London

Local daily to close.” Ultimately, that is the truth. From today, London’s Evening Standard is indeed ceasing to appear every weekday, as it has for almost 200 years. Yet you don’t have to have worked there for more than 15 years, as I did, to regard it as so much more than just a local rag.

It will live as a website, with a once a week print edition, the London Standard. But it’s certainly a moment. The reach of the Standard as we have known it was huge, if implicit. Though its print edition was largely restricted to the capital, it used to be referred to, without irony, as “the influential London Evening Standard”. How long ago that seems.

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The web indulges everyone. They don’t need to buy a paper and skip the pages they don’t like. If they don’t like grazing, they can go straight to the horoscope, or whatever. That atomisation may be a good thing but, just as we don’t all watch the same TV any more, it does mean we’re all getting further and further apart.

Whether you liked it or not, the Standard, like the church, the pub and the library, connoted community. The new weekly version will be a London version of the New Yorker. It has illustrious shoes to fill.

London landlords are selling up their buy-to-let properties at record rates as anticipated tax hikes from the U.K. Labour government add further pressure to the once lucrative investment sector.

Almost one-third (29%) of homes currently for sale in the capital were previously rented out, data published on Thursday by property portal Rightmove showed.

The spike mirrors a wider uptick in rental property sales across the U.K., where 18% of all nationwide listings were previously tenanted, according to Rightmove.

Rightmove said it was not yet clear that the figures pointed to a "mass exodus" by landlords, but rather to a gradual decline in the appeal of the buy-to-let sector. The previous five-year average of former rental listings for sale was 14%, while the proportion of ex-rental properties on the market in 2010 was 8%, Rightmove said.

It highlighted that it expected tax hikes in Finance Minister Rachel Reeve's forthcoming Oct. 30 Autumn Statement — including a possible increase in Capital Gains Tax (CGT) — to become a "potential driver" of the increased sales.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/17062102

An explosion near the O2 Arena which sparked bomb fears was staged by a convicted child abuser for a bizarre film stunt, it has been claimed.

Dozens of calls to 999 were made after a fireball blast at a construction yard across the river from the East London venue sent smoke billowing into the sky and was heard from miles away on Saturday.

People nearby said it sounded like a ‘bomb going off’ or an ‘earthquake’, and those looking from a distance could see vehicles and a shipping container on fire.

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A video shared on social media suggests sex offender Jacky Jhaj, 38, was heavily involved in the shoot.

He was jailed for four years for sexual activity with two 15-year-old girls he groomed while posing as a film producer.

The footage appears to show him completely naked walking in front of a lorry trailer bearing BBC branding and a prop police van, which suddenly explodes.

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It’s thought the fire got out of control, forcing the crew to call emergency services.

Jhaj had hired the crew under the name ‘Toby’, wearing a prosthetic ‘villain mask’ on set which concealed his identity, according to a MailOnline report.

One of the cast was said to have recognised him when he removed his mask, prompting the crew to pull out.

In addition to being pictured in media reports of his conviction, Jhaj has repeatedly made headlines since his release for staging bizarre scenes which put him in close contact with children.

In November last year, some 200 children and young women were reportedly hired to play fans at a fake film premiere in London’s Leicester Square where Jhaj appeared on a red carpet to greet them.

In April it emerged he was behind a £10,000 fake funeral at a west London church and used a well-known casting website to hire child actors to play some of the mourners.

Although the funeral was staged, it was held in the name of a real drowning victim and the presiding priest was led to believe it was real – only halting proceedings after realising it was being filmed mid-way through.

This is a really disturbing story. Baby Elsa is one of three full siblings who were all abandoned shortly after birth in a time span from 2017 to 2023.

So I finally got to ride one and wow they can really go. My favourite feature is probably the worst feature and that's that you can leave them anywhere. However what I didn't realise until actually riding one, is that the app asks you to take a picture of where and how you parked the bike when you're finished and then potentially punishes people who don't park the bikes properly. They can clearly enforce that more. But now I'm of the opinion that the local councils need to provide more bike parking. One or two parking spots at the end of every road would be enough. Being someone that lives in a hilly area, I don't really bother with bikes, but with the electric motors on the Lime bikes, I would ride everywhere and happily switch from Ubers if they were officially operating in my borough. Anyway, they're really really fun and I'm really looking forward to them redressing the balance of cars in London. For short journeys, they're perfect and the more people that access them, the fitter the city will be.

A treasure trove of prints signed by Spanish surrealist Salvador Dali which had been "tucked away and forgotten" for 50 years have been found in a garage.

The lithographs cost £500 when they were bought in the 1970s and could now fetch around £5,000 when they are put up for auction.

The haul, which also includes five lithographs by French painter, engraver, illustrator and sculptor Theo Tobiasse, was discovered at a home in Berkeley Square, Mayfair, London, during a clear out.

Antiques expert Chris Kirkham, who is associate director of London's Hansons Richmond auction house, called the find "amazing" and "surreal".

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/16650231

Ahead of AEW All In in London, several fans noticed that local advertisements had also circled the city of London as the destination for AEW x NJPW Forbidden Door 2025. This was later confirmed to be the case on the All In pre-show, with a commercial outlining August 24 as the date for the next year's Forbidden Door pay-per-view, and London as the host location.

The specific venue from which Forbidden Door 2025 will emanate was not disclosed, although a few possibilities have emerged. Such possibilities include the O2 Arena, Wembley Arena, and Craven Cottage, home to the Fulham Football Club. The latter building is notably owned by Shahid Khan, the father of AEW President Tony Khan. Ahead of All In, several AEW representatives, including Tony Khan, made a visit to Craven Cottage for Fulham's game against Leicester City.

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With London hosting Forbidden Door next year, the All In pay-per-view series will be momentarily moving away from the United Kingdom and to the city of Arlington, Texas on July 12, 2025. AEW All In 2026 will then return to London.

Londoners have been told to not scan QR codes on the growing number of stickers advertising illicit cannabis websites.

Police are wary of the growing number of ads springing up on lamp posts, bus stops and in toilets around the capital which advertise the drug and its delivery.

Inspector Kerry Goodwin, of City of London Police, said that the ads had been found in Soho and around the Leicester Square area, reports My London.

"Investigations are on-going and we’re working with the City of London Corporation to get the stickers removed as soon as we become aware of them,” he said.

“We'd urge members of the public to alert police if they see any of these stickers and to not scan the QR code."

Scanning the codes is said to send the user onto a website where it appears that cannabis can be bought and delivered.

The sites are also said to advertise CBD and other associated products, such as oils and edibles, with a number of made-up reviews attached to give the essence of authenticity.

A spokesperson for the Met said: "We do not believe cannabis, in any form, is benign."