It’s a little hard to explain .... but we’ll get there in the end. Time’s what we’ve got plenty of you see. Those noises from next door? Just to wet the whistle, in a manner of speaking. Gets the old adrenalin flowing. It’s Masher. We call him that but he’s getting pretensions, wants to style himself Olaf the Great. Not that he’s Scandinavian or anything – in fact he comes from Wales – but Welsh is torture to pronounce –if...

The backlash against Byron burger chain has stepped up another gear, after protestors released thousands of live cockroaches and other insects into two of its burger outlets. The branches, Shaftesbury Avenue and Holborn restaurants in London, were attacked on Friday evening and both were forced to close after the infestation. This move was in retaliation to an immigration sting against its own staff, which saw 35 people removed from the UK, who had been working illegally. The staff from Albania,...

A delicious, healthy recipe.

By Deborah Hodge As a previous television addict I can map out the time of year according to big shows that mainstream media feeds us. Britain’s Got Talent begins the year nicely and the X Factor winner is announced just before Christmas. Yes, we really do have our lives mapped out by television. It used to “feel like Christmas” on the cold evenings. That elusive feeling we crave from our childhoods. A sense of routine and safety: I remember it well....

A new study has studied how much poverty impacts on the UK economy and the results are shocking. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation, who conducted the research, have reported that the national cost is £78bn, which costs each taxpayer a huger £1,200 a year. Poverty is categorised as living on an income which is less than 60 per cent of the median. The JRF looked at how these people’s needs create demand on various government services. Without even taking benefits into...

The gap between property prices in England and Wales and London has closed significantly according to a new data set released by Land Registry in conjunction with the Office of National Statistics (ONS). The average price of property in England and Wales reached £221,832 in May, now standing at almost half the price of Greater London (£472,163). This compares to previously released Land Registry data from March when property in London was three times more expensive than the rest of...

With plenty of exciting restaurant openings constantly taking place across the Capital, here’s our pick of the best new restaurants arriving in London over the coming month. Dirty Bones – Shoreditch With two successful restaurants already operating on the other side of the city (one in Kensington, and the other in Soho), the team behind Dirty Bones are set to open a third site this month. Taking over a Grade II listed heritage building at the Shoreditch end of Bethnal Green Road, alike the...

There was a time when rum in the UK existed in little more than Bacardi and Malibu varieties to be enjoyed with a splash of diet coke for the conservative sorts or a mix of pineapple juice for the more adventurous. But the Caribbean spirit has enjoyed a remarkable resurgence over the past decade. Two years ago it was cocktails, with a craze for the mojito cocktail helping rum to become the UK's fastest-growing spirit, but today it’s a demand...

The West End is full of timeless shows, but very few can claim to get more relevant. George Orwell’s 1984 stands alone in that regard, foretelling geo-political events and socio-economic attitudes towards them with increasing accuracy as the years pass. The last time I saw the show it was Edward Snowden’s surveillance disclosures and the obvious Big Brother implications of NSA and GCHQ data leaks, but this time my mind just unravelled with current connotational events. The aftermath of the...