Predictably enough as there was nothing else on the table, Islington Council condemned the Sobell Centre at their last executive meeting, voting to demolish it and build a brand new centre on the site. Furious campaigners and local residents are now girding themselves for a drawn out programme of resistance to further gauge local opinion and oppose planning permission. With the Council brandishing a survey completed by under 1500 people as proof of support for......

There's a storm brewing over the future of Sobell Leisure Centre in Hornsey Road, Holloway. Passionate local residents and users of the 1973, concrete block of a diverse, multi-purpose sports facility are accusing Islington Council of steamrolling ahead with plans to demolish and rebuild the centre in spite of strong local feeling in favour of refurbishment. The current plan would mean the closure of any facility at Sobell for 2 years whilst it was......

In order to arrive at its current policy of green box and brown box recycling collections alongside normal rubbish, Islington Council had to do its homework and weigh the options. What more sensible way of doing this than sifting through samples of household rubbish to ascertain what folks were actually chucking out and take it from there? Unfortunately, the prevalent paranoia about identity theft and (understandable) fear of civil liberties being eroded means that......

First Kilo the Cat, now Diesel the Dog – call it animal cruelty, antipathy, or apathy, it all incenses us just the same. Below we mete out armchair justice (and reveal why our law career never got off the ground). The Facts: A June 22 fire in a flat above their home left the Driscoll family, including healthy 5-year-old golden retriever Diesel, without a place to live. Islington Council found the family emergency housing......

Local trader Mike Weedon has proposed new toilets to be built in the trendy bar and club-filled area of Islington. The proposal has been taken seriously by Islington Council as imore public conveniences should be available ... but not if they're named after Joe Orton. This infamous homosexual playwright of the 1960s rocked London with controversial plays such as 'Loot', What the Butler Saw' and 'Entertaining Mr Sloane' (a corpse in a cupboard and......

Unless you’ve had your head buried in the sand since Blair morphed into Brown, the government has now put housing at the forefront of the political agenda, having realised that the current lack of residential units being built is totally inadequate. At the frontline of this campaign is the need to build more homes in brown-field sites in our cities so that we can edge towards those housing targets of about 200,000 a year.......

We’ve been giving the Guinness World Records a playful mauling lately. (Yes, we can be oxymoronic as well as moronic.) Their steady slide from must-have resource to watery fact porridge has been working our danders up for some time. Islington Council aren’t as miffed with the good book, and clearly want a listing. Residents in north London believe they have found one of the shortest yellow lines in the country in their street. The......

Last week we told you all about the killer centipede which was terrorising London...kind of. So it's nice to be able to report today that the Scolopendra Gigantea has now been returned to its rightful owner. As the BBC reports today, the nine-inch monster is nw back in Islington with its owner and "exotic pet enthusiast" Gary Creasy. Lucky Islington. Mr Creasy picked up the centipede (which, disappointingly, doesn't have a name) from the......

Islington Council has installed specially constructed benches for its resident hardcore street drinkers. The benches have been designed so "the eight to 10 men who frequent the area can drink and chat in peace," and lean inwards as this is apparently the best position for "adult drinkers". Ashtrays, bins, and a low wall for privacy have also been installed as part of the £1 million regeneration scheme for the area leading up to Old......