Londoners are sick of viral videos telling lies about their city
Plus: The looming battle over festivals in Victoria Park, the Hackney school war that wasn't, the AI-generated parking fine mess, and wild swimming on a very small stretch of the River Thames.
London Centric tends to publish twice a week, to avoid clogging up your inbox. Sometimes we bring you a single investigation that’s taken months of work. Sometimes we sprinkle some nuggets of news on top, or updates on ongoing stories. And sometimes, like today, we want to bring you a little bit of everything.
Please enjoy this weekend update, which is full of exclusive stories. Promise there’ll be something you haven’t read elsewhere as you scroll down – or your money back. Fresh investigations are coming next week.
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From the Amazon rainforest to rural Australia, the world thinks London is collapsing
Thanks to all the readers who got in touch to share their stories of encountering people in some of the most remote corners of the world (which I define as meaning locations ranging from Suriname to Surrey) who think London is in a state of total societal collapse.
This follows our story about the would-be TikTok entrepreneur who said he decided to specialise in fake videos about London homes being given to illegal immigrants because “hate brings views”. On Friday night the Met Police told us they are continuing to investigate whether an offence was committed by the individual behind the TikTok account, who wrongly thought they were posting without any potential consequences.
It’s increasingly clear that London is suffering a global reputational crisis exacerbated by the incentives of viral video sites. It’s impacting tourism, investment in the capital, and the general sense of wellbeing in the city. It’s driven by legitimate raw videos that feature highly visible thefts of mobile phones and violent robberies. It’s then exaggerated by unscrupulous content creators and social media platforms who incentivise ragebait about the supposed total collapse of the city’s society.
First place for the most remote encounter went to London Centric reader Joe Jones:
In November 2025, I was visiting Suriname on holiday. We flew in this tiny plane to a remote jungle outpost in the Amazon rainforest, where we stayed for five days. It is completely off the grid with this small eight-seater plane coming and going twice a week to drop off/pick up guests and drop off supplies. And there was no access to the internet for the guests staying there.
It was run by this Surinamese bloke of about 60. He’d worked there for about 30 years and would rarely leave, preferring to spend his time in the jungle. He was a super warm and friendly guy, and loved having people visiting so he could share his passion for the rainforest with them.
When it came time for us to go, just as I was stepping into the small plane to leave, he poked his head through the door and asked where I was going back to, and I said London. He instantly responded, “oh you better watch out. That mayor of yours…”
I was taken aback and said, “Yeah, what about him?”
“You’ll have Sharia Law by next year, mark my words. It’s terrible what he’s done to London. Anyway, fly safe!” and he left before I could say anything.
It was really striking to me that a man on the other side of the world, who’d never been to London, living in a country that rarely even thinks about the UK, and with very limited exposure to the outside world, could have such a strong and distorted opinion about what’s happening here. A man who from all the evidence I had seen those few days was kind and thoughtful, but who had clearly had his brain pumped full of racist, far-right crap.
Second place went to the reader who was in remote mountains on the other side of the world:
I was in Australia back in July last year, and was on a tour of Grampians National Park. Was sat having lunch when the guide, a Kiwi-Aussie guy, came to sit with me. I’d been asking him about the birds but then he asked me if he could ask a question about the UK, and then came out with “so is the UK about to have a civil war?”
I was just flabbergasted! He said he’d been watching stuff on YouTube, including a guy who goes round old school pie shops in London. I kind of shut the convo down as it was so weird.
Nathan, another reader, got in touch with a report from the United Arab Emirates, where the BBC World Service has been replaced with Elon Musk’s X world service:
I was in Dubai at the end of last year, travelling for the F1 in Abu Dhabi and had a very odd experience with a taxi driver. I mentioned to him that I lived in London, and he immediately started talking about how dangerous it was and how I ought to be careful. He described how crime had been going up, how people were getting jewellery stolen off them in the street and that knives were everywhere.
The way he talked made him sound very familiar with the place so I assumed he had lived in or at least visited London recently. Only later did he say that he’d never been to London or the UK and that his entire impression was based on what he’d seen on social media and heard from other people in his cab.
Now London’s not perfect, but given the dystopian eight-lane motorway we were driving on at the time and that the smog was obscuring all view of the sky, I was quite glad to be heading back to London a few days later.
The anecdotes from around the world continue to flood into our inbox. There was the person with the relative in Los Angeles who was worried about going to London because their friend had seen a TikTok claiming that knife crime in the capital is so bad you now need ID to buy any cutlery from a shop. Another person said friends in Manchester regularly raised concerns about their safety. Times Radio’s Fi Glover got in touch to say one of her relatives now refused to come in from Surrey to central London because “it’s a hellish no go area, she’d be mugged for sure and all the shops were boarded up anyway”. A common thread was the perception that there are constant, rolling violent riots on the capital’s streets.
This isn’t about saying that life in London is all fine and dandy just because of the recent news that the murder rate is in decline. If you’ve read London Centric you’ll know we’ve broken news on how certain forms of theft are effectively legalised in the capital, housing can be infested with cockroaches, and stolen mobile phones are discarded with barely any police interest. Whether you’re an illegal ice cream van, a dodgy charity fundraiser, or a triad gang daubing houses in red paint… we’re still coming after you.
But the reason London Centric carefully reports these stories and establishes facts is because we think a great city can be made even better – and we want to put pressure on those in power to improve a place we actually like to live in.
For some YouTubers, X posters, or TikTokers who just need cheap clicks, London is nothing more than a filming location that provides them with the background footage for whatever viral ragebait will earn a few dollars in advertising revenue. We’ll have more on who’s behind these accounts in the coming weeks.
The Hackney school war that wasn’t
In any case, Londoners are more than capable of creating their own viral panics.
Schools in Hackney, east London, were thrown into chaos on Friday when a video began circulating on TikTok encouraging students to attack pupils at neighbouring schools. Clips posted by an account calling itself Hackney706 divided eight of the borough’s schools into either “red” or “blue” groups and urged Year 9 students to assault any student from a school with the opposing colour.
Calling it a “Hackney War,” the videos encourage pupils to film any attacks, before sending the footage to the TikTok account to be posted.
Under the words “be violent,” the post lists possible weapons, which include a compass, metal comb, and rulers. What’s hard for the authorities to tell is whether such posts are a legitimate threat of violence or the fantasy of a single school pupil with a TikTok account. A third option is somewhere in between – an incident could accidentally become reality thanks to the rapid spread of a single dubious post.
The Met Police told London Centric they took the video threats very seriously, especially after this week’s stabbing at a school in Brent. London Centric’s reporter spent the day in Hackney observing the heavy police presence caused by the TikTok message, as schools deployed staff in a bid to ensure pupils dispersed.
Officers issued a dispersal order to the Mare Street area of Hackney, allowing them to remove individuals from the area for 48 hours if they believe there’s a risk of antisocial behaviour. The local Hackney branch of McDonald’s was also not allowed to allow any under 16s to enter without an adult, with officers congregating outside.
At school kicking-out time central Hackney filled with schoolchildren who looked very disappointed by the lack of an incident, milling around while trying to avoid eye contact with the police. The schoolchildren mainly seemed annoyed they couldn’t get into McDonald’s. One woman, eyeing up the heavy police presence, asked our reporter if “there’d been a heist at M&S”.
The police and schools are understandably concerned that the virality of the messages on TikTok could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. What’s also clear is that the line between a real threat and teenagers messing about on the internet is increasingly blurry and difficult to deal with.
High-rolling activity in west London
We’re always keeping an eye on what London’s richest residents are up to. Which was why London Centric was intrigued to see an online gambler under the username GCottrell93 place a series of bets on Monday afternoon totalling £90,000 that Keir Starmer would be deposed as prime minister by the end of February.
The GCottrell93 account has previously been linked to sometime Kensington resident George Cottrell, a professional gambler, convicted fraudster, and unpaid aide to Reform UK leader Nigel Farage. The bet on the Holborn and St Pancras MP being deposed looks to be a duff one – if GCottrell93 cashes out at the time of writing, they’ll lose £20,000. Reform UK did not respond to a request for comment on whether the account really is owned by one of London’s wealthiest gamblers – and whether he’s allowed to flutter on politics while working at HQ.
Criterion Capital watch: Fights on the doorstep of HQ
Regular readers will know our sprawling and seemingly endless investigations into the curious business practices of Asif Aziz’s Criterion Capital, one of London’s biggest landlords. The company controls a large chunk of the buildings around Piccadilly Circus, snaps up suburban pubs, and purchases shopping centres such as the giant redevelopment site in Dalston. The company has tolerated tax-evading gift shops in its most prominent properties, run knock-off trademark-infringing restaurants with poor food hygiene standards that left children hospitalised, and posed an existential threat to both the Prince Charles Cinema and Picturehouse Central. It’s also well-connected: Through its charitable foundation, the Aziz family has paid for staff to work in the offices of Labour MPs and leading newspapers.
Luckily, an ever-growing number of sources connected to Criterion, who have concerns about the company’s business practices, are gaining the confidence to speak to London Centric. (If you work there, you can get in touch anonymously.) One of the most curious things we’ve been told in recent weeks is that bailiffs were sent with court approval to enforce a very small debt that Criterion Capital had repeatedly refused to pay. The dispute is believed to be over the company’s use of an unlicensed photograph on its website of the Colliers Wood tower development.
When bailiffs were sent to enforce the debt, it resulted in a violent altercation with Criterion employees outside the company's office at the Zedwell Hotel in Piccadilly Circus, leaving some of those involved with injuries.
A Met Police spokesperson confirmed to London Centric: “Police were called to a business in Great Windmill Street, Piccadilly, at around 09:30hrs on Wednesday, 21 January, following reports of an altercation between two bailiffs and a member of staff at the premises. Officers attended and made enquiries. There were no offences disclosed that required further investigation and no arrests made.”
Which raises the question: What does it say about the business affairs of one of London’s leading landlords when its staff are involved in fights outside their offices over their failure to pay small debts? Criterion did not respond to a request for comment.
Welcome to the Battle for Victoria Park
It’s grey and miserable in London – but planning for the summer festival season is already underway. It’s becoming increasingly apparent that last year’s Battle for Brockwell Park is causing serious repercussions for festival promoters across the capital.
For those who can’t remember, last year a group of south Londoners took Lambeth council to court over the number of days that Brockwell Park was fenced off for ticketed events such as Mighty Hoopla. Traditionally, London promoters have used temporary development rights to host festivals, with approval nodded through by the same council that stands to benefit financially from renting out their public park.
The Brockwell Park locals said they’d actually bothered to read national planning law and concluded this standard practice was illegal. They argued if a festival promoter wants to put structures on a public park for more than 28 days, including set-up and deconstruction time, they need to apply for full planning permission. A high court judge agreed with the locals, throwing the entire model of London festivals in chaos.
AEG, the mega promoter of events in east London’s Victoria Park including All Points East and LIDO, is among those readjusting to the new normal — as we first suggested would happen last May. Because of the Brockwell Park ruling it is having to submit a full planning application to Tower Hamlets council, in which it states it wants to take over a large chunk of Victoria Park for 75 days every summer for the next six years, in order to host 11 major festival events plus eight community events. For the first time, the public will have a chance to formally object and scrutinise the proposals in Victoria Park – and potentially put pressure on local councillors to demand changes.
Would you swim in the River Thames?
News that part of the River Thames will be formally monitored for wild swimming quality has caught our eye. The government has announced that a stretch of the river by Trowlock Island will be checked for water quality between May and September. It’s between Kingston and Teddington Lock, meaning it won’t be affected by the tides on the lower reaches of the river.
The location also narrowly avoids the untreated sewage from misconnected properties on the River Crane and River Brent that London Centric has literally waded through, as thousands of properties bypass Thames Water’s sewers and deposit effluent directly into the river. Solving London’s other sewage scandal is the real challenge if Sadiq Khan wants to deliver on his desire for more swimming in the river.
The former Finchley councillor running Reform in Wales
After a series of high-profile Conservatives jumping ship to Reform, the announcement of Dan Thomas as the party’s Welsh leader was met with one question: Who? Traffic to north London’s Barnet Post spiked, as Welsh residents rushed to Google who their new man was.
Thomas has long been a fixture of the north London political scene, becoming the Conservative leader of Barnet council from 2019 to 2022 after previously being the cabinet member who led its “easyCouncil” outsourcing reforms. The plan, which earned it the nickname in the press inspired by the cut-price airline, was to introduce a drastic cost-cutting plan to deliver only the legal minimum of services in-house while outsourcing everything else to service provider Capita on contracts worth around £500m.
Reform has its eyes trained on London’s suburban outer boroughs, like Barnet, where it hopes to make big gains. But rather than lead that campaign, Thomas last year decided to head back to Wales, where he grew up. Despite living hundreds of miles away, he remained a councillor for Finchley Church End ward until December.
Peter Zinkin, the current Barnet Conservative leader, told London Centric that Thomas should refund the councillor’s allowance paid to him during his “prolonged absence from Barnet” having previously criticised him for having “abandoned the borough, changed parties and let down residents”.
Zinkin said that the new Welsh Reform leader’s “level of engagement in the last year was very modest [...] If your job is not in Barnet and you don’t live in Barnet anymore, then you don’t actually qualify to be a councillor.”
When he was leader of Barnet council, Thomas pushed a positive portrayal of London as a diverse city. Following the killing of George Floyd in 2020, Wales’ new Reform leader said the events had “led me to reflect on racism at home, as well as abroad, and how proud I am to represent Barnet – a borough made so much better and more interesting thanks to its rich diversity.”
This item was reported by London Centric in conjunction with the Will Hayward newsletter in Wales, which is a great read for anyone wanting to get to understand Welsh politics.
No, you can’t get out of a parking fine by asking ChatGPT to write your appeal
We’re sure that all London Centric readers pay close attention to the annual report of London’s Environment and Traffic Adjudicators, the people who handle appeals for traffic offences. For those that haven’t, it’s clear that AI is increasingly causing chaos. People are asking chatbots to write their appeals and the AI systems, keen to please their users, are then writing absolute nonsense with no basis in legal reality which then has to be formally considered by the tribunal.
“Adjudicators have found that these ‘hallucinated’ cases are appearing in arguments before them,” said the traffic adjudicator. “In one appeal, 5 of 7 cases cited by an Appellant did not exist. The other two were genuine cases but they were not on the points advanced by the Appellant.”
We keep hearing the same thing – AI-generated legal appeals are clogging up London’s councils, courts, and public services. People who used to complain in green ink can now file pages upon pages of legitimate-sounding AI nonsense that legally has to be considered by those in authority. If you have any good examples of this, get in touch.
We’ll be back next week with more original investigations. Thanks to all who pay for London Centric and make it possible. If you enjoyed this edition, please forward it to a friend and spread the word.
Just a general note - as I think I made clear - that this is no Panglossian London-is-great claim. If you saw some of the forthcoming stories we’re working on regarding decline of the public sphere, organised crime, and political failures you’d never think that.
What’s happening is a growing gap between the massively flawed city you can see with your real eyes (and I cover hundreds of miles to all corners of the capital every week) and the utter catastrophic city that exists in online content.
The same narrative is circulating about my home city, Dublin. While there is a lot of random, unprovoked violence, Dublin is not a hell-hole.