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Category Archives: London
Charles Saatchi accepts police caution for assault on Nigella Lawson
Millionaire art collector voluntarily attends police station after being seen grabbing his wife by throat in restaurant
Charles Saatchi was on Monday cautioned for assault after a police investigation was sparked by the emergence of pictures showing him repeatedly grabbing his wife by the throat in a restaurant.
The multimillionaire art collector had sought to downplay the images showing him grabbing Nigella Lawson around the neck, claiming that he was “attempting to emphasise my point”.
However, the Metropolitan police said last night that a 70-year-old man voluntarily attended a central London police station in the afternoon and accepted a caution for assault after an investigation by the community support unit at Westminster.
A spokesman said police were aware of an article published at the weekend in the Sunday People, which included several pictures showing Saatchi with his hand around Lawson’s neck as they sat outside Scott’s restaurant in Mayfair.
On one occasion, he raised a second hand towards her throat and on another pinched or grabbed her nose. She appeared upset and left the restaurant in tears.
Saatchi said the pictures showed a “playful tiff”. He told the London Evening Standard – for which he is a columnist – that the pictures gave a “more drastic and violent impression” of the incident than had been the case. “About a week ago we were sitting outside a restaurant having an intense debate about the children, and I held Nigella’s neck repeatedly while attempting to emphasise my point,” he said. “There was no grip, it was a playful tiff. The pictures are horrific but give a far more drastic and violent impression of what took place. Nigella’s tears were because we both hate arguing, not because she had been hurt.”
He said the pair had reconciled by the time they got home. “We had made up by the time we were home. The paparazzi were congregated outside our house after the story broke yesterday morning, so I told Nigella to take the kids off till the dust settled.”
Asked to comment on reports that Lawson had moved out of the family home, her spokesman said: “I can clarify that she has left the family home with her children.” Lawson has made no comment since the pictures emerged.
A witness described the incident as shocking. “I have no doubt she was scared,” the onlooker told the Sunday People. “It was horrific, really. She was very tearful and was constantly dabbing her eyes. Nigella was very, very upset.”
Lawson has previously described her husband as “an exploder”. In 2007 she said: “I’ll go quiet when he explodes, and then I am a nest of horrible festeringness.”
The pair were sitting outside Scott’s when the pictures were taken. Witnesses told the Sunday People that Lawson attempted to placate her husband, putting her hand on his wrist and at one point leaning over to kiss his cheek. The witness said: “She raised her voice and got angry but at the same time was trying to calm him down, almost like you would try to calm down a child. The kiss was a strange thing. He was being intimidating, threatening.”
Heather Harvey, from Eaves, a charity that supports victims of domestic violence, said some of the language being used was shocking. “This is not a ‘row’, it is not a ‘tiff’, it is an incidence of domestic violence. There is an unfortunate myth that domestic violence only happens to a certain type of person, that it happens in dysfunctional families where people have been drinking. But it happens in every social class, and in every profession.”
She added: “It is shocking that this happened in a public place, and yet no one intervened. This is not acceptable behaviour.”
Last year Saatchi, co–founder of the Saatchi & Saatchi advertising agency, who has an estimated fortune of £100m, was pictured pressing his hand over his wife’s mouth as they dined at Scott’s.
A spokesperson for Scott’s said: “The staff at Scott’s are aware of the allegations in the media today but did not see anything untoward happen within the restaurant. As this is now a police matter we cannot comment further.” Last night Nick Griffin, leader of the British National party, was criticised for comments he made on Twitter about Lawson.
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Heathrow may seek public funding for expansion plan
Airport argues that scheme would still be cheaper for taxpayer than alternatives at Stansted or Thames estuary
Heathrow has admitted that the taxpayer may have to contribute funds for expansion plans that would mean at least one extra runway at Britain’s largest airport and hundreds more flights over London daily. But the airport said a rejection of its proposals could consign a generation to economic stagnation.
Heathrow said it was still considering its options before the deadline of 19 July for submissions to the government-appointed airports commission, but indicated that schemes for three or four-runway models could be put forward.
It said that competing with rival hubs such as Amsterdam’s Schiphol and Madrid would require having similar capacity of up to 800,000 flights a year, which would equate to a daily average of about 2,000 takeoffs and landings, compared with 1,288 at Heathrow in 2012.
John Holland-Kaye, Heathrow’s development director, said the airport “couldn’t rule out” public funding for its plans, depending on the findings of the commission.
The airport has previously been keen to stress that expansion would be paid for by private investment. But Holland-Kaye said it would still be cheaper than alternatives at Stansted in Essex or the Thames estuary. “It’s fairly intuitive that there would be greater need for taxpayer support going east,” he said.
The London mayor, Boris Johnson, has put the bill for a new hub at £70-80bn, including public funding of £25bn.
A Heathrow report titled Best Placed for Britain noted that 202 of the UK’s top 300 companies had headquarters within 25 miles of its site, compared to seven for Stansted and two for a possible Thames estuary airport. It said twice as many people lived within an hour’s journey of Heathrow, whether by car or public transport.
Heathrow warned against assuming that the jobs it sustained could be easily transplanted or that the site would quickly be regenerated if the airport was replaced. It pointed to the decades that elapsed while even prime central London locations such as Battersea and Bankside power stations lay unused, while Hong Kong airport is yet to be redeveloped after 15 years.
The airport is increasingly confident that the political debate has turned. Holland-Kaye said: “The mood has changed. The economic downturn has brought a bit of a reality shock, encouraging people to think about how we can rebuild the economy in the short term, and plan long-term to remain an economic powerhouse. We can’t take for granted that we will have the same economic success unless we do the right thing with our national infrastructure.”
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Restaurants: Terra Vergine and In Parma, London
‘For the italophile, the menu is rarely less than an adventure’
The UK’s passion for Italian food has recently been dented by spicier interlopers. Love is further chipped away by ready meals (do bugger off, Dolmio), 15-minute midweek suppers and the likes of Bella Italia. There are often queues of actual Italians outside London branches of this dull chain, allowing that deliciously chauvinistic race to head home reassured that we have no idea about food. I am tempted to get swivel-eyed on their asses. It’s not like they even get the Nectar points.
But there are glimmers of a bite-back. Rather than homogenous, non-specific “Italians” (there’s no such thing as “Italian” food, of course: there’s Ligurian or Aostan or Sardinian…), more and more restaurants are concentrating on one regional cuisine. Here’s Terra Vergine, celebrating the cooking of the Abruzzo.
My experience of this mountainous area’s produce is pretty much limited to Montepulciano wine, so this is something genuinely new to me. The owner has restaurants in Chieti, and – laughing in the face of localism – flies everything in. To be fair, I’m not sure where you’d get castrated lamb for the arrosticini anywhere within staggering distance of the M25. These are a bit of a sensation, too. Cooked on a specially designed grill that twirls them slowly over smoke, perfuming the air as thoroughly as any ocakbasi, they are skewers of meat with an intense flavour, inching towards the pungency of good mutton. More hogget than lamb, I’d guess. Chunks of fat add smoky lubrication and they’re generously salted and served, loads of them, in an earthenware jug with only pan’unto (Abruzzo’s take on crostini) as accompaniment. Prissily, I prise the chunks from the skewers with my fork, only to be told off by the heartthrob manager: “Eat them with your teeth!” he orders. Meat hits scarlet lipstick and I wind up looking like the Joker. Given that our fellow diners are Berlusconis shoehorned into skintight jeans with junior, spike-heeled molls, nobody notices.
There’s wild boar pasta “alla chitarra”, cut on guitar-like wires so that the strands have squared edges, the ragù slow-cooked and honking with wine and herbs. Pallotte cac’e ove are squelchy little balls of fried cheese topped with rich tomato sauce and wafers of truffled caciotta cheese – a collection of several kinds of loveliness. Servings are huge, especially “sagne” pasta with chickpeas and pappardelle with spicy rabbit.
The menu’s rarely less than an adventure. More so than the decor, which is a very Italian idea of contemporary: hard-surfaced chic with copper jug lampshades, and pride of place given to display cases of spendy vino Abruzzese. There’s a saying that if you have a chef from Abruzzo, your restaurant will not fail. I see where they’re coming from.
Farther north, in both Italian and London terms, is another small outfit that’s ploughing its own furrow. A red Berkel meat slicer and dangling charcuterie give hints to the provenance. In Parma is largely concerned with cheese and salumi. The meats arrive sliced as finely as raw filo, silky and ripe, lapping over the large boards they’re served on. Cheeses – fontina, robbiola and, of course, parmigiano – are perfectly kept, and there are vinegary little borettane onions for wrapping in fatty coppa, fleshy bresaola or majestic culatello di Zibello.
These, with bowls (called fojete) of dry, lightly fizzy red Lambrusco Monte Delle Vigne and some first-rate focaccia, would make an excellent meal, but we persevere with the homemade pasta: delicate parcels of herbed ricotta in sage butter, and, yes, lasagne – a damned fine version, too, creamy and scented with nutmeg. In Parma is run by an outfit called Food Roots – manned entirely, I suspect, by the animated, curly-haired chap hairdrying the customers with his enthusiasm – dedicated to PDO (protected designation of origin) food from small producers. The quality shines like the blades of that Berkel. If you will persist in frequenting cookie-cutter “Italians”, you’ve only yourself to blame for a cooling of affections. After this attractive duo, I feel positively starry-eyed again.
• Terra Vergine 442 King’s Road, London SW10, 020-7352 0491. Open all week, Mon 6-11pm, Tues-Sat noon-11pm, Sun noon-10.30pm. About £40 a head plus drinks and service.
Food 7/10
Atmosphere 6/10
Value for money 7/10
• In Parma 10 Charlotte Place, London W1, 020-8127 4277. Open Mon-Fri 11am-3pm, 6-11pm, Sat noon-4pm, 6-11.30pm. About £30 a head plus drinks and service.
Food 7/10
Atmosphere 7/10
Value for money 7/10
Follow Marina on Twitter.
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Restaurants: Terra Vergine and In Parma, London
‘For the italophile, the menu is rarely less than an adventure’
The UK’s passion for Italian food has recently been dented by spicier interlopers. Love is further chipped away by ready meals (do bugger off, Dolmio), 15-minute midweek suppers and the likes of Bella Italia. There are often queues of actual Italians outside London branches of this dull chain, allowing that deliciously chauvinistic race to head home reassured that we have no idea about food. I am tempted to get swivel-eyed on their asses. It’s not like they even get the Nectar points.
But there are glimmers of a bite-back. Rather than homogenous, non-specific “Italians” (there’s no such thing as “Italian” food, of course: there’s Ligurian or Aostan or Sardinian…), more and more restaurants are concentrating on one regional cuisine. Here’s Terra Vergine, celebrating the cooking of the Abruzzo.
My experience of this mountainous area’s produce is pretty much limited to Montepulciano wine, so this is something genuinely new to me. The owner has restaurants in Chieti, and – laughing in the face of localism – flies everything in. To be fair, I’m not sure where you’d get castrated lamb for the arrosticini anywhere within staggering distance of the M25. These are a bit of a sensation, too. Cooked on a specially designed grill that twirls them slowly over smoke, perfuming the air as thoroughly as any ocakbasi, they are skewers of meat with an intense flavour, inching towards the pungency of good mutton. More hogget than lamb, I’d guess. Chunks of fat add smoky lubrication and they’re generously salted and served, loads of them, in an earthenware jug with only pan’unto (Abruzzo’s take on crostini) as accompaniment. Prissily, I prise the chunks from the skewers with my fork, only to be told off by the heartthrob manager: “Eat them with your teeth!” he orders. Meat hits scarlet lipstick and I wind up looking like the Joker. Given that our fellow diners are Berlusconis shoehorned into skintight jeans with junior, spike-heeled molls, nobody notices.
There’s wild boar pasta “alla chitarra”, cut on guitar-like wires so that the strands have squared edges, the ragù slow-cooked and honking with wine and herbs. Pallotte cac’e ove are squelchy little balls of fried cheese topped with rich tomato sauce and wafers of truffled caciotta cheese – a collection of several kinds of loveliness. Servings are huge, especially “sagne” pasta with chickpeas and pappardelle with spicy rabbit.
The menu’s rarely less than an adventure. More so than the decor, which is a very Italian idea of contemporary: hard-surfaced chic with copper jug lampshades, and pride of place given to display cases of spendy vino Abruzzese. There’s a saying that if you have a chef from Abruzzo, your restaurant will not fail. I see where they’re coming from.
Farther north, in both Italian and London terms, is another small outfit that’s ploughing its own furrow. A red Berkel meat slicer and dangling charcuterie give hints to the provenance. In Parma is largely concerned with cheese and salumi. The meats arrive sliced as finely as raw filo, silky and ripe, lapping over the large boards they’re served on. Cheeses – fontina, robbiola and, of course, parmigiano – are perfectly kept, and there are vinegary little borettane onions for wrapping in fatty coppa, fleshy bresaola or majestic culatello di Zibello.
These, with bowls (called fojete) of dry, lightly fizzy red Lambrusco Monte Delle Vigne and some first-rate focaccia, would make an excellent meal, but we persevere with the homemade pasta: delicate parcels of herbed ricotta in sage butter, and, yes, lasagne – a damned fine version, too, creamy and scented with nutmeg. In Parma is run by an outfit called Food Roots – manned entirely, I suspect, by the animated, curly-haired chap hairdrying the customers with his enthusiasm – dedicated to PDO (protected designation of origin) food from small producers. The quality shines like the blades of that Berkel. If you will persist in frequenting cookie-cutter “Italians”, you’ve only yourself to blame for a cooling of affections. After this attractive duo, I feel positively starry-eyed again.
• Terra Vergine 442 King’s Road, London SW10, 020-7352 0491. Open all week, Mon 6-11pm, Tues-Sat noon-11pm, Sun noon-10.30pm. About £40 a head plus drinks and service.
Food 7/10
Atmosphere 6/10
Value for money 7/10
• In Parma 10 Charlotte Place, London W1, 020-8127 4277. Open Mon-Fri 11am-3pm, 6-11pm, Sat noon-4pm, 6-11.30pm. About £30 a head plus drinks and service.
Food 7/10
Atmosphere 7/10
Value for money 7/10
Follow Marina on Twitter.
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Canada’s tar sands companies fail to clean up toxic waste, report finds
Three arrested in environmental protests as Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper visits London
None of the companies operating in Canada’s tar sands have met a commitment to clean up the vast and expanding sprawl of toxic waste ponds, an official report has found.
The report, from Alberta’s Energy Resources Conservation Board, further challenges the Canadian government’s claims to responsible mining of the tar sands.
Canada’s prime minister, Stephen Harper, spoke to Parliament on Thursday. Three protesters were arrested during the visit.
The report focuses on the provincial government’s promise to clean up and eventually eliminate a vast network of open ponds storing mining waste from the tar sands along the Athabasca river.
None of the seven companies operating in the tar sands met the original performance standard, set in 2009, during the last two years, the ECRB said in its report.
Only one of the companies met a revised and weakened standard.
The finding was quietly published last week, without a press release.
“Industry performance over the 2010/2012 reporting period has not met the original expectations,” it concluded.
However, the board did not propose any penalties against the companies, suggesting instead that the clean-up targets may have been overly optimistic.
Mining waste from the tar sands, a mix of water, sand, silt, clay, contaminants, and hydrocarbons, is dumped in a system of open lakes, known as tailing ponds.
The ponds are hugely toxic to marine life, and some 7,000 ducks and geese die every year after mistakenly landing there.
The ponds currently occupy an area about 50% larger than the city of Vancouver, according to the Pembina Institute, an environmental research centre. By 2020, they are expected to expand to 250 square kms.
Alberta’s government imposed the performance standards in 2009 to try to reduce the growing sprawl of liquid waste dumps. Under the standards, mining operators were to have reduced their waste by 50% by June 2013.
Alberta’s premier, Alison Redford, promised during a trip to Washington in April that such waste ponds would disappear entirely by 2016.
Pembina Institute’s Jennifer Grant argued the province should put further expansion of the tar sands on hold, until companies meet the performance standard. She also called for more rigorous enforcement action. ” It is irresponsible to approve new oilsands expansion when mining operators are failing to meet tailings clean up rules,” Grant wrote in an email. “Promises of responsible oilsands development ring hollow when the ERCB is not enforcing its own tailings rules.”
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Police raid anti-G8 protests in London – in pictures
Police in riot gear moved in on a building in London’s Soho district where activists had planned an anti-G8 protest before next week’s summit of world leaders in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland
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Anti-G8 protest headquarters in London raided by riot police
Hundreds of officers deployed and 57 arrests made as Carnival against Capitalism is staged in London
Riot police raided the central London HQ of anti-G8 protesters on Tuesday and hundreds of officers were deployed in the capital as protests took place against next week’s G8 summit.
Squatters inside the building, a former police station in Beak Street, off Regent Street, accused police of heavy-handed tactics after they were led out by officers who forced their way in after a tense standoff lasting more than three hours.
TV footage showed officers in climbing gear trying to secure the roof, then grabbing a protester who appeared to be trying to jump off the rooftop.
The raid came on the day of the Stop G8 group’s Carnival against Capitalism, targeting banks, hedge funds, mining and oil firms in central London as well as Claridge’s hotel and Boodle’s private club in the runup to the summit in County Fermanagh. The protests were concentrated on Oxford Circus and Piccadilly Circus. Police said 57 arrests were made in relation to the G8 protests.
A Metropolitan police spokesman said the force obtained a search warrant for the Beak Street property “relating to intelligence that individuals at the address were in possession of weapons and were intent on causing criminal damage and engaging in violent disorder”.
A handful of squatters are believed to have arrived on Friday, with many more subsequently joining them.
People ejected from the building said about 200 people had been inside. A banner hung from the building said: “What if we smash the G8?”
More than 100 officers were stationed outside the property from 10am. During the standoff, some protesters, many wearing masks, dangled their legs over a ledge of the building while others popped their heads out of the window, occasionally chanting anti-capitalist slogans and “Fuck the police.”
At 1.40pm, police began using chainsaws and crowbars to enter.
Protesters started emerging, most showing little sign of resistance, and were still being brought out 45 minutes later, suggesting officers had faced multiple barriers inside the property.
Police said those who had been in the building were free to leave once they had been searched.
Police did not provide a breakdown of how many of the 32 G8 protest arrests related to the Beak Street raid.
Dozens of the squatters hung around after they were led out, discussing where to go next.
One man, who did not wish to be named, said: “I think it’s police brutality, to enter a completely legal squat. They’re just trying to stop any protests. It’s pretty scary.”
He claimed that he saw blood on a police riot shield. One person, who had apparently been removed from the building, was taken away in an ambulance. Witnesses said he was bleeding and was being given oxygen.
A London Ambulance spokesman said: “We treated two patients at the scene of the protests in central London. Both have been taken to hospital with minor injuries.”
The leaders of the world’s eight wealthiest countries, including Russian president Vladimir Putin and German chancellor Angela Merkel, are due to meet at the luxury Lough Erne resort in Co Fermanagh for the conference on 17-18 June.
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Borisstan: the independent city state and docking station for global wealth formerly known as London | Aditya Chakrabortty
What would the British capital look like in the future if it broke away from the rest of the country?
“For too long London has been an economic giant, a political giant but a fiscal infant … It’s high time London was treated in a more grownup, a more mature way, as a great city in the way other great cities are” – Boris Johnson, May 2013
By the summer of 2030, David Cameron wasn’t a name that meant much to most Britons. Ed Miliband? He barely rated a mention from the Will Straws and Euan Blairs now running the Labour dynasty. Yet there was one early-21st-century politician who could claim a permanent legacy. Little urchins would break off from intense communion with their iJobs™ to pull off a passable impersonation. “Cripes!” They’d say, while ruffling their hair. “Crikey!”
Boris Johnson, who else? He was the godfather and loudhailer of the campaign to make London independent from the rest of Britain. The fight had taken decades, but at last it had triumphed: even while Scotland remained part of the UK, the erstwhile capital had broken away and was now its own city-state. This latest signatory to the UN charter was officially dubbed Great London, but most people used an informal name that honoured its inspiration. They called it Borisstan.
It all began as mere mayoral whimsy. There had long been gripes that London was “a first-class city attached to a second-class country”. Then there was the famous suggestion in the Telegraph at the end of 2012 that “the overtaxed south needs its own party”. All right, so that was Kelvin MacKenzie, the outrider’s outrider. And it was only the Telegraph, now just a series of hyper-local websites for Sue Ryder shops in each of the Home Counties.
But what the former Sun man’s famous editorial antennae had picked up on was a prejudice that Londoners and their neighbours across the south-east were simply subsidising the rest of the country. They’d done it during the boom, when the City apparently chipped in so much to the Treasury coffers. And they did it again during the lesser depression of 2008-2020 as the capital motored ahead, even while the rest of Britain spun its wheels in perma-austerity.
Couple that popular reading of the economic dynamics with the changing social relations between London and the rest of the country. Where previous regional success, such as that of the Midlands in the 1930s, had drawn in and employed people from elsewhere in Britain, this wasn’t the case during the capital’s great boom. As the LSE’s Ian Gordon and others had shown, fewer Britons settled in London between 1997 and 2006 than left it. No, the big influx into the capital was from those born outside the UK, whether they came to work in its private-equity shops or its coffee bars. One of the ways London grew to be a world city during the bubble was by sweating migrant labour, sometimes for a lot of money, but usually for a pittance.
Put that explosion in diversity next to the capital’s economic and social liberalism, and you had a city that was very different from the rest of the country. And as Borisstan’s historians would always remind readers: don’t forget the footling details. The way that the capital established its own web domain in 2013: .london. The setting up of a new thinktank devoted to research on the capital. The lobbying done by bankers to preserve their freedom from regulations and extra tax and, well, any bothersome social obligations. And the reports commissioned by Mayor Johnson on how London should claw back more of the taxes it paid to the national government.
Thus what began as a call for Holyrood-style devolution got louder and more ambitious, until in 2029 Londoners found themselves voting in a referendum on whether to go independent. Boris himself had long left the political stage, contenting himself as a non-exec for the world’s biggest, Shanghai-based, bank. But from the bikes, to the buses to the museums; Londoners knew they were Boris’s people.
There were anxieties of course. What currency would the new city-state have? Borisstan would eventually enter a currency union with the Chinese renminbi. Where would the energy supplies come from? How would Londoners get rid of their landfill? As soon became apparent: “London” had always meant two different things. There was the small central area, where new properties were sold off-plan to foreign tycoons and where Londoners were nothing more than glorified butlers to the global plutocracy. This was the city as a docking station for international capital.
Then there was the London that had once been a hive of light industry but was now nothing more than retail parks and old council housing. Out here in 2013, the gross value added (a kind of local GDP) was just £13,000 a head; while in inner London it was £60,000 per person. Outer Londoners (“aborigines”, as they were called in some of the plush hotels) simply got bussed in and out of the high-security centre for work.
Guardianistas down the ages from JA Hobson to Will Hutton had warned of this split between the capital and the country. Who would pay for Borisstan’s equivalent of Crossrail now? Londoners had pulled in greater public spending, and claimed more infrastructure cash than Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland together. Who would foot the bill for the next banking crisis?
But these were all questions for the future. Right now, quite far down the Thames estuary, work was beginning on a small airport. The HSBC-Boris Island, it was to be called.
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