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.

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.

Six degrees of Separation (07.07.09)

Six degrees of Separation (also referred to as the “Human Web”) refers to the idea that, if a person is one step away from each person they know and two steps away from each person who is known by one of the people they know, then everyone is at most six steps away from any other person on Earth. It was popularised by a play written by John Guare in 1990 and the “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” game that became popular in the late 1990s. If you shake CabbieBlog by the hand for instance you are but two steps from our Queen.

Let’s try a blatantly self-serving experiment. If the principle of “six degrees of separation” is correct, then it should be possible to spread the news of CabbieBlog to the entire world simply by word of mouse. If each person who saw this site told even just one other person about it, the chain should eventually reach the entire world. Of course, I don’t need or want the whole world to know about this site, just all the English speaking people. If everyone who might enjoy this site found out about it, I could hardly ask for more.

If you were to metaphorically shake CabbieBlog’s and you would only be two degrees of separation from Her Majesty The Queen, as look where that would get you.

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.

Gordon’s Gin (03.07.09)

I have to declare an interest at the beginning of this post. Last week would have been the 62nd birthday of my best friend. He died too young from alcohol consumption. Not by cirrhosis of the liver, but dementia, not a death that most people associate with alcohol, but not uncommon.

When in 1751 Hogarth drew his cartoon satirising the drinking of cheap gin in the Seven Dials area of London, he did it to bring to the public’s attention the excessive consumption of cheap alcohol by the poor and promote the Gin Act, which attempted to reduce the sale of spirits.

Roll forward 250 years and we are slowly working our way to a new Gin Lane, but now we call it a Sports Bar. London cabbies now have to weigh up every potential fare after 10 pm. Are they swaying, looking dazed or do they have a can of ale in their hand?

Alcohol consumption has doubled since the 1960s and research published in 2006 showed deaths from liver cirrhosis have increased markedly in Britain while falling in most other European countries since the 1950s.

And alcohol consumption can only increase as the economy goes into decline and more people lose their jobs because of this incompetent Government.

Cheers, Gordon!

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.

Flying dead cats (26.06.22)

Just off Piccadilly is a row of tiny Georgian shops virtually unchanged since 1819. Burlington Arcade was built to cover a narrow alley that ran alongside the London home of Lord Cavendish. As he sat in the garden of Burlington House he was constantly being hit by items thrown over the wall from an alley alongside his home. Having grown tired of oyster shells, apple cores, old bottles and the occasional dead cat landing on his head he decided that a row of shops would put paid to this nuisance. The shops remain almost unaltered to this day with the famous beadles on hand to stop you running, whistling or carrying an open umbrella.

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.

Exporting Churches (021.06.09)

The early churches of New England are based almost entirely on the design of St. Martin in the Fields. Completed in 1724 its revolutionary design of having its steeple at the east end of the church, not the west end was the brainchild of architect James Gibbs who decided to turn convention on its head and build the steeple where we see it today. He also built it above an imposing portico that looks like the grand entrance to a Greek temple. Critics marvelled at the audaciousness of the new church and despite the innate conservatism of churchgoers and the church authorities, the new design soon became very popular, so much so that several members of Gibbs’ architectural practice were enticed to American by the offer of large sums of money. With the design of St. Martin’s packed in their bags they moved west as the American settlers moved west, building identical or near-identical copies of St. Martins as they went.