Who did and didn’t boycott Eurovision in London last night?
Who did and didn’t boycott Eurovision in London last night?
Plus: big paydays in City Hall, a major Uber lawsuit, and the weird stuff inside the Millennium Dome
Morning — it was a relatively quiet one for Eurovision fans in London last night, after several high-profile venues cancelled watch parties amid calls to boycott the singing competition over Israel’s participation. Their decisions inevitably caused controversy — one south London venue spent weeks arguing with punters and performers, while another up north has even faced an investigation from regulators over their boycott decision. And then, some places just held a party anyway. Who did and didn’t boycott Eurovision in London leads your Sunday round-up below.
Plus: big paydays in City Hall, a major Uber lawsuit, and the weird stuff inside the Millennium Dome.
In case you missed it: “It's like people who move to the country and then complain about cocks crowing and tractor noise,” is how one Spy reader our investigation earlier this week into the new force ruining London’s nightlife. Journalist Nic Murray got his hands on exclusive figures showing a staggering rise in noise complaints across London in recent years — in one borough, a fourteen-fold increase since the pandemic. And in reaction to the rise, the capital’s councils have been coming down hard on pubs and clubs, sometimes off the back of just one person waging a campaign of complaints. We’re so thankful to our paid readers for funding Nic’s reporting — you too can help support more in-depth reporting about London using the button below.
What we’ve spied
🎤 Some notable London venues boycotted Eurovision over Israel’s war in Gaza last night — and some didn’t. Among the boycotters was the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, one of the capital’s most iconic LGBT+ venues, which has traditionally hosted a Eurovision viewing party each year. Owner James Lindsay had initially said the pub would go ahead with showing this year’s contest, saying: “We’re a gay bar, not a political venue. People come here to get away from talk of wars”. But after criticism from some of the venue’s regular punters and entertainers, Lindsay backtracked and announced the pub would be closed on Saturday. Another boycotting venue was the Rio Cinema in Dalston, which has hosted one of London’s biggest Eurovision parties for the past few years. The cinema had announced its boycott back in March, writing in a now-deleted social media post: “Following discussion with the organisers of Eurovision Party London, we have collectively decided not to screen the Grand Final of the Eurovision Song Contest this year while Israel remains in the competition”. The move led to criticism from an antisemitism campaign group and some politicians, which in turn prompted an investigation from the Charity Commission. The Commission launched a “regulatory compliance case” to assess whether there had been “wrongdoing” in Rio Cinema’s boycott decision, potentially opening the door to the cinema losing the tax breaks it gets as a charity. By this week it was unclear whether the Charity Commission had completed its investigation and taken any action, but earlier in the week Rio Cinema confirmed it would not be showing the song contest’s final on Saturday. Another boycotter we’ve spotted: variety club Clapham Grand, which held a big party last year but had an empty calendar last night. Plenty of viewing parties did go ahead in London last night — we count at least 29 Eurovision parties across these three listing pages. The Hippodrome Casino in Leicester Square seems to be the biggest venue to show the final.
📣 Elsewhere on Gaza in the capital: pro-Palestine protests have sprung up at London’s universities, mirroring demonstrations seen recently in the US. So far it’s Univesity College London (UCL), the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and Goldsmiths where students have been taking action. At UCL, students have pitched tents outside the main campus building and are calling on the university to “entirely cut ties with the companies and institutions that are upholding Israeli genocide and apartheid”. There was also a clash between protestors and counter-protestors outside UCL last weekend, which saw five arrests. Police arrested one man for spitting on the ground in front of the Jewish group, reportedly telling them to “go back to Poland”, while four pro-Palestine demonstrators were arrested under the Terrorism Act for unfurling a banner. At Goldsmiths last week, students barricaded themselves inside the library for a ‘flash encampment’, following six months of protests at the university. The following day the university’s administration agreed to some of their demands, which included a review of the university’s pension fund and scholarships for Palestinian students. Outside of university campuses, a pro-Palestine encampment was set up at Hackney town hall this week, with activists calling on the council to divest from companies they believe are supporting Israel’s war in Gaza. As far as we know, it’s the only London borough council facing an encampment.
💰 Fresh from the campaign trail and now back on the job, Sadiq Khan is already catching heat — this time over his £160,976 salary. This week details of the London mayor’s recent pay review — which took place in December, before his re-election — have come out, and shows Khan got a £6,000 bump to his salary, equivalent to 3.9%. It means that, technically, Khan could now be paid more than prime minister Rishi Sunak, who took home £139,477 in 2022/23. But Sunak is actually entitled to more — £172,000 — he just chooses not to claim his full ministerial salary, and we also don’t have equivalent figures for the prime minister for the same period. To be fair to Khan, he doesn’t fully oversee his own pay reviews, as it’s recommended independently by the Greater London Authority, and he also took a 10% pay cut during the pandemic in recognition of the impact of lockdown on City Hall’s finances. But perhaps catching even more heat than Khan are his aides, who’ve also had big pay bumps. Most controversially has been a 4.5% pay rise to £132,000 for his night czar, Amy Lame. That’s infuriated many who blame her in part for the current malaise in London’s ailing night-time industry.
💼 Some other politics bits from the mayor’s first week back: anti-ULEZ vigilantes went on a camera-chopping spree within hours of Khan’s re-election on Saturday; Khan’s first post-election announcement was an extra £14.5m in investment aimed at reducing violence in crime hotspots, after being grilled throughout the campaign on his record on crime; more gossip has come out from inside Conservative Susan Hall’s failed election bid, with insiders blaming “infighting” and a lack of campaign funds; there’s been some outrage at the Green Party, after former party leader Sian Berry stepped down from the London Assembly just three days after her re-election.
🏢 Nearly 600 skyscrapers of more than 20 storeys are planned for London, a new survey of the capital’s tall buildings reveals. Think tank New London Architecture has published its annual guide to skyscrapers in the capital, finding that 583 are “queuing up in the pipeline”, more than twice as many as the 270 built in the past decade. The NLA’s survey also finds that Tower Hamlets has been the epicentre of recent skyscraper builds, with 71 in the past decade, more than any other borough. Further reading: our 2024 Spy guide to London skyscrapers we published earlier in the year, detailing the ones set for completion soonest. One more thing on skyscrapers: the Gherkin is getting its first-ever makeover, both internally and externally.
⚕️ As UK whooping cough cases approach a two-decade high, London’s low vaccination rates are in the spotlight. On Thursday the UK Health Security Agency announced that the disease — a bacterial infection leading to violent bouts of coughing — has led to the deaths of five babies in England between January and March of this year. The disease is particularly dangerous for babies under three months, who may not cough at all, but instead turn blue or struggle to breathe, and pregnant women are offered protective vaccines. Experts are blaming the recent rise in cases on low vax rates, and the capital has seen a particularly big fall in recent years. Just 37% of pregnant women had been vaccinated by the end of last year, down from 61% before the pandemic. Whooping cough isn’t the only disease for which there are falling vaccinations in London — last year medical professionals warned MMR was seeing a resurgence in the capital due to falling uptake.
🚲 There are fears fewer protected cycle lanes may come to London amid news the government is considering a ban on a key design feature. It was revealed on Friday that transport secretary Mark Harper is looking at whether to halt the use of floating bus stops, where a segregated bike lane is routed behind a bus stop and pedestrians have to cross the cycle lane to reach it. Quite a few have been rolled out across London in recent years, as the number of cycle lanes grows, but they’ve been criticised particularly by disability groups, who say they make using buses intimidating and sometimes dangerous. The National Federation of the Blind UK has been campaigning to get floating bus stops banned entirely, and more generally there’s been scrutiny of whether cyclists are properly giving way to pedestrians crossing. But campaign group Cycling UK says improved designs, not an outright ban, are needed. “Bus stop bypasses are needed to separate cyclists from motor traffic on some roads … But we must ensure this is done in cooperation with people with disabilities,” said Cycling UK’s head of campaigns in response to the news. Elsewhere in London transport: the government is reportedly going to unlock taxpayer cash to fund construction work for HS2 in London, while TfL is in the spotlight for the number of ‘device clash’ refunds it’s been giving out. One more thing we missed during the election — at the start of May 10,000 London taxi drivers launched a £250m lawsuit against Uber, claiming the minicab app illegally obtained a licence to operate in the capital.
📊 DATA DUMP 📊 There have been key stats for both London renters and housebuyers out this week. For renters, data from SpareRoom shows that Abbey Wood, Forest Gate and Crystal Palace have now become the most popular up-and-coming rental locations in London. Searches for Abbey Wood — in southeast London, on the Elizabeth Line — have tripled on SpareRoom (up 210%), while searches for Forest Gate in northeast London are up 157%. For buyers, relocation firm South Park Removals has compiled a new list of the ten most affordable boroughs, by comparing average house price to average salary. Tower Hamlets comes in cheapest, with the typical house costing 13.9% of average salaries, then Havering (10.0%), then Barking & Dagenham (9.5%).
🔍 And finally, we leave you with:
Someone rediscovering all the weird stuff that used to be inside the Millennium Dome
Someone’s first time being turned away from a London station because of queues
A fatberg weighing as much as three double-decker buses being removed in east London
Nigel Farage using a disabled parking space while shopping in Paddington
The Southwark Cathedral service for London knife crime campaigner Richard Taylor