Look how small the green bit is for Twitter/X ("credible" content) and how big the purple bit is ("abusive"). Great platform!

One man opened a series of cinemas in abandoned London buildings (from Catford to Ealing, from Sidcup to Sutton) as part of a plan to revive the capital’s high streets. Politicians love the idea and provided millions to help. So why do they keep going bust? www.londoncentric.media/p/preston-be...

It's wild to read that the Mirror will soon have just seven general news reporters working on "original news" stories across a seven day operation . pressgazette.co.uk/publishers/n...

Great scoop. Hackney the most cycle-centric part of the city due to the demographics, location and relatively weak/absent rail and tube links. No surprise e-bike hire companies in a bidding war - Hackney is their Premier League TV rights. Great to see the lid lifted ever so slightly on the business

Just finished negotiating “worthy BBC hour” with kids. “So there’s this thing called iPlayer that’s hard to find but has lovely thoughtful shows about being a kid in modern Britain.” “Oh I see you’ve once again pressed the big paid-for button on the remote that will feed you endless US crack.”

London exclusive: Competition between big money e-bike operators has hit the point where Hackney residents will now get flat fare £1.75 journeys within the borough, with Lime and Voi winning a contract that predicts *up to £93m* in revenue from one borough. www.londoncentric.media/p/lime-bike-...

🔺BREAKING: All UK adults to require digital ID under Keir Starmer plan

(Prompted by the digital ID announcement) The “forthcoming shift to a social credit system” is absolutely one of the things that I’m told about all the time as fact while out interviewing Londoners for stories. Hope the government has a internet-savvy comms strategy that takes this into account!

Here's what Burnham had to say to Londoners in @jim.londoncentric.media 's interview with him in January this year www.londoncentric.media/p/andy-burnh...

Absolutely not. Britain came up with the migrants-eating-beloved-animals meme ("Swan bake", The Sun, 2003). And which country pioneered irresponsible speculation about medicines and autism? America is a re-exporter.

Goes well with this nugget from the Camden New Journal's new newsletter (newjournal.substack.com/p/decision-t...) about this FT piece.

Really a significant “all politics is posting online” moment

The four flavours of the UK’s remaining news organisations! Only one of them has to scrape a toddler’s breakfast off their office desk every morning.

This is a bit like when the “Boris Johnson had a Covid-busting birthday party with Rishi Sunak present for the cake” was the first line of a Times long read, briefed as a positive bit of colour by Downing Street. Then two years later the same fact helped bring down the government.

So I'm a chronic text-based journalism poster who used to live their life on Twitter and had somehow got a large number of followers next to my name. Helpful for work, lots of stories, I could make news go viral. Anyway as I test I slightly re-engaged with various platforms this week. Vibes results:

I wish it was more complicated but: Elon won. Pundits, journalists and political elites uses Twitter to gauge popular discourse and identify stories, which was workable so long as it was moderated. He seized control, completely altered its normal mode, but none of them adapted.

Is anyone in London media/politics/food land finding the Evening Standard is posting them unsolicited copies of their print edition by special delivery every week? I've had a few people get in touch to say they're a bit confused as to why this is happening.

This episode rather demonstrates the damage you can do by getting it wrong in the first place. Later corrections never make the same splash as the initial 'mistake'.

‘If he can be found, every one of the users can be’: unmasking the man behind toxic gossip website Tattle Life

A little bit of navel-gazing on the last twelve months of trying to run a start-up local news organisation with no investment or plan, entirely funded by readers. www.londoncentric.media/p/london-new...

Public finances are a bit knackered due to low VAT receipts. Could I suggest a Treasury official and an HMRC official pop out of their Whitehall offices on their lunch break and carry out a few symbolic spot checks on long-trading gift shops not charging it? www.londoncentric.media/p/asf-aziz-l...

What has Your Party reported to ICO? A personal data breach? An alleged contravention of DPA Section 170 (which would be a criminal offence)? Not clear.

Two British teenagers linked to the Scattered Spider group (who also took down M&S, Co-op and Harrods) have been charged in relation to last year's mega Transport for London hack. Thalha Jubair, 19, from east London, and Owen Flowers, 18, from Walsall are about to appear at a court in London.

Any lawyers (or people with access to legal databases) able to do me a favour and look up when an English civil case was last listed? Would be very easy if you're a property/commercial lawyer!

Two notable shifts in position by London’s political leaders last night. 1) Sadiq Khan, following pressure from the Green’s Zack Polanski, describing Israel’s actions in Gaza as a “genocide” for first time. 2) London Tory leader Susan Hall denying the Tommy Robinson march had a far-right element.

For the second time in 24 hours I have learned an interesting nugget of information, done a quick search to see if anyone has already written about it, and found an old news story with my byline on it.

Someone’s you just gotta say enough is enough and stand up for what you believe in.

Watched this last night on Luke's recommendation and it was a great example of how to do a doc on a serious topic aimed at a youth audience that isn't dumbed-down.

The Times appears to have interviewed an 'ex Buckingham Palace cleaner' who supposedly divulges royal stain removal secrets but doesn't seem to exist, is possibly AI, and probably placed by a PR agency to boost SEO for a tiling brand. pressgazette.co.uk/news/royal-c...

Print sales are, amazingly, still the main revenue base for most mainstream local newspapers and cross-subsidise the online journalism. As the remaining print readers die, and with online ad revenue flatlining, that journalistic cross-subsidy will fall. So that's an 18% decline year-on-year.

Oh noooo But given how this is the rare case when it’s caught, and where people are checking, I’m just increasingly assuming most stuff is just stuffed with hallucinations.

British personal finance Reddit (the ONS-beating true indicator of the state of the UK economy) always seems to have posts from OnlyFans creators coming off PAYE and discovering marginal tax rates.

what

Hussein is consistently one of the smartest people on what the internet has done to us and this thread is worth reading. (Aside from the final point, no idea what he’s on about with that reference, probably something the younger millennials did.)

Absolutely !!!insane!!! to me that the UK government, lobby and newspapers litigate at length every minor infraction by the BBC, rival newspapers, or what some random columnist has posted. But all of them just carry on not even commenting about this media owner. He’s not hiding, he’s telling you!

This is the closest anyone’s got to the potential motivation of the guy who owns Britannia Hotels… growing up near Scarborough it’s nuts how much the town hated what the Grand hotel became under his watch and what it said about the place.

Who keeps crashing cars at speed into the front of a specific Tesco Express in east London? It’s happened four times in the last three weeks. It looks like a robbery - but London Centric has learned nothing is stolen and it appears to be the same driver. www.londoncentric.media/p/tesco-expr...

The “bang bus” owned by adult entertainer Bonnie Blue, visiting Oxford for Freshers’ Week, will not be eligible to pass through the High St bus gate. An Oxfordshire County Council spokesman told the Clarion: “Having taken the risk of googling Bonnie Blue’s Bang Bus, the vehicle appears to be a van.”

Amazing headline.

"Hey boss, you know how you're the Trump-backing billionaire boss of Blackstone who's just bought the local country house and could easily look like a comedy villain incomer?" "Yeah." "You sure you want to abuse a loophole in the hosepipe ban for your private lake?" www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

If you’re a uk politics/transport/urban policy person (you’re on Bluesky) then the winter timetable on east coast mainline will be such an interesting mess. The public in mid-sized towns slowly realising they’ve been sacrificed for faster London > Edinburgh trains. www.thecomet.net/news/2544425...

Funny that NY mayoral candidate is 1) allowed on Guardian Football Weekly 2) prob more likely to get on a UK podcast like this than a UK politician 3) his team were pitching this, while uk politicians still stay in politics podcast lane: “We were approached by the democratic nominee…”

Many people are saying this!

Real reporting: Is this London's busiest Lime bike parking space? www.londoncentric.media/p/london-und... And, if this one space contains 415 bikes, HOW MANY BIKES IS LIME HIDING FROM US?

Fascinating on the mechanics of the RMT strike: Lots of RMT members have been in work this week! Alternating strikes across different teams and days to maximise disruption but minimises unpaid strike days for members.

A chat with a Cambridge professor about why tube strikes are likely to cause lasting *improvements* in Londoners' commutes. www.londoncentric.media/p/london-und...

Suspect lots of people here don't realise how big a deal Kirk was on TikTok in the UK. Twins have seen loads of videos about him (mostly him being "owned" by progressive students). Lots of chat about it already on their WhatsApps. Much more so than anything in UK politics.

Exciting new London crime happened to me today: e-bike battery theft from my personal bike! Here's to the lad with the screwdriver in Soho who's probably hawking my 500W of pure lithium on Facebook Marketplace by now. If you wanted a story tip fee, you just had to ask.