London calling

Dear George,
I hope this message finds you well. This morning my train was a whooping 11mins late. It is 17*C outside and mostly clear. Britain's still using sterling (£) and on average, 400ml of shampoo cost £3.19. The price of a first class stamp is 46p.
Your last blog entry was a pleasure to read. So in return allow me to keep you up to date with the news in London this past week:

• More than 207,000 things have been handed in to Transport for London's lost property office in the past year. Books were the most common with 41,000 handed in.
• About 1.8 million people made 20 million bids for the 6.6 million Olympic games tickets available.
• Women's rights groups have slammed Hugh Hefner for exploiting women as he re-launches a Playboy club in London. Maybe I should investigate this more…
• In the past year there has been a 20% increase in the amount of tube delays according to Transport for London's figures. The Bakerloo Line was the worst performer, followed by the Jubilee and Central Lines.
• Crime on the tubes and DLR went down by 7 per cent - and on the buses by 4 per cent - in the last year. Probably because the criminals have more time to mug folk as they wait for their delayed train! Or it’s that the criminal minded are just as pissed off with how expensive it is to use public transport! Or is it because the real crime is being committed by the people who run TFL?!… Oh yeah. Satire, bitch!
• Inner London has the highest proportion of jobless homes in the UK with the number with no one having ever worked doubling. The Office for National Statistics says the total number of households in which no-one has ever worked has doubled - from 184,000 in 1997 to 352,000 last year - 1.7% of all homes. But in Inner London 6.5% of households have never had a job.
• Three men have been charged after a security alert at a bank that saw bomb disposal teams and armed police deployed to the scene. The incident at the Co-op branch in Watford last Thursday led to a stand-off with officers lasting several hours.
• More than 60 firefighters tackle a fire in Kent involving more than 1000 litres of oil.
• A police officer assaulted a 19-year-old French tourist and left him needing hospital treatment after spotting him urinating in a bush in Hoxton Square.

On top of this a teenager has been shot in South London, a man stabbed in Fulham and a woman was killed in a hit and run in Walthanstow. A man died in a car crash in Belvedere, a guy was shot in a drive-by in Stockwell and 2 police officers were stabbed in Eailing.

I think the biggest news stories revolve around Wayne Rooney’s hair transplant and other celebrity toss that makes my head hurt just thinking about how to write about it. Therefore, I will leave you with this story. After reading about your issues with money out there I thought this story would interest you. A teenager in China was desperate to buy himself an ipad 2 but, alas, didn’t have the money. Xiao Zheng, from the country's south-eastern Anhui province, is believed to have met a broker on the internet who said he could help him sell his kidney for £1,825 (Yuan 20,000). So there you are mate. China’s your next stop and if things go really bad just whack an organ on eBay. After all that drinking I’m not sure you’ll get quite as much as the guy in the story, but it’ll get you a bowl of noodles or two.

Take care buddy
Yours
Little Dave