Tokyo to take less than 100 hours. However nobody had yet won this prize, despite many attempts, including one that failed......

In this new late-licence era, it is no longer the final chime of midnight that signals clocking off time for magic and wonder: more often than not, it is 3am when the carriage turns into a pumpkin, the beautiful gown turns into a ragged velour tracksuit and the prince turns into a boorish squaddie on the lash. Yes, Clarence House, home to Prince Charles, his good lady wife Camilla and Princes William and Harry,......

The British military have launched a new satellite: The British spacecraft is the first in what will eventually be a three-satellite constellation designed to allow the Army, Royal Navy and RAF to pass much more data, faster between command centres. "Skynet's going to provide five times the capacity that the previous system provided, and allow the military to do things they just haven't been able to do in the past," Mr Woods explained. Isn't......

Londonist loves a good protest; they're excellent for the constitution. Nothing like a nice amble all the way from Speaker's Corner to Trafalgar Square with 60,000 (or 2,000, or 100,000, depending on who you listen to) of your fellow Londoners, while carrying an "amusingly" modified placard expressing your outrage about something or other. Yes, Saturday was Stop Trident/Troops Out Of Iraq/Don't Attack Iran marching day, and so march we did, from that symbolic home......

We love BBC America's anglophenia because it's always interesting to see what the other side of the pond thinks about the happenings in our own little goldfish bowl. This post, however, tackled a more serious subject than the usual pop culture geography when anglophenia popped over here for a visit: The next 20 minutes or so I spent were both familiar and frustrating. I stood alongside Shaftesbury Avenue with my arm extended nearly vertically,......

Lambeth town hall has come if for a good kicking: AN INFAMOUS council has become the worst in London. Lambeth has been judged the poorest performing council in the capital. It is now ranked among the five most pitiful councils in the whole of England. The borough's Labour administration has been left reeling after the national body that measures local authorities' performance decided the council's services to residents had got worse. The Audit Commission......

Yup, the towering innuendo has been sold by Swiss Reinsurance for over a billion dollars. German real estate company IVG are the proud new owners, but Swiss Re will remain the main tennants. OK, it's rather dull news. We got bored trying to work out if it means anything interesting. It doesn't. So here instead are an assortment of other things the investors could have got for their money... - All the heart failure......

Kind of. The Tricycle theatre is set to follow its stagings of the Stephen Lawrence inquiry, the Bloody Sunday hearings and the Hutton inquiry with a staged indictment of Tony Blair for a crime of aggression against Iraq. The real PM won't be present of course, but the lawyers, testimony and expert witnesses will be" The theatre will create the event itself and then use actors to stage a condensed version entitled The Indictment......

This story from Middle East Online is worth a post simply to show the photograph of our PM scurrying back onto BlairForceOne like he suddenly remembered he left the gas on. Not only do observers believe the prime minister's stock is damaged at home due to the war in Iraq, they find the conflict and his close alignment with the United States have harmed his reputation in the Middle East. Add to that the......