Uber

I’m as irritated by Uber as the French seem to be — though I wouldn’t go as far as they did last week in arresting the ride-sharing company’s managers. Uber has hit official resistance everywhere from Johannesburg to São Paulo; but a disruptive free-market technology so readily adopted by users that its name has entered global language is bound to win the argument in the end. The only question is whether it will be overtaken by something better. I certainly hope so. Deep in Clapham, a fellow dinner guest offered to call ‘an Uber’ to take us back north of the river. Sure enough, a scholarly-looking fellow with a clean car was there in moments. So far so good — until the driver said: ‘You go to Birmingham, yes?

Jemima Goldsmith's love life has been well documented by the red tops in recent years, with her former loves including Imran Khan and Russell Brand. So Mr S was pleased to hear that - in the name of research - she has been adopting a new approach and experimenting with the dating app Tinder. Goldsmith took to the stage at Vanity Fair's digital summit to conduct a Q&A with the app's founder Sean Rad. Things started off politely with Jemima, who is the sister of Zac Goldsmith, quizzing Rad over why he had come up with the idea for the app, which has over 50 million active users: 'I think meeting people should be fun. The ultimate aim is to be the place you go to when you want to meet somebody new and sort of make these connections.

Technology businesses have a genius for inflicting indignities on us and spinning them as virtues. When they don’t want to respect copyright, they talk about the ‘democratisation of content’. When they want to truffle through our contact lists and browsing histories, they talk about ‘openness’ and ‘personalisation’. A hundred years ago, when a widow had to take in lodgers to pay the bills, it was called misfortune. Today, when an underemployed photographer has to rent out a room in his house or turn his car into a taxi, it’s called the ‘sharing economy’. First Google took his job. Now Airbnb wants his house. Next they’ll be after his pets. In fact, they already are.

‘J’ai failli attendre’ — ‘I almost had to wait’ — allegedly said by Louis XIV when his carriage drew up just a few seconds before he reached the bottom of the palace steps. Pathetic, I know, but I try to re-enact this moment with taxi booking apps: I watch the car approach on the map on my phone, then time my departure to emerge from the building exactly when the car pulls up at the kerb. It is a moment of synchronicity which delights the trivial mind — in the way many men enjoy timing the flushing of a lavatory so that the end of the flush coincides with the last moment of micturition. But there is now another reason to do this: to avoid keeping the driver waiting.

‘Payday Lady is not trading at this time,’ says her website, sounding a little like La Dame aux camélias. Indeed (since I could not find her anywhere) the message may indicate that Payday Lady is not just temporarily indisposed, but has given up the game altogether. I’ll be glad to hear from her if she hasn’t. Meanwhile I can report that her rival Cash Lady (who promises she’ll be ‘here to help you’ within three minutes) was still out there — despite having her television ads banned last year — and so were Purple Payday, Pounds to Pocket, Peachy Loans, PayDay Pig and CashCowNow, all at colossal ‘representative APRs’ that look relatively cheap compared with Wonga’s notorious 5,853 per cent.

You know, those mysterious huts that allow entry only to cab drivers? I used to fancy they were cover for a network of underground bunkers where cackling taxi drivers plotted world domination and new ways to fuck up traffic at the Nag’s Head. One day, I vowed, the truth would be outed. This was how I ended up attending a mass sing-along at the cabbies’ hut in Russell Square. It was part of something called the ‘Cabbies’ Shelter Project’, organised by some very nice people who’d obviously been wondering the same thing. No subterranean tunnels were in evidence. Just a kitchenette, the all-pervasive stench of bacon fat and a cabbie called Mark Bird hammering out a knees-up on a keyboard. Joe le Taxi he wasn’t, let alone Travis Bickle.

What's upsetting London cabbies? Is it really that Transport for London aren't fairly implementing the special privileges awarded to Hackney Carriages, or are they simply against a bit of healthy competition? According to some, it's all Goldman Sachs' fault, but can the iconic London taxi stem the tide of technological change forever? We sent The Spectator's intrepid Harry Cole down to the frontline of Wednesday's London taxi protests, conveniently located outside of 22 Old Queen Street, to find out more.