Londoner's Diary: New Whetstone job fuels the row over Uber

 
Caught in the taxi rank: Boris Johnson
11 June 2015

Why did Boris Johnson, staunch defender of the black cab trade, soften his line on Uber at the London Assembly last month? Previously he’d criticised the “excessively bumptious” US private hire firm that, with its technology, was destroying the good old black cab. But then last month Boris said the “free market” and “consumer choice” meant cab drivers would have to accept the rise of Uber. What changed?

Motoring around town last night, we got chatting to our black-cab driver Wayne, who mentioned a conversation that he’d had with his mate Grant. Grant happens to be Grant Davis, chairman of the London Cab Drivers’ Club and a lunch companion of one Boris Johnson, whom he updates on the black cab situation around City Hall.

Over their cheese and pickle last week, Boris apparently told Grant, who told Wayne who told The Londoner, that he’d been personally told by David Cameron to leave Uber alone.

So why this unusual assertion of authority? The chat in the cabbies’ rests is that Dave’s good mate is Steve Hilton. And Steve’s trouble-and-strife Rachel Whetstone, also a family friend, happens to be Uber’s newly appointed UK senior vice-president of policy and communications.

“I hope it is a coincidence, coinciding that it does with the news that a personal friend of his, Rachel Whetstone, was recently appointed head of PR at Uber,” Steve McNamara, general secretary of London Taxi Drivers’ Association observed recently in Taxi magazine.

The Mayor’s office confirms that Boris is still “resolute” in wanting to reduce minicab numbers. The Londoner tried to hail a comment from No 10 this morning but its orange light was off.

Hilary's already a hit on Instagram

She may be a bit late to join the party but Hillary Clinton has become the latest politician to join Instagram — and she has amassed thousands of followers. In her bio the presidential candidate is listed as a “doting grandmother, among other things”. Clinton’s first post was a shot of several suits, all in red, white and blue and the caption “Hard choices”. A shameless plug for your book, Hillary?

Bring back the billiard table, says George

George Osborne gave his annual Mansion House address last night, promising an RBS sell-off and to make it law for the Government to run a surplus. But there was also time for ribbing of his boss.

“The last time any Prime Minister increased both his party’s seats in the House of Commons and share of the vote was in 1857, under the premiership of Lord Palmerston,” Osborne explained. “The parallels with my friend David Cameron don’t extend too far. Palmerston was well into his seventies when he returned to Downing Street and he literally died on the job: while making love, it is said, to a housemaid on the billiard table. You’ll be pleased to know the table and the housemaids have long since disappeared from Downing Street.” More’s the pity.

Take us to the bridge

To Harrods for a dinner to raise funds for the Garden Bridge, pulling in more than £250,000. Joanna Lumley conceived the idea for the bridge and she could raise at least half that with a few sultry words — of the 50 lots up for auction, the one that attracted most interest was Lumley offering to record your voicemail message. Her lilt was last heard seducing bus passengers into buying Remembrance Day poppies.

Joanna Lumley and Thomas Heatherwick (Picture: Dave Benett/Getty)
Dave Benett

Providing entertainment for the evening was singer Jessie Ware. As for the bridge itself, Lumley said: “I’ll be living there, darling. I’m going to disguise myself as a tree and live on it.”

Raine pours scorn on his critics

Last week poet Craig Raine was mocked mercilessly on Twitter for his new poem Gatwick, his ode to the airport printed in the London Review of Books. It described a frisson between him and a young female border control officer, and then a good leer at a 22-year-old woman on the coach to Oxford whose breasts and hips are described lingeringly.

Raine, right, writing in this week’s New Statesman, said he was unaware of the furore until The Londoner told him. “I don’t think my poem needs defending from the misreadings of malicious and/or stupid people,” he says in the NS. “If I worried about bad readers I’d have given up writing poetry long ago. This furore is an example of what Bellow, after Wyndham Lewis, called the Moronic Inferno ... More depressing was the ironic spectacle of intelligent people, people readily contemptuous of Joyce’s moralising detractors, taking up the censorious position.”

He adds that his intentions were honourable. “My attitude to the young woman is kindly. The word ‘bust’ is a term taken from tailoring. I like her big bust because she doesn’t. A form of redress. What I intend is joy — a kind of love for the whole world: the girl, her parents, Gatwick. The Greek word for hospitality, xenia, literally means love of strangers.”

Well that settles it then. Sort of.

Carney's art scandal

Mark Carney has found himself linked to an art scandal. He bought a painting through Evan Solomon, the TV correspondent fired from CBC for using his influence to profit from art deals. A spokesman for Carney insists he has “no enduring professional relationship with Mr Solomon” but at least we see his tastes: he bought a $22,500 painting by Kim Dorland, known for vivid nature scenes.

So much for electric dreams

Yesterday an electric car-sharing revolution for London was announced, and mayoral hopeful Zac Goldsmith added to it, asking for all new delivery vans and minicabs to be electric-powered.

But one influential figure might need convincing. Former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger, pictured, one of the most prominent drivers of the G-Wiz car — think a humming Robin Reliant — admitted this week on Instagram that he had abandoned his.

Model Lily Cole posted surprise. “Why did you give up on it? I nearly got one once.” An explanation came from Bella Mackie, Rusbridger’s daughter and a commissioning editor on the paper. “It used to break down in awkward places. Pushing it across Euston Road was a fond memory”. Alan added: “Pushing it up Kentish Town high street was another low”.

Travel bore of the day: model Cara Delevingne, who takes a Playstation 4 with her every holiday. Which explains why we never get a postcard.

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