"and all affected properties have valid EICRs, with no electrical safety issues identified."
Whilst I'm more senior now, I've been an Electrician for 15 years, most of which ive been doing or involved with EICR works. If no issues have been identified, especially following a lack of maintenance, either the testing regime is poor or the statement is a lie. It wouldn't surprise me if these were again fake or poor quality.
There is an enormous issue with fake and poor quality EICRs in all buildings as there is a race to the bottom in price. A 'drive by' EICR was part of the cause of the Grenfell Tower fire IIRC.
This jumped out at me as well. I can barely handle a screwdriver, but it didn’t seem a plausible statement to make. Even a “some issues were identified and have been remedied/are scheduled in the next few weeks” would be far more believable.
Seems like a cultural issue with the truth at Criterion.
I'm low-key horrified that with a host of witnesses, and caught red handed a pub manager was of the opinion that there was "no point" reporting a thief to the police when they were preying on the pub's customers. I get that the Met don't want spend resources to investigate if a robber has made off with your device and you have no better description than "some guy on a bike" but when the thief has actually been caught in the act?
On the videos about London, I suspect some of this is coming, not just from the sillier end of the US right, but also from the UAE. Will be interesting to see the extent that is raised - if at all.
Sometimes I sit and idly contemplate what London's international image would be like if Sadiq Khan had the same level of control over the media as Sheikh Mohammed does.
In Dubai (a city with a legal system actually based in sharia law) it is a lot easier to ban non-state media, require social media posters to obtain government-issued media loicences™️ on threat of deportation, and lock up any influencers who don't post what you'd like on (spurious) charges of breaching The Federal Decree-Law No. 34 On Countering Rumours and Cybercrimes, after all.
This bit about Criterion is almost laughable: “We take the safety of our residents extremely seriously and have robust processes in place to ensure compliance with all electrical safety requirements."
So doesn't that vigilance extend to who you hire? They got caught, plain and simple. Then tried to gloss over their image.
"While it was hard to trace the ownership of the building..." We need a transparent register of property ownership that anyone can look up. I'm sure I'm not alone in being fed up with the three shell games this country provides to people with money and power, enabling them to evade accountability.
Good to see the Mayor and HMG trying to sort this. Unfortunately I’ve also spent the morning watching loads of new videos of disorder in Clapham from yesterday. Whoops!
I came to the comments to write exactly what Patrick above just wrote! But my response is a little longer.. sorry (not sorry).
Unfortunately I think our problem is bigger than Sadiq (and the Government) realise.
It is all well and good boldly pointing out that your chances of getting murdered in London are the lowest they have ever been. That is great, and we appreciate it, but the chance of this happening was low anyway. You were and are more likely to be run-over in a traffic accident than murdered (I think..)
Tourists (overseas and domestic), prospective investors, (and more importantly us locals that pay taxes) are more bothered about the rest of the crime. The low level disruptive, anti-social crime.
The watch thefts are mercifully small in number - but are muggings pure and simple and therefore horrendous for the victims. Calling them watch-thefts just makes them more sensational to highlight in social media.
Phone thefts are rampant. A) because we did not used to walk-around waving £500-£1,000 bundles of cash in the air while not paying attention to whats happening around us; B) because they are so much more disruptive to our lives when we lose our phones.
Bike thefts in London (as you have previously reported) are so endemic that there are now more stories about people locating the bikes themselves instead of the police doing it (and then not being resourced to take action on located bikes) than stories about the bikes being stolen in the first place.
Shoplifting is prevalent and in many places persistent. Ten years ago we would have been shocked to see a security guard in a supermarket on a High Street. Now they are a standard feature.
And I won't comment on the Clapham flash-mobs we have just seen.
The Met, the Mayor, all the London Assembly (on all political sides), the local councils (Tower Hamlets for me) and the Government (of all sides as well) have completely missed the boat in tackling these issues. They have been brewing and increading for twenty years. Regardless of their causes, this criminal activity has been allowed to become prevalent.
Social Media amplifies this as it sells and makes money.
Banging on about a lower probability of being murdered and avoiding talking about phone theft/shop theft/bike theft is a demonstration of talking the talking points rather than actually dealing with the real problems.
The Government needs to stop beating up London and recognise that it generates a significant part of the UK's GDP. Levelling up should absolutely happen but not by levelling down London to the rest of the country.
The London Assembly and the Mayor should stop pointing fingers at opposition parties and start being honest with those that live in London about the costs of what real policing look like. We, the people, the businesses, the tourists and the Government need to start paying money to fix this.
The Met Commissioner has done a good job of improving the Met, he has some way to go, but it is improving; but he has to start being honest about telling us what it will cost to fix these low level crimes.
We need more police officers; they need to be more visible; we need a faster justice system to process criminals; we need firmer punishments as deterrents; and we need to be consistent. And it needs to be done as a permanent change. Not a one month blitz.
One MetPolice Tiktok video showing the police raiding a mobile phone cache (while superb to watch) or instagram post of a police officer ramming his car into a bike thief on an e-bike at Bank junction (Absolutely superb!!!), will not mitigate hundreds of videos of phone thefts and shop lifting in M&S Clapham and elsewhere...
Sorry (not sorry) for the rant.
But your articles are about the only decent articulation of issues that actually affect London.
The mainstream media rubbish is more bothered about regurgitating the narritives spun to them by politicians.
I don't think that's a rant, I think that captures some of the nuance I try to edge towards – you can be happy that the threat to life is low but also despair over the prevalence of low level crime in the capital.
As someone who used to cover the media industry and thinks about viral content too much.... the viral videos cut both ways. One side is people going "damn London looks a mess". The other is people being influenced by them and realising "oh you can get away with petty crime and won't get caught".
And for what it's worth, yesterday afternoon my e-bike battery was stolen by someone with a screwdriver on a packed street outside the Science Museum. I only bothered reporting it to the police so I could get a crime number to claim from Laka on the insurance. Case already closed by the Met, along with an email asking if I'd bothered to obtain the CCTV myself. (I don't blame them, sod all chance of catching the thief, but this doesn't have to be normal.)
Fighting viral content is hard but surely part of the answer is…reducing “petty” crime? Would be a boon to Londoners and visitors alike. I understand it’s primarily a budget issue, and I don’t want to live in a city patrolled by militarized cops as in the U.S., but surely there’s an answer. London police just feel a bit wet. City police don’t even allow replies on their X feed.
Someone recently set our rubbish bins alight and the police did absolutely nothing. The fire brigade simply sent us a report saying the absolute obvious— that someone had set the bins alight. And so we await the next crime/ASB.
Yeah I was being a bit facetious. Realistically the job of the mayor is to do both; the benefit of actually tackling phone theft is that helps fix perceptions too.
Any update on what has happened between Criterion and Picturehouse Central? Are the latter going to roll into summer effectively unable to utilise their top floor and roof? Assume if they are, he will succeed in their closure.
Perhaps London councils could use some of the funds they are gaining from new licensing requirements for landlords to actually check if rental properties have genuine gas safety and electrical certificates? I mean I thought they were doing this already, but perhaps I have been naive.
I think you’re right, but the problem isn’t only about low level crime. The other side of the coin for these types of videos is related to immigration. It will not stop YouTubers and others from posting and making money off prejudice, hate and fear, so long as they can point their cameras and show you that London has Fallen because immigrants have not only radicalised the whole of London with Sharia law, they have expelled almost every single White British person from London, and personally oversee the Islamification of our nation. We now walk amongst “hostiles” and require bodyguards according to some London has Fallen videos. That’s the other side of the coin that needs to be dealt with, not just the crime which I concede is important.
On Criterion's replacement EICRs:
"and all affected properties have valid EICRs, with no electrical safety issues identified."
Whilst I'm more senior now, I've been an Electrician for 15 years, most of which ive been doing or involved with EICR works. If no issues have been identified, especially following a lack of maintenance, either the testing regime is poor or the statement is a lie. It wouldn't surprise me if these were again fake or poor quality.
There is an enormous issue with fake and poor quality EICRs in all buildings as there is a race to the bottom in price. A 'drive by' EICR was part of the cause of the Grenfell Tower fire IIRC.
This jumped out at me as well. I can barely handle a screwdriver, but it didn’t seem a plausible statement to make. Even a “some issues were identified and have been remedied/are scheduled in the next few weeks” would be far more believable.
Seems like a cultural issue with the truth at Criterion.
I'm low-key horrified that with a host of witnesses, and caught red handed a pub manager was of the opinion that there was "no point" reporting a thief to the police when they were preying on the pub's customers. I get that the Met don't want spend resources to investigate if a robber has made off with your device and you have no better description than "some guy on a bike" but when the thief has actually been caught in the act?
On the videos about London, I suspect some of this is coming, not just from the sillier end of the US right, but also from the UAE. Will be interesting to see the extent that is raised - if at all.
Sometimes I sit and idly contemplate what London's international image would be like if Sadiq Khan had the same level of control over the media as Sheikh Mohammed does.
In Dubai (a city with a legal system actually based in sharia law) it is a lot easier to ban non-state media, require social media posters to obtain government-issued media loicences™️ on threat of deportation, and lock up any influencers who don't post what you'd like on (spurious) charges of breaching The Federal Decree-Law No. 34 On Countering Rumours and Cybercrimes, after all.
Really? There's no such laws in (e.g.,) Japan, but there's no 'Tokyo has fallen' narrative, as far as I can tell.
Why is Austin's reputation better than San Francisco or New York's? All have the same relevant laws.
This bit about Criterion is almost laughable: “We take the safety of our residents extremely seriously and have robust processes in place to ensure compliance with all electrical safety requirements."
So doesn't that vigilance extend to who you hire? They got caught, plain and simple. Then tried to gloss over their image.
''Rogue electrician', huh?
*all the eye rolls*
"While it was hard to trace the ownership of the building..." We need a transparent register of property ownership that anyone can look up. I'm sure I'm not alone in being fed up with the three shell games this country provides to people with money and power, enabling them to evade accountability.
Good to see the Mayor and HMG trying to sort this. Unfortunately I’ve also spent the morning watching loads of new videos of disorder in Clapham from yesterday. Whoops!
Yup - quite hard to fight back on comms if there’s a ready supply of new content!
I came to the comments to write exactly what Patrick above just wrote! But my response is a little longer.. sorry (not sorry).
Unfortunately I think our problem is bigger than Sadiq (and the Government) realise.
It is all well and good boldly pointing out that your chances of getting murdered in London are the lowest they have ever been. That is great, and we appreciate it, but the chance of this happening was low anyway. You were and are more likely to be run-over in a traffic accident than murdered (I think..)
Tourists (overseas and domestic), prospective investors, (and more importantly us locals that pay taxes) are more bothered about the rest of the crime. The low level disruptive, anti-social crime.
The watch thefts are mercifully small in number - but are muggings pure and simple and therefore horrendous for the victims. Calling them watch-thefts just makes them more sensational to highlight in social media.
Phone thefts are rampant. A) because we did not used to walk-around waving £500-£1,000 bundles of cash in the air while not paying attention to whats happening around us; B) because they are so much more disruptive to our lives when we lose our phones.
Bike thefts in London (as you have previously reported) are so endemic that there are now more stories about people locating the bikes themselves instead of the police doing it (and then not being resourced to take action on located bikes) than stories about the bikes being stolen in the first place.
Shoplifting is prevalent and in many places persistent. Ten years ago we would have been shocked to see a security guard in a supermarket on a High Street. Now they are a standard feature.
And I won't comment on the Clapham flash-mobs we have just seen.
The Met, the Mayor, all the London Assembly (on all political sides), the local councils (Tower Hamlets for me) and the Government (of all sides as well) have completely missed the boat in tackling these issues. They have been brewing and increading for twenty years. Regardless of their causes, this criminal activity has been allowed to become prevalent.
Social Media amplifies this as it sells and makes money.
Banging on about a lower probability of being murdered and avoiding talking about phone theft/shop theft/bike theft is a demonstration of talking the talking points rather than actually dealing with the real problems.
The Government needs to stop beating up London and recognise that it generates a significant part of the UK's GDP. Levelling up should absolutely happen but not by levelling down London to the rest of the country.
The London Assembly and the Mayor should stop pointing fingers at opposition parties and start being honest with those that live in London about the costs of what real policing look like. We, the people, the businesses, the tourists and the Government need to start paying money to fix this.
The Met Commissioner has done a good job of improving the Met, he has some way to go, but it is improving; but he has to start being honest about telling us what it will cost to fix these low level crimes.
We need more police officers; they need to be more visible; we need a faster justice system to process criminals; we need firmer punishments as deterrents; and we need to be consistent. And it needs to be done as a permanent change. Not a one month blitz.
One MetPolice Tiktok video showing the police raiding a mobile phone cache (while superb to watch) or instagram post of a police officer ramming his car into a bike thief on an e-bike at Bank junction (Absolutely superb!!!), will not mitigate hundreds of videos of phone thefts and shop lifting in M&S Clapham and elsewhere...
Sorry (not sorry) for the rant.
But your articles are about the only decent articulation of issues that actually affect London.
The mainstream media rubbish is more bothered about regurgitating the narritives spun to them by politicians.
I don't think that's a rant, I think that captures some of the nuance I try to edge towards – you can be happy that the threat to life is low but also despair over the prevalence of low level crime in the capital.
As someone who used to cover the media industry and thinks about viral content too much.... the viral videos cut both ways. One side is people going "damn London looks a mess". The other is people being influenced by them and realising "oh you can get away with petty crime and won't get caught".
And for what it's worth, yesterday afternoon my e-bike battery was stolen by someone with a screwdriver on a packed street outside the Science Museum. I only bothered reporting it to the police so I could get a crime number to claim from Laka on the insurance. Case already closed by the Met, along with an email asking if I'd bothered to obtain the CCTV myself. (I don't blame them, sod all chance of catching the thief, but this doesn't have to be normal.)
Fighting viral content is hard but surely part of the answer is…reducing “petty” crime? Would be a boon to Londoners and visitors alike. I understand it’s primarily a budget issue, and I don’t want to live in a city patrolled by militarized cops as in the U.S., but surely there’s an answer. London police just feel a bit wet. City police don’t even allow replies on their X feed.
Someone recently set our rubbish bins alight and the police did absolutely nothing. The fire brigade simply sent us a report saying the absolute obvious— that someone had set the bins alight. And so we await the next crime/ASB.
Agreed. It seems there’s more motivation to fight the optics than the substance.
Passers-by: oblivious, or too afraid to intervene in an obvious theft? Both sad states.
Thank you. But you are way more eloquent than I am! Sorry about the bike.
Would London's international reputation really be any better, if it was solely based on real videos?
I think I'd prefer it if they put more effort into stamping out phone theft and less into trying to convince tourists it's not a big deal.
What about both?
Yeah I was being a bit facetious. Realistically the job of the mayor is to do both; the benefit of actually tackling phone theft is that helps fix perceptions too.
Any update on what has happened between Criterion and Picturehouse Central? Are the latter going to roll into summer effectively unable to utilise their top floor and roof? Assume if they are, he will succeed in their closure.
Still rumbling through the courts. Keeping an eye on it. Picturehouse have been reluctant to talk to us for some reason.
Thank the lord for an active and sensible mayor.
Perhaps London councils could use some of the funds they are gaining from new licensing requirements for landlords to actually check if rental properties have genuine gas safety and electrical certificates? I mean I thought they were doing this already, but perhaps I have been naive.
Something I find interesting about this is that central/places like Oxford Street feel so different to where I live (Tower Hamlets)
Central is just this weird, hyper corporate tourist theme park. In my head I don’t see it as really being “London”. I almost never venture there.
Real London imv is the zone 2-3 bits where people actually live but are still not too far out.
I think you’re right, but the problem isn’t only about low level crime. The other side of the coin for these types of videos is related to immigration. It will not stop YouTubers and others from posting and making money off prejudice, hate and fear, so long as they can point their cameras and show you that London has Fallen because immigrants have not only radicalised the whole of London with Sharia law, they have expelled almost every single White British person from London, and personally oversee the Islamification of our nation. We now walk amongst “hostiles” and require bodyguards according to some London has Fallen videos. That’s the other side of the coin that needs to be dealt with, not just the crime which I concede is important.
Add to this videos of the gangs of youths terrorising shoppers in broad daylight and smashing up shops as a social media trend. https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/teens-cause-fresh-mayhem-in-clapham-days-after-mob-storms-shops/ar-AA1ZPB63?ocid=BingNewsSerp