Why has the number of London households on borough waiting lists for homes to rent gone up and up? Part of the answer is very simply that the amount of such dwellings - flats and houses let at affordable "social rents" - has been going down and down. It's been doing it fer years. Figures from the House of Commons Library obtained by Westminster North MP Karen Buck show some spectacular reductions in the percentage of each borough's total housing stock available for social rent between 1986 and 2006.

The shrinkage in the proportions of social housing has been especially marked in many boroughs where housing need is most acute and competition for it most extreme. Running through the boroughs alphabetically, I see that 55 percent of Barking and Dagenham's housing stock was for social rent in 1986, that this had fallen to 42 percent by 1996 and plunged to just 26 percent by 2006 - a drop of more than half over the period as a whole.

In Brent, the fall was from 30 percent to 20 percent over the 20 years, in Camden from 47 percent to 29 percent, in Greenwich from 46 percent to 28 percent, in Hackney from a very high 70 percent to 38 percent and in Hammersmith and Fulham from 40 percent to 28 percent. Continue reading...

More than 150 years after the Great Stink of London drove MPs from parliament to escape the shocking honk of metropolitan excreta wafting up from the Thames, a public consultation has opened on plans to avoid a repeat. Joseph Bazalgette was the man who liberated Londoners from the waterborne stench of their own waste in the 19th century. His sewer system, a triumph of Victorian engineering, remains in good shape. The trouble is, there are many more Londoners now than there were then and many more acres of green under concrete.

Both changes have increased the pressure on Bazalgette's creation: less rainwater drains into the ground and more humans are flushing more and more stuff down their waste pipes. Result? So much more sewage is having to be released into the Thames during periods of heavy rain or human throughput that a whole new tunnel - or "super sewer" - needs to be built 75 metres under the river to accommodate it. Here's Thames Water's exposition of its plans.

The scheme has been controversial in some quarters as you might expect, notably with the radical Tories of Hammersmith and Fulham. Shepherd's Bush blogger Chris Underwood has long accused them of scaremongering and today claims vindication. Meanwhile, the government has given the project its backing and Liberal Democrat Mike Tuffrey AM has released Environment Agency figures showing that 6.5 million cubic metres flowed into the Thames last month alone, bringing the total to 40 million cubic metres for this year so far. Just be glad you're not the one who had to count them.

I couldn't get there but my eight year-old daughter did. She was in the Kids Choir, which performed in The Scoop by City Hall. Tower Bridge was opened specially when they performed their final number. Wish I could have been there. Here's an angle on another aspect of the festival from the London Daily Photo:

While it was as commercial as ever, at least this year there seemed more effort had been paid to finding arts and crafts, which was nice.

Here's another, from Miss Rosemary:

The sight that greeted us would bring tears of unchecked joy to any Shopaholic's eyes: about 87 stalls stuffed with jewelery, skirts, dresses, glass mosaics and general London paraphernalia all down the riverbank. Don't worry, Dad, I only spent money on food.

And Beauty Hunter took some photos.

The first Mayor's Question Time of the new City Hall term will have a bit of added zip now that Mayor Johnson has declared his wish to hold on to his job post-May 2012. Boris's decision was undoubtedly connected to the progress of negotiations with the government over the continuation of funding for Crossrail and the Tube upgrades, though I suspect some of his more recent public bellicosity was largely for public consumption - don't forget, he was all set to declare his candidacy way back in June until he changed his mind. Continue reading...

Hogsmill River as it joins the Thames at Kingston. Photograph: Motmit/WikimediaCommons

Reaching Richmond Park by bus can be a slow business on a Sunday morning if, as I did, you time your arrival at Richmond Underground station badly. I faced a 20-minute wait for a 371 to bear me to the bus stop opposite the one where my tweaked calf and I had waited glumly to be rescued eight days previously. I walked instead. On my way up Richmond Hill I listened carefully to my body (as health gurus put these things) for signs for further strains while absorbing the genteel retail scene: a tasteful wine merchant, an art gallery, a specialist cheese shop. Welcome to Lib-Con marginal country.

To my right, the ground sloped away into the handsome Terrace Garden. Beyond that was a cinemascope view of the Thames, looking like a different river from the mudbanked trickle I'd crossed via Richmond Lock on Leg 3 of my heroic charitable endeavour. Continue reading...

It was always on the cards, and now the teasing is over. Boris Johnson has declared that he will indeed be the Conservative candidate for London mayor in 2012. He made it official on Nick Ferrari's LBC radio programme just over an hour ago, honouring a promise he'd given to the presenter on more than one occasion in the past. Continue reading...

Ballot papers to Labour mayoral candidate "selectors" - 35,000 constituency members and around 400,000 trade unionists - began to be sent out over a week ago, but some have still yet to be delivered and there remains plenty to play for between now and the voting deadline of the twenty-second of this month. The past couple of weeks has seen both candidates doing things that very jaundiced people like me are tempted to interpret as attempts to woo supporters from the wing of the party the other one inhabits. Could "Blairite" Oona's decision to back "Red" Ed Miliband rather than his brother David have been been influenced by so base a consideration? You have to wonder. As for Ken, he's been cross-dressing to the right with a brazenness to make his tailor blush. Continue reading...

A government consultation on how to evaluate the extent of rough sleeping has drawn a telling response from Islington Council, which has been back in Labour hands since May's elections. The Communities and Local Government department proposes changes to its guidance to local authorities on how to quantify the problem on their patch.

It's looks very Big Society and localist. The CLG wants making formal counts of rough sleepers by councils to become voluntary rather than mandatory when it believes it has more than ten rough sleepers on its patch. In an apparent attempt to encourage more authorities to address the issue it suggests they should submit estimates - rather than actual counts - based on information gathered from local charities, faith groups and members of the public. Continue reading...

BBC London will tonight broadcast a London Debate (BBC One, 22:35) about the effect of government cuts on the capital. Recorded on Tuesday, participants will include the influential Stephen Greenhalgh, leader of Tory flagship borough Hammersmith and Fulham, Labour Mayor of Hackney and chair of London Councils Jules Pipe, TfL commissioner Peter Hendy and our good friends Ken and Oona, still vying to become Labour challenger to (probably) Boris Johnson in 2012. Continue reading...

The Tories' Tony Arbour expressed my pessimism for me. He said he feared "a terrible anti-climax" in October 2012, with the Olympic Games themselves already receding into history and any early signs that they'd inspired droves of Londoners to take up sport disappearing with them. He added that he hoped he'd be proved wrong. I hope he is too, but yesterday's session of the London Assembly's economic development, culture, sport and tourism committee brought home the scale of the task facing the Mayor's sports commissioner Kate Hoey in trying to realise Boris's ambitions for a post-Games grassroots sporting legacy. Continue reading...

Darryl of 853 has been to the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich with his camera, a guest poster at Leabank Square has been looking into the effects of the attack on Hackney, as has Londoneer. Martin of Mayorwatch has attended the opening of the London Transport Museum's Blitz exhibition Under Attack. He writes:

Speaking at last night's launch Mayor of London Boris Johnson said the air raids on the capital had been "an unparalleled act of barbarism" but praised the way that London and other cities affected had recovered from the effects of the bombings. Mayor Johnson also suggested that the need for populations to shelter together with no consideration of social differences had helped secure Britain's post-war settlement and the creation of the welfare state.

Bloody socialist. Martin also draws our attention to other Blitz events as does Going Underground's Annie Mole.

Update, 15:12 Thanks to SuperClive (comment below) for directing me to The Greenwich Phantom on traces of air raid shelters in Greenwich Park.

You might not believe it was in his transport manifesto, but I wouldn't fib about a thing like this:

I will look to reduce the disruption caused by strikes on the Tube by negotiating a no-strike deal, in good faith, with the Tube unions. In return for agreeing not to strike, the unions will get the security provided by having the pay negotiations conducted by an independent arbiter, whose final decision will be binding on both parties. I believe this is the fairest way to ensure that London is not brought to a stand-still every time there is a pay negotiation, and to ensure union members get a secure deal.

It's on page six. I had to giggle at the time - the thought of Cockney Bob and Posh Boris bringing class warfare to an end in the confines of the successor to the proverbial smoke-filled room was as delicious as it was improbable. I couldn't believe Boris was serious, and neither could anyone else. Surprise, surprise, I think we might all have been right.

Reader Martin Deutsch approached the Mayor's office last December, asking about progress towards any no-strike deal. He was directed to Transport for London and duly made a freedom of information request, seeking to be provided with any correspondence between TfL's Employee Relations department and the tube unions and the minutes of any meetings between them. That was on 18 January. The statutory 20-day deadline came and went. Martin, very politely, nagged. TfL told him they were still "collating the information," but by mid-March they still hadn't obliged. Continue reading...

People should walk more. I got from Clapton Pond in Hackney to Whitechapel Road in 45 minutes without undue exertion. My first thought about the crowd of fellow Londoners struggling for sardine status inside a pair of rammed number 25 bendy buses from Straford as if, well, trying to climb aboard a rush hour Tube, was, why didn't they just stride off down the wide pavement towards the looming Gherkin instead? The City-bound traffic was clogged enough to mean they'd probably reach their destination faster as pedestrians. If the walk seemed too much, there was a large cycle hire docking station at the junction with New Road with plenty of "Boris Bikes" available. Ah well. Continue reading...

The Telegraph reported yesterday that rare, colour footage of London during the Blitz has been discovered in an attic. As Londonist puts it:

For a conflict that is usually seen through the distancing prism of black-and-white, the film dramatically brings home the destruction wrought on London, particularly the aerial shot of a bright red bus crawling through the rubble of Cripplegate.

See the clips here and here.

Despite the expectation within Transport for London, largely confirmed by Philip Hammond's public statements, that government funding for Crossrail and the Tube upgrades will survive largely unscathed, the Mayor has revved up his anti-cuts rhetoric in the past two days. As Helene Mulholland reported, Boris used his Telegraph column - ker-ching! - yesterday to align himself with the argument of none other than Ed Balls that the coalition may be seeking to slash the deficit too quickly, and in the Standard, while craftily ignoring the really issues behind the Tube strike - job losses - he insisted that he "cannot and will not accept" cuts of between 25 and 40 percent to London's transport budget. Continue reading...