Memorial to Lucinda Ferrier We've seen them around New York, but this is the first time we've spotted a ghost bike in London. This white cycle, across the road from Stoke Newington station in northeast London, commemorates the life of Lucinda Ferrier, who died while biking past this spot earlier in the year. According to this map, a few other ghost bikes are starting to crop up around the capital now, offering a poignant memory......

In the quest for local kudos, organisational dynamism and staff motivation making humdrum local business improvement initiatives sound sexy is all important. The London Bridge Business Improvement District Company decided they had a crap name so, inspired by the spirit and energy of amusing films by the makers of South Park and general corporate Americanisms they've rebranded as Team London Bridge. It's enough to make you do some athletic cheerleading. Go team! The new......

A sign of this country's creeping Torification, with Britain's top two Blues boasting their two-wheels-better philosophy at any opportunity (never mind the traffic signals)? Or merely a sensible policy that could help get more people on their bikes? Kensington and Chelsea are to trial a scheme by which cyclists will be allowed to go the 'wrong way' down one-way streets. Natty new signs are to be introduced on six streets in the borough, advising......

Up to 9000 members of the Public and Commercial Services Union, including security staff at the Houses of Parliament, Police Community Support Officers, Traffic Wardens, 999 Operators and admin support staff will be striking - most pointedly - on Budget Day, 12 March, to protest against a below inflation pay offer. Seems union action is rumbling all around London at present. Yesterday we reported on the mobilisation of bus drivers for standardised pay and......

Unite lived up to its name today, presenting demands on behalf of bus drivers across the capital for a standard wage and agreement on driving hours to address considerable disparities across operators. This is their first coordinated claim since privatisation in the 80s. Drivers working for different companies might currently be earning anything from £20-28K all in. Unite is calling for pay to be standardised at £30k across the board, recognising the key role......

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.......

Boris Johnson is backing a plan to bring Routemasters back into action, with electric motors and no emissions, and the reintroduction of drivers and conductors on each bus. With characteristic swiftness, Ken Livingstone has taken opposition to the plan and Londoners are once again torn between the two views on the possible return of the famous big red bus. For a brief set by Autocar magazine, design company Capaco came up with the electric......

First it's our music venues, now it seems even our police stations are up for grabs. With a potential value of £1.5 billion, the Metropolitan Police property protfolio is quite a cash-cow. No wonder then, that they're going to be reviewing the number of nicks. This asset Management strategy predicts that some stations may close to be replaced with smaller facilities across the (32) boroughs. Unsurprisingly, there are a few concerns. Mike Green, councillor......

Before the demolition of Old London Bridge, whose narrow arches restricted the flow, the Thames used to freeze over in the coldest winters. In such years, the denizens of London would gather on the ice for a frost fair. Here's how it might look today. Although we suspect that icing over the Thames would be easier than freezing modern health and safety rules. As a yuletide bonus, we'll be doing a seasonally themed Touch......

London is getting more dangerous by the day ladies and gentlemen. It's not enough that a quick trip down Oxford Street is going to leave you gasping like a floundering flounder on the deck of a homeward bound fishing trawler, now you can't even grab the number of your local brass from that phone booth down the road in safety. Well, not if you live in Camden, so breath easy SE London for the......

There have been many suggestions for women's safety at night: travel in groups, don't get minicabs, always walk facing traffic, carry a rape alarm, make sure you're home before it gets dark and stay indoors until daylight. All really helpful - for putting sexual equality back to the dark ages (so to speak). Women should be able to be out and about at night without fear of being attacked, raped or sexually harrassed which......

London Overground (LO) begins operations today. The new service takes over where Silverlink left off (we'll leave you to decide which particular circle of Hell that is). The stations and trains are now owned by Transport for London, with services operated by London Overground Rail Operations Limited. Practically speaking, this translates as follows: - Oyster cards now work on the benighted routes. - The Tube map has a new look. - All stations staffed......

Anyone looking at this case for the first time would be dumbfounded. Were the Metropolitan Police Force in breach of health and safety laws when they shot an innocent man seven times in the head? Health and safety laws? Isn't that like prosecuting Genghis Khan for illegal immigration? Terminology aside, the Met were yesterday found guilty of endangering the public when, on 22 July 2005, they misidentified Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes as a......

The nice people from Docklands Light Rail have contacted us to respond to our report from a couple of days ago of an unintentionally unmanned DLR train carrying passengers between stations. Here's what they had to say: The Docklands Light Railway can confirm that on 30 October 2007, at approximately 09:45hrs a train in passenger service departed West India Quay platform 4 without a staff member on board. The train continued to Westferry platform 2......

The name of the band Korpiklaani means 'forest clan' in Finnish, so perhaps it isn't so surprising that the band started their set at Camden Underground an hour or so late. Our theory is that they got lost on the Tube, distracted by the leafy promise in such place-names as Oakwood or Wood Green or Green Park, only to be met with bitter disappointment upon venturing aboveground. What really matters is that Korpiklaani eventually......

Hmm. Londonist hasn’t always had happy bouncy things to say about the 2012 Olympics. And it is rather likely that we will come up with some more searing satirical observations before too long. That is what Londonist does. But just for today, it is with vague approbation that we report on one of the side effects of the whole proceedings – the Personal Best scheme. It is true that the idea behind it is a......

You can jog there, or swim, or speed walk - but you really shouldn't drive to the Olympics. But that may be a better option for travelling criminals, as 180 are rounded up after a special operation on public transport. It may be a Banksy, but it's still vandalism. And now there's even health and safety for hedgehogs. Awfully artistic photo courtesy of sunshine today's flickr stream.......

Unlocked safe, stack of explosives...not a scene from a Guy Ritchie heist movie, but Golders Green Tube station. It was revealed yesterday that rail union staff discovered maintenance detonators (along with what was thought to be petrol) in an open, unattended safe at the station. The explosives are normally used to alert track workers to oncoming trains during night work. After this security embarrassment, they're being used to illustrate "a worrying slip in safety standards......

In the early hours of this morning a burst water main on Maida Vale caused chaos as roads, homes and businesses were flooded with rushing brown floods. 40 firefighters were called to the scene to evacuate people, divert and pump out the water. Evacuees were taken to the safety of a local pub. Whether the landlord flouted licensing laws to warm everyone up with a snifter has not been reported. Thames Water engineers stopped......

You might think the act of visiting an art gallery specifically to gawp at a hole in the ground would obviate the need to remind people not to trip over said hole. Apparently not. Mere days after the unveiling of Doris Salcedo’s Shibboleth, a 548 foot long fissure running the length of the Turbine Hall, people are already coming unstuck. One young woman reportedly fell feet-first into the exhibit and had to be dragged......

More than 30 horses were rescued from a burning barn early Friday morning in the Hertfordshire village of Bricket Wood. When firefighters arrived things looked pretty bleak for the horses, trapped in one end of the barn while the fire burned in the other. Fortunately the fire brigade got down to some pretty serious business. They sprayed a ‘water curtain’ around the barn to prevent the fire spreading to other buildings, a digger went......

Crickey, what does it say for us mere unarmed mortals when top cop Inspector Glen Smyth is too scared to travel solo on trains late at night? Admittedly, Smyth's fear has been provoked: a failed attempt to arrest a drunk, unruly train passenger in Feltham on the night of the England V. Germany football match at Wembley left Smyth all bloody-nosed. A spokesman for the British Transport Police says: He has a right to feel......

Londonist has a case of the spookies – deathly headstones in deathly places. More specifically, Sutton Cemetery. According to This is Local London, bereaved relatives frequenting their loved one's resting place have been confronted by not-so-subtle wooden support stakes and yellow post-its informing them of the instability of the headstones, which must then either be shored up or replaced. A spokesman from Sutton council explains these actions are a response to the rising number......

This Week In London’s History Monday – 17th September 1961: Police arrest 1,314 demonstrators at a CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) protest in Trafalgar Square. Bertrand Russell is amongst those arrested. Tuesday – 18th September 1970: Guitar legend Jimi Hendrix is found dead in his basement flat in Notting Hill, west London. A subsequent inquest records an open verdict on his death, noting that he drank wine and took nine sleeping pills the previous......

Protest over national vs. regional chains, the never-ending debate over the place of cars and bicycles in our metropolises, professional sports scandals, remembering a solemn day, and being issued a search warrant - it all happened across our sites this week! Another banner week at Chicagoist started off with daily reports from food writer Lisa Shames on her attempt to eat only locally grown and raised foodstuffs all week as part of a farmers market......

We love Firefighters. We also harbour a morbid love for the London Fire Brigage incident page which tells you what's burnt down where (look - a hay barn in Upminster ). But now we've got love for a particular firefighter who seems to have done the impossible: produced a rap track promoting fire safety and made it look cool. Yes, "Got Mine Got Yours" is a bonafide, non-cringeworthy message to da kidz but also......

Members of three transport unions are downing tools in September. And it's a packed diary of inaction. September 3: a 72-hour RMT/Unite strike begins at 6pm. September 4: a 48-hour TSSA strike begins (time not disclosed). September 5: TSSA strike concludes. September 6: RMT strike concludes at 6pm. September 10: a second RMT/Unite strike begins at 6pm. September 13: RMT/Unite strike concludes. The strikes are the latest fallout from the collapse of Metronet - the......

What we now know about the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes- * The stories that Jean Charles acted suspiciously by running away from the police and jumping the barriers at Stockwell tube are untrue. * He was not wearing a bulky jacket or a bomb belt with visible wires hanging out. * Members of the police force knew this (for instance, the ones that followed and shot him.) * Senior officers knew that......

The term ‘wading knee deep in shit’ has taken on new meaning for residents of Harrow in north-west London. Parents in the Kenmore Avenue area were horrified to discover that the floodwater their children were playing in and near contained sewage waste. Mohammed Ayaiz, whose son, Usmaan, developed an itchy rash after coming into contact with the water, said: “We’ve told him he can’t play outside there anymore and I take him to the......

By which we mean 'tests the patience of those in charge of public safety and wastes everyone's time, money and resources.' Not wanting to be outdone by the Evening Standard's scaremongering, the Daily Mirror sent two journalists to the Stonebridge Park train depot to plant a fake bomb on a freight train, in order to test the security measures in place. A similar exercise was carried out last year when two Daily Mirror journalists......