🚓 What Cab News

From next January Uber is encouraging London cabbies to join their platform, despite this shameless company spending a decade trying, and failing, to destroy London’s black cab trade. This is the same company that has shown little regard for the well-being of its passengers. This is the company that makes a mockery of the UK tax system. This is a company that has no regard for women’s safety. This is a company that had exploited its drivers until it lost its case in court. This is also the company that has subsidised fares to the tune of billions in an attempt to bankrupt the centuries-old black cab trade. They need us to help grow their market share, and give them some kind of legitimacy. Oh! Did I mention our first court hearing suing them is in January?

🎧 What I’m Listening

London Particular (BBC Sounds) London is not one but many cities, a city of curious anomalies and dark secrets, of hidden portals to other dimensions, a city so vast and varied that the weird and the uncanny blend seamlessly with the ordinary, where the person sitting next to you on the bus, or walking beside you on the pavement, may, in fact, be a visitor from another time.

📖 What I’m Reading

Ten-Second Staircase by Christopher Fowler. I’m now on Book 4 of 20 of his Bryant and May mysteries by this quintessential author of London noir. Diagnosed with a tenacious form of cancer at the very start of lockdown, last year marked a sad premature end to the sparkiest of creative minds.

📺 What I’m watching

I’ve been watching BBC’s Planet Earth III, this beautifully filmed and meticulously researched series that has run for 20 years. What should been an uplifting programme, I’ve found depressing, 30 per cent of species have become extinct since David Attenborough started Series I. I hope my grandson’s generation does a better job than we have.

❓ What else

The Chicken and Frog Bookshop in Brentwood has shifted a few copies of my book. This great local retailer specialises in selling children’s books and teaching youngsters, which might say something about my magnum opus.

📆 What date?

100 years ago on 1st January 1924, the Met Office issued its first Shipping Forecast broadcast, at this time it was called Weather Shipping.