Monthly Archives: July 2022
London in Quotations: Lord Tyrconnell
The Filth, Sir, of some Parts of the Town, and the Inequality and Ruggedness of others, cannot but in the Eyes of Foreigners disgrace our Nation, and incline them to imagine us a People, not only without Delicacy, but without Government.
Lord Tyrconnell (1750-1805)
London Trivia: Jeffery Archer is innocent
On 24 July 1987 Jeffery Archer was awarded record libel damages of £500,000 and costs from the Star newspaper for accusing him of paying a prostitute, Monica Coghlan, for sex. The former deputy chairman of the Conservative party told the jury he was a fool for paying £2,000 to her, but that he was not a liar when he denied having slept with her.
On 24 July 1969 after 4 years in a Soviet jail, Gerald Brooke returned to London. He had been swapped with the Krogers, a couple involved in the Portland spy case
London gangster Charlie Richardson claimed to have help bug Harold Wilson’s Downing Street phones for South African intelligence agency
Clerkenwell is named after the ‘Clerk’s Well’ that supplied Charterhouse. It can be seen through the window of Well Court, Farringdon Lane
There was a public latrine on Old London Bridge that plopped directly into the Thames, providing boatmen with a fresh source of worry
Voltaire, Edgar Allen Poe, Ho Chi Minh, Mahatma Gandhi, Vincent Van Gogh, Sigmund Freud, and Hiter’s older half-brother all lived in London
London’s home to the world’s largest block of acrylic by Tower Hotel it’s a 1-tonne cuboid reject for 2001: A Space Odyssey – black was used
Zog self-proclaimed King of Albania, fled to London when Mussolini invaded with his country’s gold. Booked into the Ritz and paid in bullion
London’s oldest sports building still in use for its original purpose is the Real Tennis Court at Hampton Court Palace, one of its walls dates back to 1625
On the eastbound platform a roundel still reads St. James’ Park, the rest have the current spelling and punctuation, St. James’s Park
The Queen’s Remembrancer the oldest legal post presides over the Trial of the Pyx where 26 gold smiths are sworn in to weigh Royal Mint coins
It’s an odd coincidence at £4m modern London Bridge cost the same as buying, transporting and re-erecting the old bridge at Lake Havasu, USA
Trivial Matter: London in 140 characters is taken from the daily Twitter feed @cabbieblog.
A guide to the symbols used here and source material can be found on the Trivial Matter page.
Previously Posted: Grumpy! That’s a laugh
For those new to CabbieBlog or readers who are slightly forgetful, on Saturdays I’m republishing posts, many going back over a decade. Some will still be very relevant while others have become dated over time. Just think of this post as your weekend paper supplement.
Grumpy! That’s a laugh (10.07.09)
London’s taxi drivers have been identified as the country’s grumpiest workers. A recent survey found that traffic jams, the rising cost of petrol and drunken passengers meant that cabbies rarely managed a chortle all day. In fact just 0.4% of taxi drivers said they laughed regularly through their working day and those individuals of course have had their licenses revoked.
Live in a big city, and drive a black cab every day, you will soon see why we are morose. From grumpy fellow road users, fanciful detours, to passengers who seem to have left their brain at home that day, driving a cab through the congested heart of a major city can easily become the most irritating of occupations.
Another recent survey of cab users shows that people still judge London cabbies to be the best in the world albeit miserable, but rate Parisian chauffeurs, commonly excoriated for their rudeness, above their counterparts in Berlin, Sydney and Las Vegas. Just how bad must they be in Berlin?
While the Discovery Channel after spending eight months travelling across Britain seeking out the trickiest jobs reported a few years ago that London’s black cab drivers have the most dangerous job in Britain. How exactly you classify driving a black cab as more dangerous than risking your life every day, chained to the deck of a North Sea trawler, working on a North Sea oil rig, being a lumberjack and having trees fall on your head or demolishing an asbestos filled building defeats me.
An Oxford University study said fishermen are 50 times more likely to die at work than any other profession. So based on these facts, how does deep sea fishing in raging seas slip into second place behind driving a comfortable vehicle while listening to Robert Elms on London Radio while saving to purchase your holiday home on Tuscany?
Well here’s my theory. The report ranked each job on the likelihood of serious injury, skill level, working hours plus mental and physical stress. For black cab drivers, these occupational hazards come from the general public whose wrath has been incurred by delays caused by road works, drivers giving their unsolicited opinions and Gordon Brown.
So perhaps this survey has it right. So next time you use the services of a Black London Cabbie spare a thought of our occupational risks.
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