On Big Smoke this month

Each month we review what’s been and gone on Big Smoke over the last few weeks.

Regular readers will not be surprised to learn that the whole Camden CCTV camera saga produced the most visited posts. The video and the FAQs did seem rather popular, if that’s the right word.

Other popular posts from February (in no particular order) include our ongoing discussion about Clissold Cafe: for a Cafe we can all enjoy which was kicked off in Januuary by Emma Dixon in her piece The toast of Hackney.

Some of our reports on ongoing campaigns recieved good attention like the GMB against Carillion’s bullying and Campaigners call to “Make Archway Livable”. This makes us feel warm and fuzzy and part of the whole reason the site exists is to help people promote their campaigns making the world an ever so slightly better place.

We’ve also weighed in on various issues and both John Angliss’ piece on Workfare: London Assembly Member defends the indefensible and David Mentiply’s Grit where people walk, not just where they drive got at least a small slice of the attention they deserved. Our send off to the St Paul’s protesters is also worth taking a look at if you didn’t spot it the first time around, Farewell Occupy: an inspiration that was seen but not heard.

Talking of workfare our local ‘scoop’ Camden employer complains that ‘Back to Work’ boss pays herself millions and nothing to clients, showed that A4e was not just bad for the unemployed.

At Big Smoke we also host the occasional photo of “things” out and about in London that we think are moderately interesting. Last month the most viewed one of these was from Islington, Writing on the wall in Islington, which surprised me but it’s always interesting to see which pictures go down the best.

Our ongoing coverage of the Mayoral election will feature an interview with the UKIP mayoral candidate next week but so far it is Siobhan Benita who has been recieving the most attention. Both our video Interview: Siobhan Benita, a voice for London? and our report Siobhan Benita launches her Mayoral campaign were among the top viewed articles in February.

Lastly, but certainly by no means leastly we’ve been upping our sports coverage and David Mentiply’s The Return of Jason Euell did very well indeed, as well as receiving some nice comments in other places, which is always nice. Hopefully we’re going  to broaden our sports coverage and once we’ve got on top of that we’ll have to start a music section!

If you’d like to contribute to Big Smoke read our submissions guidelines and then write to us at editorial@bigsmoke.org.uk. We’d love to hear from you whether it’s something simple like promoting an event, a job vacancy or a fully fledged article that you think we’d like to run.