Uber loses its licence, London loses its grip!

Congratulations to everyone complaining about Transport for London's (TFL) decision not to renew Uber's licence. You have managed to make Londoners look like a pack of spoilt brats, demanding cut-price taxi fares as if it's a human right on par with food, water and shelter. Honestly, the way people have been carrying on, anyone would think that before Uber, Londoners simply never left their homes. Uber did not rescue London from being a bizarre city of hermits.

As ever, nuance has been the first casualty of the inevitable debate, especially in regard to the risk of sexual assault in an Uber taxi. According to a Freedom of Information request by the Sun newspaper last year, 32 of the 154 allegations of sexual assault against taxi and private hire drivers over a one-year period were against Uber drivers. That's an allegation every 11 days. TFL has raised concerns about Uber's lack of expediency in referring sexual assault allegations to the police.

This led to mindless whataboutery. "What about sexual assaults by drivers of black cabs?" is the cry that has rattled all over the internet over the last few days. Obviously, it is not OK for black cab drivers to sexually assault people either. Or for anyone to sexually assault people. It is stunning that this even needs to be said.

I have a novel idea. How about we strive for a world where nobody gets sexually assaulted in taxis? The "my preferred taxi service is less rapey than your preferred taxi service" chatter is race-to-the-bottom nonsense. 

Then there are the other scandals that led to TFL not renewing Uber's licence. Thousands of background checks on drivers have been deemed invalid, and there have been instances of drivers paying dodgy GPs for falsified medical certificates, and concerns about the possible use of Greyball software. In the US, Uber has faced allegations of Greyball software to identify when local officials were using the app and ignoring their requests for a taxi in case they were seeking to find drivers operating in areas where they were not licenced. Uber has denied using this software in the UK.

Of course, plenty of people have accused those who are supporting TFL of being anti-consumer choice. There are plenty of apps that you can use instead of Uber - Gett, Kabbee, MyTaxi, Addison Lee, Taxify, Taxiapp... People whining about a black cab monopoly don't appear know what a monopoly is or they don't seem to realise there are plenty of alternatives to taking a black cab.

And if you have the Uber app, you obviously have a smartphone so if all else fails, you can use your damn life skills to simply Google licenced minicab companies in the area and make a phonecall. Retro, I know. On top of all this, London has one of the world's best public transport systems - every time I travel anywhere, I come home with a renewed appreciation of the tube and red buses.

Indeed, even the narrative that Uber is a benevolent company for the people is a myth. This is a company that has indulged in price gouging during terror attacks. It is a business model that is designed to reduce consumer choice by undercutting other taxi companies into oblivion or merely replacing one monopoly with another, as has been the experience in Sydney. Anyone wringing their hands over potentially 40,000 Uber drivers being out of work is being ridiculous - Uber's modus operandi will result in drivers from other companies losing their jobs.

On top of all that, many Uber drivers work for the app to supplement their income from other low-paid jobs. According to Uber's own research,  almost 40% of their drivers have another job. This means that there are a lot of drivers out there for whom one job is not enough to pay the bills, particularly in London. And if you don't care about the low wage culture that has swept through Britain's labour market, consider that many Uber drivers will be driving people around after knocking off from another job. Are you happy to be driven home by a driver from a company where there is a very high chance that he or she will be completely knackered behind the wheel?

If Uber is taken off the roads next month, plenty of their drivers will be able to find work with other taxi companies. The demand is there in a city the size of London. According to today's news, Uber could make concessions in regard to TFL's demands for improved safety and better working conditions for drivers in order to get its licence renewed. This strikes me as a far more sensible use of their time over the next few weeks than challenging the decision - that would truly put the livelihoods of drivers in limbo.  

My hunch is that Uber will stay on the road - and if it does so with improved safety procedures for passengers and better conditions for drivers, that is a win for everyone. And then Londoners can find something else to whine about, because we always do.  

Photography by Thierry Manac'h'/Flickr

Charity and the cult of the personality

Today, #kidscompany and Boris Johnson were trending at the same time on Twitter. It was quite the coincidence because both stories that led to the social media noise illustrated precisely why the cult of the personality continues to make idiots of us all. We may look back with the privileged superiority of 20/20 vision in hindsight at how people fell under the spell of Adolf Hitler or Josef Stalin but we are not necessarily any smarter in 2015.

Boris Johnson was in the news because he rugby-tackled a 10-year-old boy. Everyone reported this with the usual "Oh,  isn't Boris hilarious!" tone. It's another Boris distraction from his appalling record as Mayor of London and his ineffectiveness as an MP. He does this on purpose, because he knows it's what people will talk about instead of anything serious.

But falling for the cult of the personality isn't limited to the BoJo fan club. The #kidscompany Twitter trend centred on the terrible story that is the collapse of the Kids Company charity. Kids Company was founded in 1996 by British-Iranian psychotherapist, Camila Batmanghelidjh.

Batmanghelidjh was lauded across the political spectrum. Celebrities, such as the members of Coldplay and JK Rowling, donated generously to the charity that started as a youth drop-in centre in London's Camberwell neighbourhood and grew until it had therapy centres, alternative education facilities and a presence in 40 schools in London and Bristol, as well as a performing arts programme in Liverpool.

And, crucially, David Cameron hailed her as a heroine, as part of his "Big Society" concept. Remember that? That thing in which we are all meant to be in together? That one.

Kids Company received £30m of taxpayers' money. Three million of this was meant to be spent on restructuring an organisation that had grown perhaps too fast with ego and ambition overtaking reality. Instead, it was mostly spent on overdue staff wages and, if we're lucky, the government might be able to recoup £1.8m. When a government has to prop up a charity that is attempting to provide vital social services, we have a serious problem.

When Camila Batmanghelidjh became a public figure, she was very quickly known for her brightly coloured caftans and turbans. She was charismatic, she was passionate, she was patronisingly described as "larger than life", which we all know is code for "overweight but makes up for it with personality".

And it seems that her dizzying presence blinded people to a lot of things. There is an ongoing police investigation into sexual assault. Today, we had the unedifying spectacle of the Commons committee hearing into the inner workings of Kids Company. The committee heard that despite claiming to care for 36,000 clients, there were only records for 1,699 people. There were questions about handing out cash to vulnerable minors and whether that really is the best way to deal with the complex issues that go along with social and economic disadvantage. After this day of testimony, it would appear that Kids Company was poorly run with no real strategy for solving social and economic problems at their root causes or for how the charity should expand.

Just because Kids Company is a charity, that should not make it immune from scrutiny. If anything should be scrutinised, it's charities because people who donate have the right to know how their money will be used. It is a huge responsibility.

The elephant in the room is that the government saw fit to give £30m of our money to one charity without a whole lot in the way of due diligence. The very notion that £30m of public money can be thrown at a charity to try and solve complex problems in three different cities is ridiculous.

While tweeters waste bandwidth giggling at Batmangelidjh's weight and outfits and at Boris tackling a child, not enough people are talking about how few answers the government has for elevating people out of poverty.



Photography by George Hodan

The myth of strike-busting driverless tubes

As soon as #tubestrike starts trending on Twitter, the calls for the London Underground network to switch to driverless trains reach fever pitch. People carry on as if the network can switch to driverless trains in a matter of moments and that it will instantly end tube strikes.

Regardless of your views on London tube strikes, it is important to know that switching to driverless trains can't happen overnight and it won't necessarily stop strikes, even if we woke up tomorrow to find the switch had somehow magically happened.

There are 11 London tube lines, as well as the Overground and the already-driverless Docklands Light Rail (or DLR, but more on that in a moment...). In February 2014, when Mayor of London Boris Johnson, approved plans for driverless trains. But not even Boris would have such a rush of blood to the head that he'd sign off on a project that would be unfeasible on a practical level and astronomically expensive.

Boris signed off on procurement for 100 driverless trains for the Piccadilly Line. Just the Piccadilly Line. This is the start of a project that will cover only four of the network's lines between now and 2034 and it will cost £10 billion.

Every month, my bank account takes a direct hit thanks to Boris' love of raising public transport fares, but not even he would hike fares to the point where the upgrades and new trains required for a driverless tube could be implemented in lightning-fast time.

To implement driverless trains across infrastructure that is more than 100 years old in many parts is not a small or cheap undertaking.

On top of this, there ain't no whinger like the average London underground passenger. Especially when lines are closed for essential engineering work. Apparently, there are people out there who would rather travel on a poorly maintained railway system all the time instead of sucking it up and dealing with the occasional replacement bus service while travelling on a safe, well-maintained service the rest of the time.

And the average London underground whinger would complain at a rate last seen at Fawlty Towers if entire lines were closed for months at a time to do the upgrades required for driverless trains. Transport For London (TFL) needs to strike a balance between getting work done and minimising inconvenience for paying passengers.

Not that any of this stopped Richard Holloway, a Conservative councillor for the London borough of Westminster, from setting up an ill-informed and predictably briefly popular petition on change.org. The petition calls on Boris Johnson to "begin operating completely driverless trains on the entire London underground as soon as possible."

I tweeted Richard to ask him about this and he said that the Paris Metro went driverless over a period of five years. "Are we going to let the French beat us?" he asked without a trace of irony, given the French culture of strikes, and despite the fact it's not 1793.

Facts are pesky for Richard - the Paris Metro has not yet gone entirely driverless. I have no idea where he got his five-year figure from - Paris opened its first driverless line in 1998, a second in 2012 and a third is due by 2020. So that means two out of the 14 Paris Metro lines have gone driverless in the last 17 years.

When I asked Richard for costings, he tweeted a link to a BBC news story. I pointed out that this is not a costings document and he asked me if I frequent change.org and ask every petition for a full breakdown of costs for their proposal? Of course I don't. Most petitions on change.org are started by people who are not elected representatives. But if you are an elected representative publicly putting forward a proposal, you are effectively making a policy statement and it is entirely reasonable to be expected to provide costings. Especially when public money is involved.

Richard clearly didn't want to discuss this matter any further and asked if I'd demanded costings on a petition about the UK providing medical care to migrants at Calais.

He had no real answers to my questions and today, he is still on Twitter banging on about driverless trains as a panacea for all strikes. Such as the DLR, I suppose?

But the DLR - the line that is always cited as an example for how the tube should be by the "LET'S GO DRIVERLESS TOMORROW!" brigade - is not entirely without staff nor is it strike-free.

The DLR has more than 500 people on staff, such as cleaners, security staff, station staff and train captains. The captains move around the carriages while the trains are in motion and they have to manually operate the train if something goes wrong. If the rest of the tube network, went "driverless", the tube drivers would be the first people to be offered these train captain jobs - they are already trained to deal with a range of mechanical problems so they'd be obvious candidates.

And, sorry to break it you, Richard, but DLR staff have gone on strike. In May this year, DLR cleaning and security staff went on strike. If there are working people involved in an endeavour and striking has not been outlawed, strikes will probably still happen.

Get mad about tube strikes if you like. That is your right. But don't kid yourself that driverless trains can happen overnight or would be an instant strike-buster.



Photography by Svetlana Tikhonova

Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, a buffoon for each side of the pond

Could Donald Trump and Boris Johnson be the same person? Evil clown twins separated at birth perhaps? Whatever the case, they are two sides of the same awful coin and if we end up with President Trump and Prime Minister Johnson in five years time, two nations will be ruled by two spiteful, fiscally irresponsible men who are not nearly as funny as they want you to believe.

Superficially, both men are known for amusing hair. But in the pantheon of comedy, the hair on these two men is about as funny as burning orphans. Trump's flammable nylon skull pet and Johnson's deliberately unkempt head of straw serve as distractions from their real agendas, from them being properly scrutinised for the policies, for what they really stand for.

Both enjoy playing up their clownish personae. If you really think Boris Johnson's stammering, eye-popping schtick and his constant use of swallow-the-thesaurus words is spontaneous and genuine, you've been fooled. As you giggle while his head lolls about like a bladder on a stick, he wants you to think of him as a loveable buffoon. He loves it if you to think he is "good comedy value" because he'd rather you didn't question him on his abject failure to be the eco-friendly Tory mayor we were apparently all crying out for, on ever-increasing public transport fares, on the contractually dubious white elephant that is the Emirates cable car, on his vanity projects, on the money has has wasted on useless buses, on gluing pollution to roads, on trying to convince us his airport idea was a good one, on his complete failure to be present for TFL-union night tube negotiations despite happily plastering "Mayor of London" on TFL propaganda posters...

Likewise, Trump knows full well the internet contains more jokes about his hair, his orange face, his marriages and his tacky ostentation than any real scrutiny about policy. This week, he was placed under scrutiny by Megyn Kelly - I am no fan of Fox News but she did well at the debate this week. Trump's response to her perfectly reasonable questioning was to make a grotesque menstruation analogy. He knew the outrage would dominate the news cycle. His apologists won't care that he is a sexist and once the news cycle moves on, any policy-related questions Kelly asked will be largely forgotten.

Johnson and Trump use these idiot personae as distractions and we let ourselves get distracted. They are both as fiscally sensible as a spoilt teenager let loose with Daddy's credit card but that doesn't seem to stop people from hoping they achieve the highest office in their respective countries.

Both men love a vanity project. Trump Tower stands as a phallic edifice to Donald Trump's supposed throbbing, masculine success. He puts his name on everything he touches. Likewise, Boris Johnson loves that London has Boris bikes, Boris buses (even though they are crap) and he is most likely tickled that people still refer to his dead-in-the-water Thames Estuary airport idea as "Boris Island". And while bikes, daft buses and a failed airport idea seem lame in comparison to Trump's tower, plane and golf courses, it means that we all refer to Mr Johnson as "Boris". As if he is a man of the people, one of us, the kind of chap we'd go down the pub with for a night of top banter.

Both men have advocated policies that would not be out of place under the Stasi's awful regime. Trump is mad about a great big damn wall to keep Mexicans out while Johnson would simply love to see the secondhand German water cannon available for use on the streets of London. Kudos to Home Secretary, Theresa May, for not letting Johnson have his toys, even though he already wasted our money on them. Zero respect to Johnson for his complete lack of grace in the face of what he sees as a personal disappointment, as the act of a colleague who is out to get him, to stop the BoJo juggernaut.

If you seriously think either one of these men would be a good president/prime minister, you have been conned.

Enough with MPs wanting to be London mayors already!

Being the Mayor of London is a big job. It is not just a ceremonial role where you get to throw on some robes and gold chains and open village fairs. It is a huge responsibility. Apart from New York City, London is pretty much the only major city in the world where people from other countries know who the mayor is, especially since the deliberately dishevelled showpony that is Boris Johnson has been in the job. As a result, he has a huge following from people who don't even live in the UK and certainly don't have to live with the consequences of his ridiculousness.

Now Boris is both an MP and the Mayor so he can do two jobs badly instead of just the one. Being an MP is also a big job and a huge responsibility. So why the hell do people keep thinking they can do both jobs and do them properly?

When Boris leaves his post as mayor next year, there will be a vacancy and sitting MPs keep sticking their heads over the parapet to declare they're running for the top London job. We have Sadiq Khan, Labour MP for Tooting, Zac Goldsmith, Conservative MP for Richmond Park, Diane Abbot, Labour MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington, David Lammy, Labour MP for Tottenham all with hats in the ring. Additionally, Gareth Thomas, Labour MP for Harrow West, and Justine Greening, Conservative MP for Putney, are considered as potential candidates.

It has to stop. To try and be Mayor of London and an effective MP at the same time is to show no respect to the people you represent.

MPs cop a lot of flak and it is often well-deserved, especially when greedy snouts keep finding their way into troughs at our expense. But it is a demanding job, even if you are a humble backbencher, and there are plenty of MPs of all political shades who work hard and are genuinely trying to serve the people they represent. If you don't believe me, check out the excellent BBC documentary Inside The Commons.

And what is really sad is that among the MPs who have declared they want to be the Mayor of London, there are some genuinely talented people, in particular Sadiq Khan and Zac Goldsmith. I can imagine both Khan and Goldsmith being better mayors for London than Boris Johnson.

But I don't want to see any of them as Mayor of London if it means they won't be able to devote as much time as they should to their roles as MP. And being a good MP, even if you are a London-based one, means you're not going to have time to take the helm of a city as huge, complex, diverse and challenging as the nation's capital. Nobody votes for a part-time MP any more than they vote for a part-time mayor.

And, frankly, while I'm at it, I've had it with the party politics focus on the job of Mayor of London. Hell, party politics at any level of local government can get messy and it can easily turn local councils into training grounds for ambitious wannabe MPs. This should not be the purpose of local government.

The media has to shoulder a lot of the blame for the party politicisation of the London mayoral elections. Every time it is portrayed as Labour versus Tory, red versus blue. As if the mayor can only ever be from one of two parties. And people are daft enough to view it as a two-horse race and vote for one of the two heads they see on every front page rather than carefully thinking about who might actually be the best person to run the capital.

In the last London mayoral election, it would have been magnificent if Siobhan Benita won. Imagine that. An independent mayor of London. A mayor who is not beholden to the policies of any of the major parties. A mayor who might actually have made decisions based on what was best for London and for Londoners. A mayor who is not distracted by the demands of being an MP. A mayor with no ambitions to be in the House of Commons or to be Prime Minister.

Will Londoners be bold enough to vote in a way that could set a great example for local government across the whole country? Or will it be another election of more of the same, regardless of the result?

The BoJo juggernaut rolls on...

Last week's news from the No Shit, Sherlock files concerned Boris Johnson announcing that he plans to run for election as an MP next year. Previously, Boris said had the best job in the world as Mayor of London. Previously, Boris said he had no intention to run as an MP in the 2015 elections. Previously, in his past life as an MP, he was an inconsequential Shadow Minister for the Arts before being sacked from the front bench after lying about an affair with Petronella Wyatt.

Personally, I don't care who Boris sleeps with. None of my damn business. But if Boris intends to complete his term as Mayor of London and be an MP at the same time (presuming he is a shoo-in for a safe Tory seat), it is my business. And it is the business of everyone who lives in London as well as the people who live in his future constituency which, at the time of writing, could be Uxbridge.

Quite simply, he cannot do both jobs properly. He is not doing the job of Mayor of London properly.

If the people of Uxbridge elect him as their MP and only then realise he is a self-serving career politician, they only have themselves to blame. If people in Uxbridge discover this time next year that they cannot get an appointment with him to discuss local issues, why the hell would they be at all surprised? Just as Labour parachutes candidates from elsewhere into safe seats in the north of England, it is equally lazy politics (and lazy voting...) for the Conservatives to drop Boris into Uxbridge or similar.

He is, according to David Cameron, a "star player" and, as such, Boris Johnson MP will no doubt be expecting a cabinet position if the Conservatives win next year. And that should worry everyone in Britain.

Boris's track record as Mayor of London has been awful - he has presided over increased tube and bus fares, the wasteful Emirates Airline cable car that provides public transport for a handful of people on any given day and involved a seriously dodgy contract that should have been anathema to anyone who supports either free trade or free speech (but it's OK because he apparently didn't know about the finer details of the contract when it was signed), increased homelessness (but it's OK because he thought the anti-homeless person spikes were stupid...), stupid buses that are a fare evader's delight, a failed plan to glue pollution to the roads, the imposition of the Congestion Charge on hybrid cars, the exemption of affluent parts of London from the Congestion Charge, a mindless crusade against all diesel-powered cars that ignores the latest cleaner diesel technology from leading automakers such as BMW and Volkswagen, and the purchase of a secondhand water cannon that Theresa May has not yet let him use...

Still, we really must forget about all that waffle and piffle, as Boris might say when he is being oh-so-hilarious (in the same way that a booming yeast infection is hilarious...).  He does like to trumpet London's continuing economic success as something he has done and of which he is very proud indeed.

Except that London is too big to fail. It will always be here, attracting higher average salaries, higher house prices than the rest of the country, ambitious people, creativity and innovation - and people desperate for a break or even a basic wage. The capital is a giant economic force and not even Boris can bugger that up entirely.

And that is, in a nutshell, why the rest of Britain should fear Boris in the House of Commons. If he is elected and the Conservatives win the next election and Boris ends up, inevitably, in the cabinet, he will not do a damn thing to try and rectify one of the biggest social and economic challenges facing Britain - the obsession with London at the expense of regional development and job creation beyond the M25.

But regional development isn't sexy. The next election will not be won or lost on some random regional development policy from any of the major parties. And, for Boris, the concerns of the people of Uxbridge probably won't be sexy either. If they vote for him and the result is yet another clown in the house, they'll get the MP they deserve - but the rest of the country will have to put up with his ridiculousness too.

On the upside, it might stop people who don't live in London from saying they love Boris because he is "good comedy value", but that's not much consolation for the possible consequences of terminally gullible and lazy giving this wasteful man yet another ill-deserved opportunity.


Photography: Steve Linster 

A fine day for a London tube strike

The media coverage of today's London tube strike has been predictably awful and light on facts. This morning, Eamonn Holmes had his best furrowed-brow-of-deep-concern on as Sky News showed allegedly "shocking" images of people queued outside tube stations seemingly baffled about a strike for which we have had plenty of notice and thus plenty of time to sort out alternative arrangements. The whining on Twitter has gone predictably nuclear and there are so many red herrings flying about, it is no wonder people don't seem to understand what the strike is actually about. So here are some helpful points.

1. It is not a strike about driver salaries. Regardless of whether you think tube drivers are overpaid or not, this is not what this strike is about. Stop blathering on about driver salaries. Please.

2. It is a strike about the plan to close all ticket offices on the London Underground and the loss of 953 jobs, which TFL plans to manage as a programme of voluntary redundancies.

3. Yes, more than 400 TFL staff have applied to take voluntary redundancies. Good for them. That doesn't change the fact that there will be less staff and no ticket offices.

4. The claim that everything will be OK because staff will be redeployed to platforms and thus the tube will be safer is laughable. Firstly, as Boris Johnson likes to remind us, crime is down on the London Underground. This is great news but taking staff away from the ticket hall level of tube stations will not improve passenger safety. Incidents sometimes happen in London tube stations at the ticket hall level. Most nights after work, I walk to Oval tube station and it is because it is a well-lit, staffed station that I feel safe. The Oval station staff are friendly, helpful and busy.

5.  If a staff member is dealing with an incident on a platform and then something happens at the ticket hall level that also requires the attention of a staff member, that person cannot be in two places at once. Or the staff member on the platform may be blissfully unaware of an incident in the ticket hall and not do anything to help. Especially late at night when many tube stations are much quieter than at rush hour, this is not a prospect that any passenger should feel comfortable about.

6. Last night, it was announced that a tube station was temporarily unable to offer wheelchair access because of staff shortages. This means that nobody would have been on hand to assist with placing a ramp to ensure any passengers in wheelchairs could safely get off the train. Why would anyone be OK with staff cuts that would make it harder for people in wheelchairs to get around London (not to mention the elderly, parents with buggies, anyone who has to take heavy luggage on the tube...)? Again, see point five about station staff not being able to be in two places at once...

7. Yes, the overwhelming majority of tube passengers use Oyster cards and many take advantage of auto top-up so they never have to go near either a ticket window or a ticket machine. However, many people still obtain their first Oyster card from tube stations, sometimes ticket machines break down, sometimes people have trouble with the ticket machines for many reasons, sometimes Oyster cards are faulty, sometimes people make mistakes on ticket machines and need a refund, sometimes people have trouble with ticket machines because of eyesight  problems, sometimes people have trouble with ticket machines because of language and literacy issues, sometimes kids use ticket machines and get confused, sometimes someone is taking so long at a ticket machine it is quicker to see a member of staff... And so on and so forth. There are many reasons why a human being is required even when there are ticket machines.

8. Ticket hall staff provide a great service for tourists to London, whether from abroad or from other parts of the UK. The ticket machines may be straightforward enough for most people but there are plenty of times when a confused visitor needs some friendly advice on getting around this fine city. It's all well and good for smug Londoners who have memorised the entire tube map to crap on about how they never need to speak to a member of TFL staff. I urge these people to visit any tube station near any major London tourist attraction or any interchange station and observe TFL staff helping visitors. This is good for London's reputation as a tourist destination.

9. Staff-free ticket halls are a magnet for fare evasion (much like the daft hot-in-summer-cold-in-winter buses Boris Johnson has spent £350,000 each on...). What is a major contributing factor in fares going up? Oh yes, that's right. Fare evasion.

10. Boris has said that because of the 40% RMT member turnout and 49% TSSA member turnout for the strike ballot, it is invalid. Rather like the mere 38% voter turnout at the last mayoral election, eh, BoJo?

11. And while we're talking about the unions, yes, Bob Crow is a walking caricature of the old school union man in his duffle coat and flat cap. And Boris Johnson is a walking caricature of a posh, eccentric bumbler. So what?

12. Yes, Bob Crow is on a salary of £145,000 a year. Again, so what? Unions often pay people well, which means they are not hypocrites when it comes to making demands for higher salaries for their members. If you are not a RMT member, you are not paying Bob Crow's salary so why whine about it? But if you are a British taxpayer, you are helping pay the £1 million salary of new RBS CEO Ross McEwan. And if you shop at Tesco or you're a British taxpayer, you have been making your contribution to Tesco CEO Philip Clark's £6.9 million salary. (For what it's worth, if I was Bob Crow, I'd move out of the council house, but that's a moot point.).

13. My nearest tube station is at the end of a line. The staff at the ticket hall level are kept very busy with confused passengers who have fallen asleep, especially late at night, and need advice on how to get home. If you don't spend much time at the end of a tube line, you'd be surprised how often this happens (and yes, sometimes it is drunk people, sometimes it is just the tired and overworked.) If someone has missed the last train heading in the opposite direction and they are unfamiliar with the area's night buses, some advice from a friendly human is usually warmly welcomed. Baffled tourists have also washed up at my local tube station and need help to find their intended destination.

14. The chaos on many platforms today, frankly, isn't much different to the daily chaos at plenty of busy tube stations when there is no strike on. Am getting flashbacks to the time I had to wait for seven trains at Stockwell in rush hour before I could get on board (and I don't even take up much room). London is always a busy city. A lot of the whining today is pitiful. Some people are carrying on as if it's the Blitz. And some people have reported problems on their journey today not because of the strike but merely because of fellow passengers being idiots. This is usually the case on any given day travelling on the tube. Today is not the apocalypse. Harden up, people.

15. The 7/7 terror attacks were a vile, awful, inexcusable event. It was a murderous assault on the transport network we take for granted. But Londoners kept on going, most people refused to be scared off using the tube and it remains a busy, popular service that does an amazing job of moving millions of people every day through the capital. Among the heroes of 7/7 were TFL staff who worked with emergency services and ordinary Londoners in the face of an unthinkably despicable event and played an important part in getting London moving again. No good person ever wants 7/7 to happen again but what is inevitable is that on a network of the scale of the London Underground, sometimes things go badly wrong. Life can be unpredictable. And when unpredictable things happen on the tube, TFL staff are the first people everyone turns to for help and information. With 953 front-line staff gone, this will be compromised.   

16. Sometimes a little human interaction beats the hell out of being ruled by machine overlords.



Image courtesy of TFLⒸ

The Rant Mistress! Now guest-blogging for MoronWatch!

I am delighted to report that I have started guest-blogging for MoronWatch. Follow MoronWatch on Twitter - @moronwatch - and thrill to the spectacle of conversations with some of the most stupid people on the planet.

Click here and you can read my debut post for MoronWatch, in which I offer a few reasons as to why Boris Johnson is not hilarious, is not a national treasure and shouldn't be the mayor of London. I focused on his pathetic environmental record, which largely consists of wasted money, giving rich people but not hybrid cars a Congestion Charge exemption, offering a grand plan that won't come into effect for another seven years, increasing public transport fares, oh, and some bikes.

In the interests of not taking up too much room on a blog onto which I was graciously invited, I didn't even touch on his abysmal record and asinine policies on housing, the expensive white elephant that is the loss-making Emirates cable car, neglect of south-east London, a cancelled bridge and a cancelled DLR extension.

I have already been called a "guest fuckwit" as a result of this post and a Boris Johnson fan girl has trolled me on Twitter. What fun!