RMT calls off planned pensions strike April 24, 2014 Transport union the RMT has called off planned strike action over pensionable pay. The General Grades Committee has decided not to go ahead with action planned to begin from next Monday, so Transport for London members should work normally. The general tube strike – scheduled for 28 April to 30 April and 5 May to [...]
London Time: You don’t have to be an elitist to appreciate a decent watch April 16, 2014 A CERTAIN newspaper, which shall remain nameless, last weekend highlighted a continuing problem in the perception of the watch business – namely that owning a decent watch immediately puts you in an elitist club. It featured a fashion special that included just one watch: an orange-plastic, £170 Uniform Wares creation, which is apparently appropriate for [...]
Inflation falls to four and a half year low April 15, 2014 Inflation keeps moving lower, having fallen below the Bank of England's two per cent threshold in January for the first time in four years. Headline consumer price inflation has come in at 1.6 in the year to March, down from 1.7 per cent last month. Analysts expected to see inflation at that level today – [...]
Buy a family home in seclusion next to Richmond Park April 10, 2014 Find out why creative types are leaving central London for new leafy townhouses PRIVACY is becoming the new buzzword in high-end property. As London’s population grows and house-building becomes a top political priority, homeowners are becoming increasingly reluctant to live on top of their neighbours. In search of a room of their own, away from [...]
Londoners who skip the commute once a week could be refunded £310 a year April 10, 2014 London workers who skip their commute once a week could be handed a refund of up to £310.50 on their season ticket from next year, under a proposal set out today. Roger Evans, a Conservative member of the London Assembly, believes commuters who underuse their travelcard by walking, cycling or working from home should be [...]
HS2 deluged by 11,000 complaints on postcards April 9, 2014 Spare a thought for the post room at Golder Associates, the company hired by the Department for Transport to assess the environmental effects of High Speed 2. The consultancy recently received some 7,500 postcards entitled “Don’t miss your chance to tell David Cameron the only AONB [area of outstanding natural beauty] on the route of [...]
Labour’s £20bn pledge to devolve power to the nation April 7, 2014 LABOUR leader Ed Miliband will today unveil a central pillar of the party’s manifesto for 2015, with a plan to devolve control of £20bn to regions around the UK. Revealing the interim conclusions of Andrew Adonis’s growth review, Miliband will pledge to hand new powers over transport, housing, infrastructure and the work programme over to [...]
Fast-drying concrete cost Victoria Line passengers 100,000 hours, says TfL April 7, 2014 The spillage of some fast-setting concrete saw London's Victoria Line halted in January this year, as a signal room was flooded with the stuff. “We understand that a foot of concrete burst into the control room having been poured into an escalator void,” a spokesman for the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, [...]
Letters to the Editor – 03/04 – Royal Mail, City villages, Best of Twitter April 2, 2014 Royal Mail It’s impossible to accurately price something in the absence of a market, but that does not excuse the government for wasting taxpayer money on the Royal Mail float. Business secretary Vince Cable’s search for long-term investors inevitably reduced demand. And it should come as no surprise that many investors identified as long-termists didn’t [...]
Sales of new homes in Canary Wharf soar April 2, 2014 Residential activity in Canary Wharf is booming, according to new figures from property consultants JLL today which show that the business-focussed district enjoyed one of the highest levels of sales of new homes last year. New unit sales have increased from 400 in 2012 to 1,050 in 2013, pushing values up to an average of [...]