Rats on Kensington High Street.

I made a mistake recently. I attempted to drive in London. How stupid of me.

I was driving through Fulham and while paying attention to the rather clever new-fangled Sat Nav App ‘Waze’ it took me down a residential street. I didn’t get very far. Unbeknownst to me, the road was blocked by bollards. So I tried a different road. Dead end again, and again, and again.

Hammersmith and Fulham Council, and now many others in London have decided that using residential streets to move about, is basically evil. So they’ve blocked them off, and unless you have a permit, forget about it. So make sure you know who is coming to your house so you can book them in, yes, book them in… with the council. If you don’t,

the visiting Auntie Mavis will be slapped with a £130 fine.

Delivery drivers are particularly punished by this, be they vans restocking a quaint independently owned cafe or a Deliveroo chap dropping off a burger. The reception to this legislation wasn’t exactly warm. Giant wooden plant pots blocking the roads have been tipped over and oil has been poured on cycle lanes, which is very dangerous… and hilarious. I tip my hat to Dick Dastardly and Muttley for that one. Hopefully they can also spin around some diversion arrows and give Sadiq Khan some more brilliantly cartoon-y problems.

I also find the language of this rather concerning. Rat runs. Are delivery drivers rats? Are Uber drivers rats? Ditto Black Cabs. London Taxi drivers take an exam called The Knowledge, which requires them to memorise and navigate over 25,000 roads in London and the quickest routes from place to place without looking at a map, or staring dead-eyed at a phone, gaffer taped to the windscreen. If I want to get somewhere in London quickly, I use a cab. If I fancy hearing a rather bold opinion on immigration, Boris or his Party. I use a cab. The issues with the Millwall midfield? Cab. But by blocking off these side roads, the taxi’s, Ubers and delivery drivers have to queue on the main roads.

The idea behind blocking ‘Rat Runs’ is that it improves air quality and safety. So if there aren’t any cars going down these streets the air improves. But if cars, lorries and buses end up backed up on the main roads, they sit there, in traffic, not moving, engines running, emissions still coming out the back. Wouldn’t the councils rather get traffic moving so it buggers off and gets where it’s going. Rather than choking people walking up and down main street, picking up dry-cleaning and grabbing some milk. Not that they can do that because Main Street is a double-yellow-red-route-no-stopping-one-way-system and if a Traffic Warden sees you he will issue a parking-fine-penalty-notice-congestion-charge-pollution-order and then execute you.

Another problem was the way it was introduced. Without consultation of residents and people who own businesses in this area, and they aren’t best pleased. Business owners called it an exercise in making money and sneaky, I would go further than that, I would call it a blatant attack on the working people of cities all over Britain, not just London. Because if half-baked ideas like this are allowed to go unchallenged, it sets a precedent for all the councils out there without any jobs to do.

Never mind knife crime or burglary! No. Derek’s Deli Deliveries has got to be stopped!

Now if I have to explain it to everyone. London is a city home to nine million people, and over a million businesses. Now these people have to get around and these businesses need things delivered. In fact most of the economy is just Amazon packages going backwards and forwards. And until Amazon rolls out delivery drones, so people can nick stuff using a big net rather than pinching it off the porch, vehicles still need to move about here and there. So don’t come to crying to me when your new iPhone cable doesn’t arrive because the driver couldn’t get up the road.

And besides, you shouldn’t have sucked your old one up with the Hoover.