A Putney cottage designed by Erno Goldfinger has been illegally destroyed. Arbus Ltd, of Croydon, applied for permission to pull down the building in 2002, but was refused. Living up to his surname, Director of the company Rajiv Laxman paid little heed to the order and the building’s Grade II listed status, demolishing the cottage anyway. He’s now been ordered to pay £11,000 and forced to rebuild the property using the same design and......

So ex-Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's Milan, deducted eight league points for their involvement in the Calciopoli scandal, provide Europe's club champions, sitting alongside the Italian nation's triumph at last summer's world cup. (Incidentally, anyone who still disbelieves Filippo Inzaghi that Milan practice free kicks such as the one they scored from should have a look at this.) Former Milan CEO Adriano Galliani, banned for five months for his part in Calciopoli, was prominent amongst......

Seattlest has a talk with the photographer from last week's "Segway Mom" and then experiences some dissension in the ranks over the question of wine vs. beer. It's not West Side Story, but about as close as they'll get. They're also still waiting on some inbox relief after a spammer is arrested. As Chicagoist counts down the days to its third anniversary party, they found all-organic pizza to be underwhelming amidst the hoopla, tried......

File this one under 'what the f*ck'. Hello. Please introduce yourselves, and your cause. We're the London Urban Ironing Collective. Our parents were diagnosed with Cancer in December 2006, so we decided to raise money for Cancer Research UK using the medium of ironing. We're asking Londoners to suggest well known locations where they'd like to see us carrying out Textile Crease Management (TCM). They donate money to Cancer Research UK on our website. make......

And on the eighth day, God created overdrafts. And we all rejoiced and said “It is good” and hit up the high street for some more brand name labels and useless knick knacks. Banking: it’s not a glamorous business, really. They have been entrusted with people’s life savings, the fruit of their blood, sweat and tears, and what do they do? They make us jump through hoops like so many toy poodles in ballerina......

The mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg (yes, Bloomberg as in that media conglomerate), is in London at the moment to look in greater detail at why so many international firms are moving their M&A activity and their currency trading to our very own City - away from his home turf. US firms - especially the ones that earn fat fees from such business - aren’t happy about the shift, with consultants McKinsey having......

Do you know your Sexual Orientation Regulations? Sounds like they should involve a spinning bottle and a Twister mat, but it turns out they simply ensure that gay people get the same rights as everyone else. Opposition to them was quashed despite yesterday's protest: New rules outlawing businesses from discriminating against homosexuals have been upheld in the House of Lords. A challenge led by Lord Morrow of the Democratic Unionist Party failed by a......

Every day this month the Londonist team will be pointing you in the direction of a Christmas present that (with a bit of luck) you won't already have on your list. Climb up onto our collective lap and we'll see what we can move from our sack to your stockings... Londonist has designed the Cornershop Christmas Hamper for those who really can't be bothered this year. Perfect for assembling on the way to a......

Somehow, the world of -ists managed to make it through the week despite news that Jen & Vince broke up. -Chicagoist had fall on their mind as they made squash and fudge, read "House of Leaves" and ">tried to figure out what's next for the Cubs. Not fall related, but still of utmost concern, the whole skinny black pants thing. -Torontoist fought off an evil scourge of raccoons and went to go see who would......

The Golden Dragon on Gerrard Street. We’ve been there ourselves. A couple of times, in fact. Nothing flash, but decent food for a good price. Or so we thought. Seems they’ve had a bit of a hygiene problem. City of Westminster magistrates heard mouse droppings were found in storage areas and on clean plates and meat appeared to have been gnawed by mice. But that’s just an appetizer. The 11 breaches of food safety......

Axl Rose has been visiting London's teenage cancer wards! Guns n' Roses frontman Axl Rose has made a surprise visit to the Teenage Cancer Trust Ward at the University College Hospital in London. Simon Davies, the CEO of the Teenage Cancer Trust Ward, commented: "We were so touched that Axl wanted to visit the Teenage Cancer Trust ward in London." Now, this is great and everything, but it seems to us that letting Axl......

Any Londonist readers who dream of becoming Conservative Mayor of London, you need to get your skates on. The deadline for 'Tory Mayor Idol' is this Friday. As the Times article says, so far there are only "two worthy but obscure" candidates who Ken would more than likley "eat for breakfast", but there is a shortlist of possiblities: Some of the names floated include Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington, the former Commissioner of the Metropolitan......

A tribute to the capital’s alleys, ginnels and snickleways 2. Brunswick Square to Mecklenburgh Square Where? Obscure Bloomsbury hinterland, North of Coram’s Fields. What? A leafy, nameless passageway connecting the northern ends of the two squares. The track is unsigned and little known even by locals. It runs through land once owned by the Foundling Hospital, a charitable children’s institution whose patrons included Hogarth and Handel. The passage separates the so-called Coram Community Campus......

The BBC is reporting that no individual police officers will be charged over the death of Jean Charles de Menezes. "Instead," says the Beeb, quoting a 'source close to the investigation', "the Metropolitan Police is to be prosecuted under health and safety laws over the fatal shooting." Asad Rehman, of the Justice4Jean campaign group, who was with the family when they received the news, said earlier: "They will be very, very disappointed if no officers......

We recently wrote about the £85.00 sandwich available at Selfridges. The McDonald sandwich consists of every possible luxury ingredient that can be squashed between two slices of fancy bread and seemed quite tasty at first sight. On reflection, it was too much, too rudely combined. Our slightly sneering comment on the excesses of this bungled attempt to make a functional food item into something deliriously luxurious was actually hiding an incredible amount of gastronomic envy,......

Nelson gets a facelift, including the removal of a generation's-worth of pigeon shit. Channel Tunnel train to be named after Dame Kelly Holmes. Apparently, 'The route's other trains will also be named after Britons famous for speed'. [Insert predictable celebrity drug-taking gag here.] Bidding for the rights to distribute a free afternoon newspaper on the Tube has begun. Fire at former Dickens home. And finally, a rather upsetting story about gravestone health and safety......

Party Funding System To Be Reviewed They're all at it! It seems that the £14m received by the Labour Party in secret loans has caught up with them, with the party's National Executive Committee taking back responsibilty for the party's funding, to make it more transparent. Tony Blair met with members of the Labour NEC today, many of whom did not know about the loans, and are understandably annoyed. The creditors in question -......

If you thought Big Brother, I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here and the enforced spangles of Strictly Come Dancing were hard on their participants... consider those participants lucky and enjoying an extremely nice deal. At least they are not required to go through their "reality TV" motions in front of a live audience. Plucky international theatre company Zecora Ura's new show, in collaboration with Britain's longest running experimental theatre whizzes The People......

Kids: they love nothing better than a good night out at the theatre. Seriously - once the new Unicorn Theatre opens tomorrow they'll be dedicated fans - or should be anyway. Unicorn Theatre has been going since the 1960s and was the first theatre company for children to have its own theatre venue, the Arts Theatre in the West End. The company was so keen to make the space welcoming to children, they lowered......

I’ve never done this before, so I don’t really know what to expect. And with those words we were hooked. There's a wonderfully unpredictable element in taking on such a beast as the capital, so you have to give respect to anyone with the balls enough to organise an attempt at bringing some random participatory fun into the lives of Londoners. This time it's... Manhunt! At midday on Sunday 4th, a giant game of......

Christmas is just around the corner, and signs of the festive season are cropping up all over, from the jolly garlands that were put up in our local Superdrug sometime in the middle of October, to non-denominational holiday illuminations hopefully not flicked on by convicted rapists. But of course one of the most eagerly-awaited signs of the Yuletide is to be seen on Oxford Street, in the famous holiday window displays at Selfridges. Needless......

- There's to be an 'informal' meeting (jeans and trainers allowed then) on Iran's nuclear program in London today.This was announced by the US yesterday after Tehran resumed nuclear fuel work. - EU regulations on noise pollution mean our clubs might get quieter. - Google has opened it's London 'Googleplex' at Belgrave House in Victoria. - Will the xmas light crapness never end? G4 turned on the Covent Garden lights last night. With a bit......

It's mushroom season, when our woods and undergrowth are bursting with mycological delights. Go for an autumnal stroll on Hampstead Heath, Epping Forest or any of our other semi-wild parks, and you can't help but notice those crazy alien forms skulking under bushes or clinging from trees. Tasty fry-up, 'mind-expanding' psychedelic, shelters for little gnomes - mushrooms have many associations and uses. But which ones are edible? Can we just take what we want?......

Last week everyone was talking about the secretary, her ketchup, her boss and his trousers over at law firm Baker and McKenzie. Now, thanks again to the beauty of the leaked email, we've been offered another glimpse into the whacky world of the corporates, this time at accountants KPMG where it seems they have a bit of an insect problem. Earlier this month a KPMG employee named 'Lucy' was so annoyed about a fly......

It's a very modern quandry: if a man pays £279 for two tickets to a Shania Twain concert, who should be punished: the man who sold him the (horribly overpriced) tickets or the man who was stupid enough to buy them? Ok, so we're being a little facetious but seriously: nearly three hundered quid to see Shania Twain at Wembley Arena, one of the worst venues in the city? According to the papers the......

Maybe we overhyped it. Maybe we just built up our (and your) expectations too much. Maybe we were just foolish to expect too much from Southwark council. Whatever the reason, it seems the South Bank Snow Slide outside Tate Modern has failed to live up to expectations. Consider the photograph on the right, sent to us by Mark Mochalski. That's never 30 metres is it? And if it is, then at least 20 metres of......