At a recent architectural debate in south London, the Strata Tower, the landmark building in Elephant & Castle was lambasted for its ugliness.

London's firefighters went on strike again today in a row over new contracts.

A Government education minister was mugged as he walked home, it emerged today.

Two men are facing jail after they were convicted yesterday of running an illegal fertility company that gave women access to sperm donors. Nigel Woodforth, 43, ran the operation from the basement of his home in Reading, Berkshire, with 49-year-old Ricky Gage. A jury at Southwark Crown Court, in south London, convicted both men of three counts each of providing sperm without a licence or third-party agreement.

Lennon Naked began with a splash – a late-period John in what appeared to be mint condition plunging into the pool of his stockbroker belt mansion to the sound of "Come Together". The device might have felt a little overfamiliar (how many times has the off-the-peg transcendence of an underwater shot been employed in such things?), but it was all but impossible to resist the jolt of that music – a cameo appearance by the real thing in a drama that was largely going to be a triumph of similitude. Even more reassuringly, Robert Jones's script instantly showed that it had got the weight of Lennon's wordplay. A jump cut deprived us of the final resolving cadence of the song and plunged us again, back to Beatlemania, as John and Brian Epstein made a scrambled getaway down a fire escape and John demonstrated the rasp of his wit. "Kiss 'im," he says as fans beg for contact. "'E's never been kissed by womankind... or unkind." And the joke scrapes close to unkindness itself, a teasing poke with just enough thrust in it to hurt, but not enough to make the malice deniable should things turn nasty.

Spotting a UFO and colour blindness were excuses given by drivers for not paying parking fines. The UFO spotter said he was so shocked by what he had seen that he drove into a bus lane, as he explained in a parking appeal to Southwark Council, south London. Another appellant said: "I'm colour blind, so I thought the yellow line was green."

The actor's ego is a fragile thing. It needs to be cosseted, massaged, given the odd boost from time to time. John Constable, playwright and poet, knows this and has come up with the perfect ruse to attract an A-List star to his new play – he's looking to cast the role of God.

More than half of Britons believe some rape victims should take responsibility for being attacked, research suggested today.

England has, in the theatre, been symbolised as a decrepit theatre or a slipshod hospital. Some might feel Ireland should be represented as a church, but Brendan Behan knew better. In The Hostage, Ireland is a Dublin pub with rooms upstairs. These are rented by three whores (two of them female) and a dodgy lodger who brings in a hymn-singing salvationist. The proprietor, Patrick, has lost a leg in an IRA battle at Cork--or was it Mullingar? Given the alcoholic intake here, it is not surprising that he isn't sure; one suspects he has become legless without leaving the pub.

A controversial scheme to provide over-the-counter contraceptive pills to teenagers in a bid to cut unintended pregnancies is being piloted in south London .

Councils with the lowest quality adult social care services in the country were named and shamed by regulators today.