Four males in their late teens have been arrested in connection with the stabbing on York Way, in Islington, on Sunday morning. Kinsella was the seventeenth young person to have been killed this year in London and was the brother of Eastenders star Brooke Kinsella.

The protest was organised by 16-year-old Brooke Dunford using texts, emails and Facebook.

Kinsella’s is the first death since a march through the capital on 7 June this year which was attended by 1000’s. Londoners is saddened and deeply concerned by how dangerous London is becoming and urges anyone who has the power to do something, anything, about the situation, to do it and do it fast.

Here’s looking at you, Boris Johnson and Gordon Brown, to make our city safe again.

London in the sun is parks, pools, cafes and fun. But rather than laze about and spend money on sun-cream and barbecues, Tom Howard and Morag Lyall took it upon themselves to get Morag on her bike and riding. Here’s what happened on her first foray into two wheels, pedals and saddles…

(Illustration by Sion Ap Tomos)

There comes a time in every man’s life to impart wisdom. Even the most dim-witted of males have bits of knowledge to share to brothers, sisters, lovers or most commonly and certainly most dangerously, children.

Measuring wisdom is hard, but I would say I have moderate amounts. Measuring children is easier, and I have none. So the person responsible for soaking up my information, was my pal Morag Lyall.

Morag can’t ride a bike. And before we met on drizzly-cum-sunny afternoon in Victoria Park with my bicycle (Joseph), a swampy hillock, a hungry squirrel and some internet notes, she didn’t even know how to stay on one.

Teaching someone to ride needn’t be difficult, and there’s an abundance of guidelines on the internet. After some browsing, I went for www.ibike.org for the approval of users and the simplicity of the approach. It’s as step-by-step a process as following a recipe or putting together a flat packed wardrobe.

Most advice you’ll find is directed at adult teaching child. Morag is 24, and bigger than a child. People always say you learn things faster when you’re young, but I’ve long held the view that children are, largely, idiots. Morag proved me right.

Stage one: the bike

The bike the learner sits on should have a low saddle, enabling him or her to have their feet flat on ground when sat on the saddle. This offers them greater control when they are moving, and means they can put their feet down when scared.

Unfortunately for Morag, she was on Joseph. And with me being 6 foot tall and her considerably less, we had to construct a saddle on the metal, purple frame out of a wrapped up cardigan. Helmet on, shoelaces, jumpers and trouser tucked in, on we went…

Stage two: balance

Next, face the learner down a gentle hill of about 20 feet that flattens out or goes uphill slightly at the end. Get them to coast down it, in a straight line, with their feet an inch above the grass.

Balance is key on a bike. Stay on the thing, and you’ve half the battle won. “I used to be a ballerina,” Morag said. And within half an hour she was rolling without a wobble. “Weeeee!” she would yell while careering out of my view, but she seemed confident.

So we climbed the hill, and she coped with that too. So we went to a bigger hill. And this time, after coasting down the hill she would find the peddles.

Stage three: peddling

At first, the learner only needs to find the peddles, and rest their feet. As they feel more confident, you can encourage them to pedal. Morag was so good, that three goes in she was off. And we repeated the process until she was confident.

Stage four: add turning and braking

And Morag was so confident she started turning left and right independently. She would brake, hop off Joseph at the first uphill climb, grin and say: “This is so much fun.” I couldn’t help but agree.

Stage five: standing start

This time, hold the learners bike, place the peddle under their strongest leg, give them a push start and tell them to peddle.

This is where teaching people how to ride isn’t like you remember, or how it looks on the tele. My instructions told me very firmly to not, under any circumstances, do the running alongside shouting: “Daddy’s got you! Don’t worry, Daddy won’t let you fall!” It’s not constructive, it’s distracting, and in mine and Morag’s case, it would be weird.

But she got it, predictably quickly. We did it again to check it wasn’t a fluke. I assured her she’d done it all by herself (she really had), we high-fived and sent her darting over Victoria Park’s most challenging terrain: concrete paths, puddles and tramps.

Not on the road though: according to www.ibike.org, new cyclists can sometimes take two years to be ready for the road. But those instructions were for children. And as we’ve established, children are idiots.

Info:

Where to learn:

Contact the British Cycling Association on 0161 274 2000, and they can tell you about initiatives in your area, teaching kids and adults to ride bikes. It is often free, but sometimes a small fee is involved.

What you need:

A bike and a helmet: any local bike shop: £100 - £500 for the bike; £20 - £100 for the helmet. A large grassy area: free

Instructions/Contact:

www.ibike.org: for instructions on how to teach people to ride.

www.britishcycling.org.uk: for information on cycling in Britain.

The event will be more like a festival than a gig, with acts spread across four stages between 7-9pm. Funnies playing include circuit heavyweights Stewart Lee, Luke Wright and Rich Herring as well as a host of no less enjoyable joke tellers. Click here to see the whole list.

The event will cost you nothing, but to bagsy, shoutgun and get first dibs on some tickets you have to become an LIOP member (free, by clicking here), then email liopping@gmail.com and tell them how many people you want to take.

LIOP has been going since October 2006 and is run by comedian Terry Saunders and promoter Tom Searle who met at the Edinburgh Fringe and decided they were both “a little sick of shitty comedy gigs in shitty rooms above shitty pubs with shitty drunks being shitty”.

A similar event last year (click) attracted 400 people, but due to LIOP’s rise in profile since then, they want, and can reasonably expect, more. And that includes you, fans of excellent free stuff in London put on by people who want you all to have a good time and don’t have one big beady eye on making loads and loads of money for themselves. Unlike these people.

A drawing by Adam Howarth of a man looking like Rambo wearing a pink vest accompanied a post called ‘Men can wear pink’ written by Two Fashion Conscious Men. Click here to see it.

This is the first time Londoners has used an illustration, but it most certainly won’t be the last. Click here to see how good Daytrotter looks, one website that uses drawing a lot. We want to look that good.

As John W Gardner once said: “Life is the art of drawing without an eraser.” And like Vincent Van Gogh once said: “In spite of everything I shall rise again: I will take up my pencil, which I have forsaken in my great discouragement, and I will go on with my drawing.”

And like Henri Matisse once said: “Drawing is putting a line round an idea.” And he also once said: “Drawing is like making an expressive gesture with the advantage of permanence.” And like Le Corbusier once said: “I prefer drawing to talking. Drawing is faster, and leaves less room for lies.”

If you want to draw for us, get in touch, here. We are accommodating folk, and we will be sure to respond to as much of the interest as we possibly can.

The survey or nearly 21,000 motorists said that elderly drivers were worse than young drivers, age-wise, that females were generally worse than males, that Sunday motorists were worse than any other day of the week, and that BMW owners were the least competent, by brand.

So it goes without saying that if you see an elderly lady driving a BMW on a Sunday in London, run for your lives. The survey put Mercedes-Benz and Land Rover drivers less than the required stopping distance behind BMW’s, so be aware.

East Anglian drivers were voted the best.

Londoners can’t help but notice that there are more people, more cars and busier roads in London than there are in East Anglia. But overall, isn’t surprised by the news, and hopes that London motorists will take heed and buckle up.

Londoners is also aware that London motorists almost certainly won’t take heed, or buckle up. Instead we will take solace in the knowledge that no one writing for this website drives a car in London, and therefore deflect any responsibility away from us and onto our reckless fellow capital dwellers.

The gig on 12 June, dubbed as “intimate” by other news providers, will be the smallest gig the band have played in a decade. The Proud Galleries’ capacity is 400, and the band will play a 40 minute set.

The band did consider giving members of the crowd, in blocks of 40 (followed by another 40, and then the next 40, and then the next 40, until all ten 40’s were satisfied) 4 minutes of Feeder each, but the move was considered pretentious, despite the entertaining maths.

Tickets are £6 for the show which promises to be a far cry from Feeder’s usual slot, half way down a festival line-up.

Londoners is loathe to admit that the gig’s size could be a reflection on Feeder’s dwindling record sales and ageing fan base, preferring to think of it as the first gig they will play to promote Silent Cry, their sixth record in 16 years, out on 16 June. The album will will be preceded by a single, “We are the People” on 9 June.

Grant Nicholas, Feeder’s lead singer, definitely did not say: “Playing somewhere like the Proud Gallery is a good way to appear cool, persuade naive kids to come and see us play, and hide the fact that we are currently struggling in the miserable Welsh housewife market because of the rise of bands like Coldplay and Keane.”

Welshman Nicholas, guitarist Taka Hirose and drummer Mark Richardson are playing the Isle of Wight, T in the Park, Reading and Leeds and Oxegen festivals this summer.

All young (24), smart and handsome, a musician as well as acting on TV; he’s one of those “good at everything” guys. He’s been around a while too. In an interview over a year ago, he and I discussed his newest song “The Box”.

It was, he said, based on a pamphlet written by a member of the early green movement, David Thoreau. Based on his experiences of living hand to mouth in a shed just outside New York, it centred on the idea that when you die, you can’t take anything with you, and when you’re alive, stuff just gets stolen or broken, so why not just live with what you need?

Flynn was impressive, knowledgeable and engaging, and so is “The Box”, the first track on A Larum. The name A Larum, meanwhile, may or may not be based on the play A Larum for London, or the Siedge of Antwerp, a play about a battle in Antwerp in 1956, which is considered to be awful.

This is speculation, but it would make sense. Flynn has toured with a Shakespearian acting company, appeared on TV and is deeply interested in literature, plays and the like. This comes through forcefully, on the record, with is rammed with words. It will definitely be too wordy for some, and that’s a good thing.

But there’s no point being wordy, unless your words are good ones. In this respect he wins also. “Pray for the people inside your head, for they won’t be there when you’re dead,” he advises on one album highlight, “Tickle Me Pink”. On “Leftovers” he charms with “Leftovers is what I want, don’t need no fine cuisine/Give me a dime for bacon rind, or slip me some of that old sardine.”

Flynn’s heroes include Jeffery Lewis and Diane Cluck of the New York anti-folk crowd. Yet he is way more traditional than that particular scene. Rather than the kind of spitty, edgy, argumentative folk that they peddle, Flynn’s sounds are wholesome. The Sussex Wit behind him provide violins, a very angelic sounding female backing singer and banjos while he spins his imagery. He’s more Bert Jansch and Nick Drake than anything else.

“Brown Trout Blues” is pure Drake, with depressed lyrics and gentle, earthy finger-picking. And a lot of the guitar throughout the record is Jansch inspired. Plus he’s got a barn-dance vibe, and “Eyeless in Holloway” could be the soundtrack to a 50s barn dance.

Most enjoyable though, is his colliding of traditions with pop culture. Perhaps the best track here is “Wayne Rooney”, sounding like a Nick Drake bootleg but commenting on bar men that look like George Best. It is subtle and beautiful. “If I know better, I don’t know better,” he confesses. And he does it so perfectly that you want to spill your heart out to Flynn in exchange. “Tunnels” is almost as good, and has the best harmonica moment on the record.

To be hypercritical, the record is a tad too long and getting rid of few almost-duds in the middle section would make it zip along better. No one wants a record that drags. A Larum doesn’t, but only just.

A product of some good schooling and loads of reading, Flynn has been subjected to “posh” jibes. But fuck it, when you’re this good, it’s hard to care. If he plays his cards right, he could fill the age-old gap that is a folk star. When you think about, there hasn’t been one since Dylan.

Blake was evicted for cheating, which she denies, after receiving a coded text message from her sister. Blake then said Channel 4 infringed on her privacy and filmed her against her will after she had asked to leave the Big Brother house.

She also said she was misrepresented after refusing to shower as a protest for having her suitcase withheld from her on entering the house. This led to her being called “stinky Dawn” on Big Brother’s Big Mouth.

Ofcom disagreed with her and sided with Channel 4, agreeing that she was fairly represented and not held against her will. In fact, the opposite happened, and she was ejected by the channel.

Londoners must admit that it struggles to take seriosuly any “infringement of privacy” claims made by contestants appearing  on a TV programme whose premise is the constant and unbroken surveillance of people. In such situations, privacy ceases to exist.

With regards to the “stinky Dawn” jibes, Ofcom said in its report that they ”found that references to the body odour issue… reflected events in the house”. Londoners feels sympathy for anyone who has their belongings confiscated, but is also painfully aware of the doctrine: If you don’t wash, you will begin to smell.

Lessons can be learnt from all parties, on this one.

Other Big Brother news: The new series launches on 5 June. Pictures of the new house were released today, 11 of which you can see by clicking here.

In a move that would give Gordon “six-dishes-on-the-menu, local-produce-only” Ramsay a kitchen nightmare, Tokyo-Gino on Barnsbury Road has an array of dishes from both countries.

The restaurant’s website says they will be selling “sushi from the east, and wood fired oven pizzas and fresh made pastas from the west.”

Noodle and rice dishes, lasagnes and salads are all available on the menu which is absolutely enormous.

The two styles are kept separate (so no sushi pizza, or tomato and basil soba noodles) and cooked by two different “East and West” chefs, presumably on different sides of the kitchen, to avoid confusion.

This Londoners writer has never before seen or heard of such a thing as an Italian and Japanese restaurant, and commends the originality of the idea. It is also of the view that Islington badly needs a Japanese restaurant that isn’t Wagamama.

Punters can eat in or take away at TokyoGino. Look out for the first review on the web, right here on Londoners.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown didn’t say: “We need to make sure the streets of London don’t become too Conservative, or conservative, and Pete is helping us out.”

Babyshambles frontman Pete was said to be delighted with his new role, and didn’t say: “I think Mr Brown has accurately assessed my skills. I will be proud to keep wild bohemia, flaunting of drug laws and driving without insurance on the streets of London.”

Ex-Libertine Doherty emerged from jail yesterday having spent 29 days of a six-month sentence. He had a certificate with him confirming he was off drugs, and said he was looking forward to spending time with his cats and drinking a rum and Coke.

Suggestions have been made that he has got off lightly not serving his full sentence. Londoners thinks he has been released at just the right time, to fight the fight for us liberals.