What's the deal with London's Harry Potter shops, which are in some of the capital's most prominent shopping areas? And why are so many of these businesses now owned by a 31-year-old woman in Oxford who originally claimed she was not the actual owner when we tracked her down? This is how London Centric tracked down the legal owner of four shops in locations such as Oxford Street, Piccadilly Circus, and Whitehall.

Read London Centric's investigation here: londoncentric.media/p/harry-potter…

I recently began asking the illegal gambling operators on Westminster Bridge in central London for their gambling licenses, as part of a London Centric investigation into how the bridge had become a hub of illegal activity, despite being next to parliament and the Met police HQ.

They didn’t like it.

Read the full investigation here for details of illegal ice cream vans making big money, overseas organised crime gangs, scammers, and pickpockets - plus the struggles of the police to enforce the law with limited resources.

londoncentric.media/p/westminster-…

Amid the coverage of the Jewish Chronicle this weekend there's been a lot of focus on the role of Robbie Gibb who has been the only shareholder and sole director of the business since 2020. (Although seemingly not the person funding the outlet.)

🧵This is no longer the case: The ownership of the Jewish Chronicle has changed in recent weeks. Gibb quit as director, to be replaced by the duo of ex-Labour MP Lord Austin and Jonathan Handel.

(The press release announcing this promised a third director, who hasn't joined: )thejc.com/news/jewish-ch…

What political news do people *actually* see on their phones during an election?

With @RR_research we recorded the phone screens of six voters for three days, then played back the recordings. What we learned was... bracing for anyone in news/politics.
theguardian.com/politics/artic… We went for a spread of six people across the country. It isn't at all representative but it gives us a flavour of some trends. And when you watch back the screen recordings of people's phones you realise that very few people engage with online politics or news in any depth.

Excl: Here's what happens if you scrape Betfair data for bets on a July election.

This graph cuts off at the end of 21 May, the day before Sunak announced the election.

There's a flood of bets that day - before Rishi formally told the cabinet and stood in Downing Street. For the first four months of the year people are gambling a few quid here and there on July. It's just messing about. People are having fun and guessing.

Then around 20th May some people are gambling actual money, with some bets in the £100s at odds of 7/1. Tidy profit!

Vardy loses in of the all-time great self-inflicted legal defeats. theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/j… The judge found that "significant parts of [Vardy's] evidence were not credible" and there were many occasions when her "evidence was manifestly inconsistent with the contemporaneous documentary evidence, evasive or implausible".

In a wood-panelled Victorian courtroom in central London, after almost three years of very expensive legal arguments, Rebekah Vardy and Coleen Rooney have just taken their seats a few feet apart for their libel trial. Rooney's lawyers claim Vardy leaked stories to the Sun because "she wanted the favourable publicity and coverage" that came as a result.

(I'm going to keep my court reporting on this thread. If for whatever reason you think this is all silly, simply mute this thread.)

Absolutely *iconic* example of government pre-announcement spin in the Sunday Times today. So this sounds good, right? Something about the Red Wall, wherever that is, and them getting *three new high speed railway lines*. Wahey! All on the TGV to Halifax! thetimes.co.uk/article/9c301d… Huh but actually it’s rolling the ground for cancelling HS2’s eastern leg, meaning we’ll get most of a new railway without the bit that makes the pain worthwhile. The spin frames this as an anti-London thing. (Let’s ignore how trams and buses are the real answer for commuters.)

Just got second dose of Pfizer at Science Museum in London, they’re doing them for anyone who had their first jab 21+ days ago on a walk-in basis with no need to book. It was brilliant, the staff, the volunteers were brilliant. Ten minute queue, go do it Londoners! What’s a mess is centralised info for walk-ins. Ended up cycling around asking in person, some places said they had spare but had been told off by NHS for doing second shots under 8 weeks. In the end a Reddit thread was more accurate than NHS website. LET PEOPLE GET SECOND DOSES.