A final little bit from me in today's edition: the south London flagger who told the BBC he was one of many “hardworking business people” hanging British flags -- and his £98,000 false injury claim

When I called him, he gave this gem of a quote

Moments before the dog was handed over, captured in grainy iPhone SE glory.

The pet does seem to be a crucial part of the protest. The man’s banner says “Dictators Fear Freedom, Even For Animals” with an icon of a dog.

Earlier this year, Iran banned dog-walking in cities including Tehran.

For more on the chaotic, unregulated pedicab industry: www.londoncentric.media/p/londons-pe...

Wildfire expert Dr Thomas Smith on the risks in parks like Hyde Park, Brockwell Park, and Hampstead Heath:

Another fun part of this edition is the Qatari-royal-owned, mould-infested, ceiling-falling-down, £7.95m Mayfair townhouse that reminded me (already resigned to not owning in London for about 11 decades) just how outrageous London’s property market is.

Key findings, from council powers and Inside Success' finances to allegations from charity heads that they are making "zero contribution to the fight against knife crime":

Real screenshot (of non-real tweet) from the real Conservative video.

Dominic Cummings and LFG (*those* tube graffiti cleaners) hard-launched in the telegraph over the weekend with this vaguely terrifying photo angle

Plus: the Kemi-branded chocolate handed out at the Tories' summer party. Nothing like "I would die to protect free speech" with your morning coffee.

www.londoncentric.media/i/165872932/...

Graffiti cleaning is part of their aim of targeting decline "bottom-up"; their policy work (eg their Infrastructure Bill work) is the "top-down" equivalent. Interesting to see what happens next...

There's a load of references to Musk, Sam Altman, and the right-leaning Nicolas (30 ans) meme among the political group.

More insidiously, the co-founder (who heads up the graffiti cleaning) this week reposted a Reform MP's tweet about migrants and "Dinghy Popping".

Looking for Growth was co-founded by Lawrence Newport, the campaigner behind the XL Bully ban.

Supporters include Dominic Cummings (a speaker at all of its events), Reform's Zia Yusuf, GB News' Tom Harwood, some figures from the left, and a lot of tech-adjacent men in their late 20s/early 30s

Lessons from SXSW London, where people were not too happy at paying up to £1,300 to wait around all the time:

- successfully so British that queues almost became the main event
- if everyone has fast-track tickets, no one really has fast-track tickets

www.londoncentric.media/i/165346629/...

Goldfinger, dystopian high-rise, broken lifts and trapped residents ... yet another London property shitshow

For Stantke, the lessons from Spectrum are clear: people should not be living in high-rise blocks during cladding removal works, and building owners should be more accountable and subject to greater scrutiny, she says.

Residents say they have heard nothing from building owner Arinium Limited and almost nothing from building management Block Management UK.

Christian Hansen, a solicitor representing the residents, said the government should require building owners to share more information. Stantke agreed.

Some residents were tenants paying c£1,300 a month for a 1-bed; others were leaseholders, who had queued overnight in 2016 to buy their flats.

The building's known fire safety issues included flammable cladding, mid-removal at the time of the fire. The scaffolding for this aided the fire's spread.

Kasia Stantke, one of the residents displaced by the fire, told us she lost everything except her passport, which the LFB returned to her when the building was demolished in December.

When the news of the fire broke, the immediate comparison was Grenfell. An LFB deputy commissioner described the Spectrum fire as “one of the most extreme [fires] we have seen in a residential block in recent years”. Thankfully, no one died - but all the residents lost their homes.