Welcome to The Standard podcast’s round-up special edition, where we bring you the news highlights from the week that was.

It began with nightmare weather as Storm Bert continued to bring disruption into Monday following winds over 80mph and torrential downpours caused “devastating” flooding over the weekend, in which five people were believed to have died.

Continuing our reports on the future of Oxford Street, we looked at mayor Sadiq Khan’s hiring plans for some very well remunerated jobs to create a “commercial model” and help envision his pedestrianisation plans.

Tuesday brought the announcement of a government white paper on wide-ranging reforms designed to tackle economic inactivity in a bid to bring more than two million people back into work.

We also looked at whether Black Friday sales promotions were all they seemed, the closure of London’s historic Smithfield meat market after more than 900 years and spoke with a former British Army officer who had a stroke at 28 and is now skiing to the South Pole, plus Bafta winner Kit Young on starring in a new London interpretation of Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse - and getting his new award through airport security. 

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