Sadiq Khan has recently announced that there have been 230,000 racist tweets directed at him. Two questions arise from that disclosure: why would nearly a quarter of a million think the mayor deserves a tweet about his ethnicity when there’s plenty to criticise on his ability to run London? And is he employing staff, at our expense, to supply him with statistics about nasty things said about London’s most useless leader?

The fact that the dollar now buys you twice the number of Chinese made Big Ben snow globes than it did this time last year (and tax free shopping is now back for tourists), means that US tourists ‘are flocking to our shores’ and will probably continue to do so right up to the King’s Coronation sometime next year – incidentally they should announce the date to give hotels time to jack up prices. This means we’ll probably continue to see even more luxury hotels going up in the West End over the next few years, and more heritage parts of London destroyed, which ironically is why the Americans visit the Motherland.

How the hell does Sadiq have the time to host a weekly podcast? Clean Air with Sadiq Khan is a new show from LBC in which the mayor “speaks exclusively to public leaders, politicians, environmental activists and celebrities from around the world who are helping lead the fight against climate change.” Confirmed guests so far include Richard Curtis, Ed Miliband and Lily Cole.

One old cabbies’ saying goes ‘Bermondsey pays better than Belgravia’, reflecting the sadly true notion that generosity is more likely found among working Londoners than the gentry. Now payment app Lopay has analysed 57,816 fares paid to more than 2,000 taxi and private hire drivers in the capital and found that just 1 in 5 passengers alighting in Wandsworth’s wealthy enclaves tipped their driver, barely half the figure recorded in top-tipping Hillingdon.

According to Lopay’s data, London’s worst tippers were Wandsworth, where just 21.3 per cent of passengers added a gratuity to their fare, followed by Barnet (22 per cent), Greenwich (22 per cent), Brent (22.5 per cent) and Westminster (23 per cent). Top tippers were Hillingdon (38 per cent), Havering (35 per cent), Lewisham (34 per cent), Hounslow (33 per cent) and Richmond (30 per cent). The generosity of taxi customers alighting in Hillingdon may stem from the fact that the West London borough is home to Heathrow airport, so the data includes high numbers of air passengers carrying luggage.

Further analysis of the data revealed that the average gratuity paid to drivers across the capital was 10 per cent or £3.10 and that passengers are most likely to leave a tip in the evening, between 7pm and midnight. By contrast, late-night revellers are the least likely to leave a tip, with the worst hours for tipping recorded between midnight and 5am. Londoners were more likely to tip on weekdays than at the weekend, suggesting that those able to claim their fare back as a work expense may be more generous than those paying out of their own pocket.

A few years ago Time Out (when it appeared in printed form) ran a series: Bloggers picks:15 things to do in London this Autumn, naturally CabbieBlog made a contribution and this was my take on Autumnal London.

See Victorian London blaze into life

There aren’t many places left in the capital where you feel like you may be in Dickensian London, but Kensington Palace Gardens is one of them. At night you’ll notice the soft glow emanating from the street lights: they’re a handful of the 1,500 Victorian gas lamps remaining in the city. Just five lamplighters maintain them – it’s a job so popular that vacancies are rarely advertised by British Gas. As dusk falls and the birds start to roost in the trees, a clockwork device inside each lamp turns on the gas jet, which is ignited by the continually burning pilot light. The flame then heats a silk casing coated in lime oxide which turns white-hot and gives off that misty glow. For a short time, modern-day London is but a memory.

Now if it wasn’t for the pressure group The London Gasketeers, Westminster would have replaced the last of these lamps with LEDs. The council had argued that repairs on the lamps were difficult and expensive, and led to dangerously darkened streets. The local authority will now consult with Historic England, with Cllr Rachael Robathan, the leader of the council, stating:

We all want to preserve these beautiful heritage lamps for the future, but in order to do that we need to make sure they can continue to operate going forward.

We shall be keeping a close watch on this authority’s ambitions for modernity.