Jury service can be a drag, we imagine (Londonist's youthfulness precluding it from being summoned to rule over our fellow citizens). How to make the time go quickly? You could do like Homer Simpson did and wear a pair of oversized comedy glasses to surreptitiously snooze behind. Or you could smuggle in some class Cs and attempt to drive down Doobie Lane while deciding the verdict. A juror from Surbiton tried just that last......

The Legal Cafe 81 Haverstock Hill NW3 4SL 020 7586 7412 Expect to pay: around £3-£6 for a light bite, £2 for a coffee, £120 for a one hour legal consultation. Rating: 7 out of 10 Soups, salads, sarnies and...subpoenas? This tasteful cafe brings new meaning to the phrase 'law and order'. On the one hand, it's a friendly corner café serving light bites and superior Illy coffee. On the other, it offers cut-price......

If Londonist were to steal oodles of cash from our employers, we'd probably make like Joyti de Laurey, the Goldman Sachs secretary who helped herself to millions of pounds that she squandered on jewelry, speedboats and a Cyprus villa before landing in jail. What we probably wouldn't do is get our hands on the cash then blow the lot on strippers. Yet that's exactly what a lawyer for Radcliffes Le Brasseur did between 2003......

We're very excited. After years of overdosing on the American cop/detective/legal thriller franchises it looks like we're finally getting our own. Law and Order's crossing the pond. Of course, we'd prefer CSI but beggars can't be choosers. We love The Bill but its East End beat patrol and trademark frontline grit put it at the other end of the entertainment scale to L&O which deals with the more cerebral end of arrest and trial,......

To top off a year of switching the telly off standby, turning down the thermostat and carbon offsetting concern, you can now give a loved one 12 square metres of greenbelt land for Christmas. Yes, you can help protect London's precious remaining circle of undeveloped land by purchasing bits of it through the Good Gifts catalogue, run by the Charities Advisory Trust. 12 square metres is apparently the size of your average living room.......

You may have noticed the streets were very crowded in central London on Saturday but this wasn't a pre-emptive swipe at the shops for early Christmas shopping - it was London's participation in a global rally on climate change. Coinciding with the climate change summit in Bali, there were demonstrations, marches and general activity around the world to put pressure on governments to prioritise climate change measures. Targets for lowering greenhouse emissions as set......

The Holiday season is in full swing in NYC, with holiday lights in Brooklyn, a giant snow globe in Bryan Park and Chanukah specials for ham. One citizen decided to go vigilante on annoying car alarms, a murder suspect used a fake Asian accent on the stand and a video of a man being beaten up by teenage girls on a subway shocked the city. And we interviewed soon-to-be-leaving-Gawker editor Choire Sicha, who said,......

That's right. As from today, King's Cross Thameslink is no more. The outmoded station on Pentonville Road closed for business yesterday. Services now stop beneath St Pancras International on new platforms (pictured). It seems to be the law these days that anything recently opened must be trumpeted as 'shiny new'. Not so with these platforms. IanVisits describes a 'clinical grey feel', but with much widened access. Diamond Geezer, meanwhile, gives a fitting eulogy to......

A group of men robbed a St Pancras telecommunications firm on Thursday evening by dressing up as policemen, in a plot bearing a touch of Alanis Morissette about it. The thieves were let into the building by one of the firm’s employees, after claiming to be investigating reports of people on the roof. Once inside, they ditched their pretensions to law and order and tied up five members of staff. They then made off......

Or is it? Samina Malik, self-described “lyrical terrorist”, yesterday became the first women sentenced under the Terrorism Act. Found guilty last month of collecting materials “useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism”, including original poetry with titles such as How to Behead and The Living Martyrs, the 23-year-old West Londoner was given a suspended jail sentence, during which time she will be required to undertake supervised community service for 18......

Five years ago, Sharon and Terri Arnold solicited firefighter Andy Bathie’s help in starting a family. Under the assurance that he would bear no financial or emotional responsibility for the children’s upbringing, he twice obliged. The women had a boy and a girl, but broke up soon after. And Bathie, who thought he had been doing his friends a favour, now finds himself financially liable for the children. Charity, apparently, sometimes comes with a......

In years to come as historians look back on the events that triggered the untimely demise of this once great nation of ours, they'll probably be analysing the following timeline: October 2003: First grumblings about raising the Council Tax in London to pay for the Olympics if we get it. February 2006: Travelling Ken asks for a bit more money to fund the Olympics, 65p a week on London's Council Tax bills. December 2007:......

A special two-for-one offer on gig reviews this time. Londonist saw the slightly odd combination of Gorgoroth (old-school Norwegian black metal) at Scala on Wednesday, and former System Of A Down frontman Serj Tankian the next night at the Astoria. Musically they were worlds apart, despite a shared taste for heavy riffs.Gorgoroth are not a band for the faint-hearted. Once arrested in Poland for a "blasphemous" stage show that included naked women on crucifixes and......

Our weekly roundup of film reviews continues, courtesy of James Bryan… This week Michael Caine and Jude Law give it some Pinter in Sleuth, Wes Anderson delivers his latest quirky offering in The Darjeeling Limited, Christian Bale eats maggots in Rescue Dawn and Blade Runner gets polished up in a new release. Sleuth should be a masterpiece, a quartet of talent coming together to intimidate us all into how it’s done. We’ve got national......

Amidst calls for their boss' resignation, it's reassuring to know that some London cops haven't lost sight of the big issues facing modern policing - namely, getting "ethnically diverse" mascots on our streets. "PCSO Steve", whose beat covers primary schools in and around Sutton, has spent the past couple of years attending community events and glad-handing celebrities and politicians. Now before you get all high-horsey about the money wasted on PCSOs, we should point......

It is pretty cool and rather rare when an almost A-list celeb truly proves their worth, rolls up their sleeves and gets their hands dirty. Jemimah Khan has in the last day or two shown herself to be a woman of astonishing integrity and courage, and Londonist is feeling like a right bitch for previously thinking anything less of her. The press call her a ‘former socialite’, but once a socialite, always thus: it is......

File this one under the ‘Huh, you don’t say’ department: A recent report by legal recruitment specialists Hughes-Castell has found that City lawyers are raking in big paycheques. Average starting salaries for new solicitors have for the first time climbed above £60,000. And of course, although that means that some newly minted lawyers are making less than £60,000, it also means that others are making more - with some firms paying as much as......

Oh, that Jude Law! Grown women swoon and keel over at the mere mention of his name. Men grind their teeth and glower with untrammeled jealousy when glimpsing his visage on a magazine cover or film poster. Such is his star quality. Those brooding yet boyish eyes. That elegantly receding hairline. He really is quite something. While he's a big Hollywood movie star these days, Our Jude does love to hang out in his......

Fun Fun Fun Fest 2007 Recap from Super!Alright! on Vimeo. Austinist attended a town hall meeting about proposed noise ordinances that could undermine the city's future as the Live Music Capital of the World, and lamented the possible loss of Texas's only feminist bookstore. Throughout the week, they interviewed a bunch of indie fashion designers and D-I-Y websites—Etsy, Ornamental Things, 31 Corn Lane, and Aorta Designs—for the upcoming Stitch Fashion Show. They also did......

New writing theatre company Paines Plough are presenting an absolutely cracking new way to see plays this autumn and making us think that there should be more theatre programmed like this. New writing, an exciting theatre space, a sensible time slot, a hot snack and a drink are all included in the ticket price and you can be on your way having had your culture fix by 8pm when other theatres are raising the......

IBM will run the congestion charge. Will Haw's Law be revoked? London Grand Prix not ruled out. Got an opinion about Tube accessibility? Help TfL decide priority stations for step-free access. Read the background on Diamond Geezer. Did we mention that it's our birthday? Image courtesy of Homemade via the Londonist flickr group.......

We think Josie Long is magic. Like, properly magic. With spells and prestidigitation and conjuration and that. This is the only way we can explain how she is able to perform to sell-out crowds at a venue as large at The Bloomsbury Theatre, but still totally capture the spirit, warmth, friendliness and intimacy of a small, lo-fi indie comedy gig. When we saw her earlier this year at Stewart Lee's fund-raiser to release a......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 19. Spinning Argh! No wonder there is apathy. At the time of writing this, a general election is still undecided, although if Gordon Brown goes ahead with it, it could lead to a really exciting time. They are going to really be schmoozing us lot, as our demographic are least likely to vote. In preparation......

A night of clubbing is as much about the music you want to hear as it is the experience you hope to get out of it. Whilst there are endless opportunities to don your best threads and brave the night buses to see and be seen, we prefer to come as we are, get sweaty and get down. With their irresistible selection of post-punk and electro classics and obscurities, Our Disco ticks all our......

There are some very pissed newts in Stratford, as the Olympic Planning busy bees have slapped a compulsory purchase order on their current ponds to make way for a cycle track. Actually, they shouldn’t be that pissed off, as they are to be offered a bijou new des res in an all new pond nearby replete with grub-friendly foliage and goo (and they’ll probably be given discount vouchers for the velodrome ‘an’ all). The Great......

It would seem that Mayor Livingstone, famous for courting the unusual, is at it again. He is new-best-friends with the Polish community in London. His jolly japes this time include a Polish reception at Town Hall, replete with pierogi and pickles, and a trip to POSK, the Polish Community Centre in Hammersmith. He is quite the darling of the Polish press, by all accounts. Of course only the very cynical would suggest that it has......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 14. The Right To Protest It seems to me that the government is particularly exposed whenever it is seen to block the right of its citizens to protest. Freedom of speech and the right to protest are two of the founding pillars of democracy, and that is what the government is fighting so many wars......

14. The Jewel House Apparition Mr Edmond Lenthal Swift was the Keeper of the Crown Jewels, at the Tower Of London from 1814 to 1842. It was here, as mentioned in a previous episode, that a sentry encountered a huge phantom bear, which he reported to Mr Swift, before dying of shock two days after the frightful incident in which he speared the creature with his bayonet, only for the blade to pass right......

The second of our interviews with the Tory candidates for London Mayor. Previously, Andrew Boff. Victoria Borwick is a born and bred London lass whose Mayoral campaign carries the tagline 'A red head not Red Ken'. She has 25 years of management experience and is currently a councillor for Kensington and Chelsea. She has four children, doesn't like tinny techno and knows a thing or two about Cleopatra's Needle. But does she have the......

The Health Professions Council is a statutory body set up to regulate 13 health professions including dieticians, radiographers, paramedics and arts therapists. As they say, when you need one of these people, You need to know that they meet professional standards. You also need to know that someone will take action if things go wrong. Unfortunately, the farcical nature of such regulation has been highlighted today by the case of Derek Gale, working out......