PIGEON (n.) Grey bird often seen in Trafalgar Square whose purpose is to entertain tourists, a bird that doth make an excellent pie.
Dr. Johnson’s London Dictionary for publick consumption in the twenty-first century avail yourself on Twitter @JohnsonsLondon
The City of London is going to exclude cabs twenty-four hours a day from Bank Junction. Nowadays you can’t drive along Cheapside end to end and you can’t drive down Bishopsgate. Many cabbies already avoid working in the City, but when this goes into place, they’ll stop working the Square Mile completely.
For two years Blue Badge Guides Emily and Alex have been podcasting weekly snippets on their Ladies Who London as a way to (as they say) bring London’s quirky, fun history to everyone in the comfort of their own homes. Having just discovered them I have a lot of episodes to catch up on.
For some time now I’ve been a member of NetGalley, which offer books for review. Ex-Home Secretary Alan Johnson now writes novels, his latest is The Late Train to Gipsy Hill. While most politicians turn to novels as a way of showing how inside track they were. Johnson eschews this approach and just gives us a thriller not without prescience given later events in Ukraine.
Sewage. Pressure group Thames 21 appeared on a BBC Panorama to show reporter Joe Crowley a mound of wet wipes on the Thames foreshore at Barnes. Designed to be a safety valve for occasional use, London’s overloaded sewage system routinely discharges raw sewage into the Thames, on average once a week, discharges have now become regular and routine. Thames21 showed the BBC Panorama team around one of the five Thames sites where wet wipes have accumulated in such quantities they have physically changed the shape of the riverbed and are informally known as the Great Wet Wipe Reef. Incredibly only 7 per cent of Britain’s rivers are in good health, and sewage pollution is one of the major causes. Ignore at your peril.
With the Queen laid to rest the arguments have begun over where to put her statue. Currently, there is only one full-size statue in Windsor Great Park. The bookies’ favourite is, of course, the fourth plinth, but that, according to ArtNet, would mean bringing to an end the “best-known public art commission in the world”. The plinth is not suitable for the memorial for the late queen either, as it sits in an awkward location in front of the National Gallery terrace, and close to the busy public toilets. Some politicians are lobbying for a statue in Parliament Square, other plans include renaming streets, parks, and even Heathrow airport in her honour.
You must not expect much friendliness from a John Bull who does not see his way to get something out of you. On the other hand, for learning commerce, London is without exception the best school.
Georgina Meinertzhagen (1850-1914)
On 23 October 1843 fourteen stonemasons who had worked on Nelson’s Column ate a celebratory meal atop the platform before the statue of the famous admiral was placed aloft.
On 23 October 1731 a fire broke out at Ashburnham House, Little Dean’s Yard destroying or damaging 114 books bequeathed to the nation
There are five prisons in London and four of them were built by the Victorians (Wormwood Scrubs, Wandsworth, Pentonville and Brixton). Brixton is the oldest prison in London still in use
It was Lord Byron’s valet – James Brown – who established Brown’s Hotel in 1837. Agatha Christie’s At Bertram’s Hotel is based on Brown’s Hotel
Mayfair’s most eccentric dentist was Martin von Butchell, when his wife, Mary, died in 1775 he had her embalmed and turned her into a visitor attraction to drum up more business
‘So hour by hour, be thou my guide, that by thy power, no step may slide.’ The words to Big Ben’s chimes known as the Westminster Quarters and is the most common clock chime melody
A blue plaque commemorates the site of the Tabard Inn, immortalised in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, in Talbot Yard, Southwark
The George Inn is a National Trust-owned, medieval pub in Southwark and one of the few Grade I listed public houses in England
For the London 1908 Olympics there was the first purpose-built Olympic swimming pool, at the Paris Olympics of 1900 the competitors had to race through sewage in the River Seine
A spiral escalator was installed in 1907 at Holloway Road station, but linear escalators were favoured for the rest of the network. A small section of the spiral escalator is in the Acton depot
In 1809 as part of a hoax a resident of 54 Berners Street was visited by hundreds of maids requesting jobs and tradesmen delivering goods
Medieval London’s streets moral impurity was underlined by their names: Codpiece Lane, Sluts’ Hole, Cuckold Court, Whores’ Nest, Maiden Lane
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.
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.
As you read this they are already stacking the kindling wood for me in Smithfield, but I feel it has to be discussed.
London is experiencing the worst decline in its core business for a generation and cabbies not renowned for being stoical never stop complaining about the loss of business.
With so many cabs available companies have in some cases stopped pre-booking them, telling their employees to hail from the street.
We now have the opportunity to become the first city in the world to have a completely integrated transport system.
By allowing cabs to accept Oyster Cards while at the same time drivers should offer an appropriate discounted rate for the journey (say 20 per cent) for using the card.
At the same time, TfL runs a promotional campaign spearheaded by Boris Johnson and offering tokens in the Evening Standard, I believe could be of mutual benefit to all participants.
By promoting the fact that we are helping London’s struggling businesses by keeping down their costs might even help raise London cabbies’ profile, possibly changing the view held by many that we are greedy and self-serving.
Sponsorship from a body like the London Chamber of Commerce could offer prizes for the cabbie who gave the most discounted rides and the most frequent passenger who availed themselves of the service. Corporate sponsorship of the scheme could be extended to a tie in with the London Olympics.
Another idea suggested by the Chairman of the London Taxi Driver’s Association is that with London’s transport bursting at the seams in the morning and evening rush hour, TfL could introduce an online system to marry up empty cabs travelling to and from London with commuters. With again a discounted fare balancing what the passenger would normally pay on the train with the convenience of being picked up locally and having a seat for their entire journey.
While Tweet a London Cab the fledgling (sorry about that) no booking fee service, who allow people to book a cab via Twitter should also have wider coverage, possibly incorporating that morning and evening commute suggestion.
As a footnote; TfL pay some of their staff over £100,000 a year to think up these incentives, and I offer them gratis, so you see we cabbies can be altruistic.
Now boys, do you still want to tie me to a stake and roast me?.
CabbieBlog 