Sadiq Khan - Labour at it’s best? ?

GG13, So, the price has been upped, as everything else has over the years, and extended into the weekend as well, as will become the norm for many world cities. Only good can become of it.

As far as the Trump balloon goes he also allowed a blimp of himself in a bikini to be flown over London. Maybe the man just has a sense of humour.
As for the Tube don't I seem to remember that one reason for suggesting limiting the use was to make sure NHS staff and essential workers could travel to work safely? Have we now decided the financial sector is more important? How soon we forget.

* Grandad1948* I have read that only about 35% of office workers have returned to the city centre. I think it will be a real missed opportunity if things revert to exactly as they were before.
This new way of working could be the way to really revive the suburban and town high streets. People will start buying their lunches again, just more locally. Commuting is a waste of time if one can work from home.
Google and Twitter seem to be functioning perfectly well without all their employees in one building.
It will also free up our Victorian underground tunnels for essential workers, as has been said up thread.

About Sadiq Khan: I remember another thread about him where some people made some really strange posts about why they did not like him.

Ilovecheese, in regard to your above post @16:19 today, I can only go by my experiences of this week in regard to Central London and the returning workers there.

Certainly, the hotel we stayed at in Holborn was not as full as it would have been on a working weekday night prior to lockdown, but I would estimate it had occupancy of approximately three quarters to two thirds.

We then walked down onto the Kingsway for a meal and again all the Restaurants and Bars were open and trading well it seemed, with the roads leading down to Oxford Street and Regents Street having plenty of people on them.

The City yesterday was busy with many out and about in their working breaks etc, and on walking down to the Innes of Court certainly all the Barristers and QCs chambers fully up and running.

It has to be remembered that many thousands of entertainment and service industry jobs rely on the City of London and tourism in the capital. The closure of the theatres is impacting those jobs greatly even now especially at weekends.

For me and many others I am sure London has that "Buzz" that no other British City seems to generate. To lose that could cost this country many billions in tourism and many hundreds of thousands of jobs in the entertainment and hospitality industries.

A few days in London to tour the sites, lovely hotel, Dinner and a show has been part of many tourists lives for untold numbers of years now and to see that all taken away would be an enormous loss to Britain.

From my barrister neighbour grandad
For those of you who have swallowed the Government line and have thus been mislead into thinking that Courts have re-opened and are heading back to normality, here’s the actual picture from this Monday’s crown court lists, showing where trials are being heard:

Aylesbury: no trials
Basildon: no trials
Birmingham: 2 trials listed. Courts 2,3,7,10,11,14,16 not sitting
Bolton: 1 trial
Bradford: Courts 2,3,4,5,7 not sitting: 1 trial listed in court 6
Bristol: 3 trials listed
Burnley: any business appears to be listed at Preston
Cambridge: 1 trial, only 5 other cases listed across the remainder of the courts
Canterbury: 1 trial and only 3 other courts sitting
Cardiff: 1 trial with courts 1,6 and 9 not sitting
Carlisle: 1 trial listed with only 1 other court sitting
Central Criminal Court: 6 trials listed, courts 3,4,5,6,7,9,10,11,13,15,17,18,22 not sitting
Chelmsford: no trials and 4 courts sitting
Chester: no trials
Croydon: 2 trials listed, only courts 2,3 and 6 sitting
Derby: 1 trial listed, only courts 1,3 and 4 sitting
Durham: 1 court sitting with a trial and a backer trial
Exeter: 1 trial
Gloucester: no trials
Grimsby: 1 trial
Guilford:1 trial and a floater. Only courts 1,2,3 and 5 sitting
Harrow: 1 trial
Inner London:1 trial, courts 2,5,6,7,8,9 and 10 not sitting
Ipswich: 1 trial
Isleworth: 2 trials
Hull: 1 trial part heard
Kingston:1 trial
Leeds: 2 trials and a backer
Leicester: 2 trials
Lewes: no trials
Hove: no trials
Lincoln: no trials
Liverpool: 5 trials sitting
Luton: 1 trial, courts 5 and 6 not sitting
Maidstone: 2 trials, courts 1,5,8 not sitting
Manchester Crown: 1 trial, courts 3,8,9,12,14 and 15 not sitting
Manchester Minshull street: 1 trial
Merthyr: 1 trial
Mold: no trials
Caernarfon: no trials
Newcastle: no trials
Newport: no trials
Northampton: 1 trial
Norwich: 1 trial with backer
Nottingham: 2 trials
Oxford: 1 trial
Plymouth: no trials
Portsmouth: 1 trial only courts 1 and 6 sitting
Preston: 1 trial
Reading: 2 trials
Salisbury: no trials
Sheffield: 2 trials
Shrewsbury: 1 trial
Snaresbrook:2 trials
Southampton:1 trial with only 2 courts sitting
Southwark: 1 trial, courts 2,3,5,6,7,11,12,13, 15 not sitting but Prospero House has 3 trials listed today
St Albans: No trials, trial matter listed at Luton
Stafford: 2 trials
Stoke: no trials
Swansea: 1 trial, sitting at Newport
Swindon: 1 trial, another trial is listed at Bristol
Taunton: 1 trial
Teesside: No trials and only 3 courts sitting
Truro: 1 trial
Warwick: 2 trials
Coventry: 1 trial
Winchester: 2 trials
Wolverhampton: 1 trial court
Wood Green: no trials save a trial of fact, courts 1,2,5,8,9,10 not sitting
Woolwich: 1 trial
Worcester: 1 trial
York: 1 trial

Grandad, I live up north and would love to see a show, but they are all in London. We get the second hand shows, but not all the good shows that are in London travel the country.

I will be dammed to spend a weekend in London just to see a show.

My Dad was a Londoner, but when he moved "up North" he said he would never live in London again.

He liked the people here, the way of life and the friendly atmosphere. You know, talking to strangers at a bus stop, or in a queue for instance.

And, SK is a complete joke, but nobody is laughing

Sadiq Khan is a total waste of space.
He thinks he can force Londoners into giving up their cars by building housing developments with no parking spaces. That and trying to force the rest of us off the road with ever increasing congestion charges which do nothing to cut congestion.
Londoners do actually talk to their neighbours and chat at bus stops and in queues etc.

I don't understand how the Mayor can be build housing developments without parking? Isn't that up to the developers?

I’ve never found him impressive and he looks uneasy in his role ( and sounds it) as another poster says ‘out of his depth’.
I doubt he will be chosen in future elections.

Developers can have their plans turned down if they don’t meet the requirements....

vegansrock, in regard to post @18:05 today, I did not state that the Courts are open. However, new cases are continuously arriving into the Baristers and QC Chsmbers including those for the industrial courts. Those cases still have to be worked on and prepared for whenever they may get to be heard.

That is the reason the Innes of Courts are fully operating once again.

vegansrock
My son is a barrister and he has been working from home ever since lockdown. He is not a criminal lawyer, his areas of expertise are Employment, Commercial and Business, and Public law. I think he has been into central London only once since lockdown. Trials have been conducted via video link, also many important meetings. He regularly represents clients from America and Canada and so this way of working is normal for him. The trials he takes part in are not jury trials. Usually he was in London regularly, at his Chambers and attending trials and meeting clients. He also used to travel to various different cities in England for trials. All this has stopped, and yet he says he has more work than ever, and he has been working long hours. There may well be barristers running up to The Royal Courts of Justice with their gowns flowing, how else would anyone know they were barristers? But the truth is that the majority of legal work is not being done in London at this time.
I agree with Grandad in that the lifeblood of London is important for its survival, but I know that much legal work is currently being done out of London at this time.

I agree with you maddyone , just highlighting the fact that few criminal trials are happening and the government pretence that all is up and running is not actually happening. My neighbour is a criminal barrister and has hardly anything to do, in fact received government self employed handouts amounting to £ several thousands. Hardly any chambers are fully functioning.

We visited one of the chambers within the Inns of Court with a solicitor from a large insurance organisation which have been clients of our company for many years. They wish to bring in a Barrister to an upcoming industrial court hearing which is unusual but not unknown.

On walking into the Grays inn it was obvious that many of the Barristers and QCs where onsite from the array of BMWs, Benley's, Audi's and even a Roller parked on the site. With many others obviously working within the inn it certainly was apparent to us that Greys Inn at least was fully functional on that day.

But there, that was only our personal experiences of our working visit to the Inns of Court and the City of London Wednesday and yesterday.

Why does Sadiq Khan get the blame for something the Government did? The Government insisted on increasing congestion charge and cutting exemptions for pensioners and children. Khan did not want to do it.
I think he is a decent man trying his best and the first moderate mayor we have had in London. Livingston was a hard worker but extreme left and Boris lazy and extreme right.
I also hate all this London bashing. Not everyone is rich in London. Many parts of London are amongst the poorest in the country with low wages, poor housing and high costs.

Great post GrandmaMoira. Many of those lower-paid workers rely on the money tourists and city of London workers bring into the capital for their employment.

They have been hit very hard by the Covid crisis, but no one seems to give them any thought whatsoever in their anti-London bashing.

Thank you Grandad1943.

Maybe the office workers are slow to go back to their offices which of course has a dreadful knock on effect to other businesses whatever their size, however the majority of construction sites are up and running. Some sites have continued throughout especially if it was upgrading safety issues.

I am afraid for all you Boris lovers it was the governments fault that charges rose. When asked for help for the transport system in London, the government reply was only if they put up fares and increased the congestion charge. Hence the raise.

Just re-read the post and I have posted what someone has already said., that it wasn't the Mayors fault but the governments that prices had to rise.

The government are trying to remove the mayor’s powers in order to undermine the fact that it is likely that London will continue to elect Labour mayors. They want the mayor to take the blame for the government’s unpopular policies in regard to policing and transport.