This is what Fleet Street looked like on Wednesday night. Every taxi in the world was parked there. Two lanes each way, from Blackfriars to Aldwych and up Chancery Lane and anywhere else they could block. You can never find a taxi when you need one, but when you don’t, 2,000 of them land on your doorstep. I decided when I took the photo not to include a grinning, pouting, ultra-cool ME in the foreground. On the basis that ‘selfies are for TOSSERS’.

It was an(other) anti-Uber demo by the Hackney Carriages. And they’ve got a point. In fact they have loads of points, as the driver I spoke to went to great lengths to explain to me in a ‘brief’, 40-minute lecture in answer to my question: ‘this about Uber then?’

All points are valid. 600 new Uber drivers register every week. They get paid terribly because they offer cut-price fares and then lose most of it to Uber. They come down from every provincial town and city to work in London and sleep in their cars in streets where they shouldn’t be. Getting too little rest and driving under the influence of tiredness. Taxis can’t cut their prices, they’re set by Transport for London. Taxis cost 40 grand; a second hand Prius costs about 8. Half the Ubers aren’t properly insured. And so on and so on…

Unfortunately, particularly with the under-30s who have no instinctual ‘love’ of a proper, black, Hackney Carriage, price and availability conquer all. And apps. Do you spend £25 on a plain white t-shirt that’s made in ethical workshops out of recycled cotton from sustainable, replanted lands where all the workers are on first name terms and sing hymns before work? Or do you hit the Primark app and get one for £1.50 that’s made from recycled asbestos in Sri Lankan sweatshops where the workers earn a can of coke for a 60 hour week during which they’re regularly beaten with long poles? They look the same.

However, there are more important things than taxis and t-shirts. There’s rugby. There’s Australia. Tomorrow night. Biggest game in the entire history of big games. Make that BIG GAMES!!!! England need to win or they’re out. Gone. Finished. Exiled from their own World Cup. Even if they win its not certain they’ll qualify but quite likely.

Heroes or zeros. One night. Australia in the way. I love a world cup.

Happy Friday

A xxxx