Our city is the City of Westminster, and you can improve cycling in Pimlico by joining the Times Cities fit for cycling campaign and push the 5 points which are relevant to Pimlico:

• Trucks in London should be required by law to fit sensors, audible truck-turning alarms, extra mirrors and safety bars to stop cyclists being thrown under the wheels.
• Road junctions must be fitted with priority traffic lights for cyclists and Trixi mirrors that allow lorry drivers to see cyclists on their near-side.
• Two per cent of the Highways Agency budget should be earmarked for next generation cycle routes, providing £100 million a year towards world-class cycling infrastructure. Each year cities should be graded on the quality of cycling provision.
• The training of cyclists and drivers must improve and cycle safety should become a core part of the driving test.
• 20mph should become the default speed limit in residential areas where there are no cycle lanes.

You can tweet your support for the Times Campaign Tweet #cyclesafe and also write to our MP in support of the Times

I try to keep this blog tightly on the subjects of Pimlico, Renting, and Flats. It’s not too difficult because I can use the Forum to ramble about other subjects, and this keeps the blog focussed.

I thought that I would stray a little to talk about this blog, and blogging, as a way of thanking my many sources of information, and I have broken the story into three parts.

Pimlico

Renting

Property

Pimlico

Blogging about Pimlico is probably the easiest of my 3 core subjects, particularly since I define “Pimlico” as being anywhere within walking distance of Pimlico Flats – so that covers Central London, and makes:

• Victoria & Belgravia “North Pimlico”,
• Kensington and Chelsea “West Pimlico”,
• Battersea, Vauxhall, Stockwell, Clapham “South Pimlico”
• Westminster, Soho “East Pimlico”

I try to focus on free and little published events and attractions, as the bigger professional things are generally commercially advertised and known about. My biggest source of information is the weekly publication The Pimlico News and Journal which is something that I publish myself and is automatically curated from various feeds. It has been sufficiently successful that I now carry it as a page on this website which can be accessed from the menu on the left.

It’s a great Newspaper but I must give thanks to some of the contributors. There are of course the usual traditional sources of information, BBC, Newspapers, but the purpose of niche blogging is to uncover the real story, and here are the local blogs and websites which I follow in order to reach the news other blogs can’t reach:

London Blogs

• Foremost has to be the Westminster Chronicle  just because we need professional journalists and local newspapers in our lives, and if you don’t use them and pay for them we will lose them, and be all the poorer. I don’t know how the power of the internet will pan out, but printed news is under pressure from free blogs like this, and the free “Pimlico News and Journal” that I just promoted. In spite of my competition with the Chronicle all I can say is that we need our local shops, and newspapers, so please buy a copy from your local newsagent.
• Londonist  a website about London and everything that happens in it – it’s a professional publication set up in 2004 as The Big Smoker. I like it because, although it is a comprehensive London-wide reference resource, it carries this off with humour and is in touch with it’s community roots (e.g. the Hand Drawn Maps initiative). They provide everything you need to know about the capital, as well as celebrating the quirks, eccentricities, hidden and surprising bits that make up the alternative side of the city.
• Discovering London - which I juxtapose alongside Londonist because Peter’s blog is small, if not tiny, yet it is brimming over with personality, quality, and originality. Peter has yet to reach his 1st anniversary of blogging, but already his website is one of my favourites.
• Tired of London, Tired of Life began in October 2008 as a place to document those moments of inspiration for making living in London exciting & different. Doing the same thing day after day can get anyone down, but our city has an almost infinite number of things to see and do. If you’re not getting the most out of London, it is a sad truth that you have no one to blame but yourself. This site was part of a personal plan for the author to get the most out of the greatest city on earth, and it has worked.
• Going Underground Look at what the mainstream press has to say! The magic, mystery & sometimes maddening shortcomings of London’s Tube are documented with love, enthusiasm & sometimes despair by its unofficial social historian ……. The best blogs have a tinge of obsession about them … On some mornings it can feel like the only reason to be grateful that the Tube exists … one of London’s obsessives
• Young and Poor  Cheap/free events, gigs, food & drink, or sales —  never paid to mention things so it’s only things worth recommending.
• Ian Visits does NOT list the mainstream music/theatre/film events which are already so well supplied by the major newspapers and magazines – but DOES list the heritage open days, walking tours and mostly, the astonishing array of free (or cheap) lectures that the societies and universities of London provide. It’s a personal resource of remarkable usefulness.
• Boris Watch An act of frustration, at the loss to apparent personality politics, and the accusation that somehow young people are to blame …… but also a great tap into the stories that THEY don’t want you to read about.
• Laura Porter London-based travel writer & VisitBritain Super Blogger, mum, copywriter, tea drinker, afternoon tea addict & all-round London obsessive. She is a professional travel writer for About but I have recommended her twitter feed as she is a model in how to use Social Media. She does so much more than just promote her own writing, and is very generous with the links and information that she publishes. Consequently I would say – if you want to keep your finger on the pulse of mainstream London – follow Laura.

Monday 23 January is considered the most depressing day of the year.

For one day and one day only an installation by art collective Greyworld that replicates the effects of the sun will be raised by crane 56m high above Trafalgar Square, the installation gives off more than four million lumens of light – the equivalent of 260,000 lightbulbs, to brightening up a cold, dark winter day.

The Trafalgar Sun has taken six months to create, will be 30,000 times bigger than a football and weigh over 2,500kgs (two and a half tons!). The sun will rise an hour early at 6.51am and set at 7.33pm, extending the daylight in Trafalgar Square by two hours.

The Trafalgar Sun, Trafalgar Square, London, from 5.57am until 7.33pm on Monday 23rd January

Only in Pimlico does a knife wielding mugger ask police to look after his cat.

In a dawn raid detectives seized a 32-year-old man on suspicion of a violent robbery on a woman in Belgravia last month. In the attack the woman had a pair of £100,000 earrings pulled from her ears moments after she had stepped from her Bentley car in Eaton Place. Police suspect there are links to a series of eight attacks on women walking home alone in Pimlico in November and last month.

The robbers stole jewellery and watches, sometimes at knifepoint – leading residents to organise night-time patrols to guard the streets. Officers from Westminster Crime Squad burst into the suspect’s one-bedroom flat on the third floor of a council block in Notting Hill early today. Using a steel battering ram, they smashed their way inside, shouting “police, police, police”.

Sounds of a struggle could be heard before the suspect was led away in handcuffs – after first asking one officer to look after his pet cat, Angel.

Knife Wielding Mugger

Christmas Tree

Simply deposit your tree at one of the drop off locations listed below between 3rd and 15th January 2012 and WCC will collect and recycle it. Before you take your tree to the recycling site please remove all decorations. Once collected the trees are sent to be chipped and composted.

Churchill Gardens Estate, SW1V (next to Balmoral Castle Pub)

Charlwood Street, SW1 (on the junction with Denbigh Street next to the existing recycling bins)

Eaton Square, SW1W (junction with Eccleston St)

Erasmus Street, SW1P (junction with Cureton St)

Pimlico Plumbers – the only company to have more PRs than workers – is hoping for a viral Christmas with an animation, which doubles up as an online Christmas card to the company’s customers, and features the Pimlico boss Charlie Mullins rescuing Pamela Anderson – in all her glory – from a celeb-studded party where a pipe bursts.

Even smarter for the Pimlico marketing geniuses – the video only cost £250 to make, being the prize money awarded to the lucky student won Pimlico’s competition for an animation which was incorporated into the syllabus for a Diploma in Art & Design (Interactive Media).

Pimlico's Charlie Mullins

Staff at a Pimlico charity shop have been left spooked by a series of unusual events which they have blamed on a mischievous ghost, writes Sophie Exton.

Tim Briggs, manager of the Red Cross shop in Ebury Street, first noticed the phantom when he was alone in the basement and the clothes steamer mysteriously switched itself on.

Another time, he left an old pocket watch on the sorting table while carrying out research into how much it was worth, when it vanished overnight.

When he looked through a bag of new donations, Mr Briggs was shocked to find the watch tucked in between cashmere jumpers.

Staff have also reported objects unaccountably moved around the shop and feeling very cold in the basement.

The freaky antics have been attributed to Alfred Cross, who was a butler during the Edwardian period when the building was a family home.

Mr Cross was found dead in the basement but the circumstances surrounding his death remain a mystery.

Mr Briggs said: “As butler of the house, Alfred Cross might have had to steam his master’s clothes and he would have had good time-keeping, so that might explain his interest in the clothes steamer and the pocket watch.

“Or perhaps he keeps coming back because he wants to show his support for the Red Cross.

“People who live near the shop have come in and told us they think the basements of their houses might also be haunted.

“The ghost is more mischievous than frightening but I do sometimes get an eerie feeling when I’m doing stock takes.”

Assistant manager Ruth Sullivan added “There is definitely something spooky about the shop.

“At night when I close the shop, it often feels quite cold and as if there is a presence.”

http://westminster.londoninformer.co.uk/2011/10/spooky-goings-on-at-pimlico-ch.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

Two Pimlico Pubs have shut this month – I’ve no idea why, but it’s tragic. Pubs are unique to British culture, and central to community, when a Pub closes the community is dealt a blow. The Pubs that have closed in the last month are The Clarendon, and the Contented Vine. Over the years a number of other pubs in the Pimlico Conservation area have shut – the Greyhound, the Dolphin, The Brahms & List. This should all be of major concern to anyone who looks to build community.

The Dolphin, 114 Denbigh St SW1

The Dolphin is in Pimlico, the area south and west of Victoria Station, and has been closed since 2001 or so. The boards in front of the downstairs windows declare TOLPUBBLE. (and the NEW NAVIGATION INN which isn’t even in London).

The Dolphin appears to still be tenanted in its upper floors, but the pub is showing no signs of ‘doing’ anything at all; a surprise given the land values in the area. Depicted here in Summer 2002, it was still the same in February 2008. The address was the offices of a company called Coffee Wash Ltd, since dissolved.

Pimlico Winter Blues – doncha hate ‘em? Darker nights, shorter days, repeats on TV, a long slog until the next holiday and the expense of Christmas, for some, as we turn back the clocks and turn up the heating, the difficulties of life can be overcome! “Beating the Winter Blues” will have qualified medical professionals talking about strategies for avoiding depression, how to manage and where to go for help if everything gets too much.

Open to anyone, the event takes place from 5.30pm to 8pm on October 20 at the Victoria Medical Centre, in Upper Tachbrook Street, and is being run by the Victoria Medical Centre Practice Patient Participation Group (P.P.G). Victoria Medical Centre is the oldest practice in Westminster and has been in existence since before the NHS began. It is also the largest General Practice Surgery in the area and offers a wide range of services from a purpose built, state-of-the art premises conveniently situated in the heart of Pimlico.