Wonder if you can pay with your oyster card.

Hello everyone!

Last September I had the pleasure of visiting London. Call me silly, but it was like a dream came true. I've idealized the UK during my entire life for some reason and certainly was not disappointed.

The weather was beautiful during the few days my mom and I stayed there (we left for Edinburgh a little bit after). People were kind and courteous, with a few exceptions — which is expected and totally normal.

I was amazed by the public transportation system. We could easily move through the city so fast, even at rush hour. In my country, traffic jams are the rule... all the time. I really wish we had such an efficient system back home.

Compared to my home country, the UK was expensive but totally worth it.

The buildings, their architecture. The Thames. The monuments, the parks, how clean the streets were. The food, the beer. I was even thrilled by the amount of foxes roaming down the street haha.

I know London, and the UK overall, have issues of their own. I don't doubt my experience comes from the eyes of a 5-day tourist, and living there surely is completely different. But let me tell all of you living there: you have a beautiful city and an amazing country and I hope, from the bottom of my heart, that whatever is not going right at the moment gets better for you all.

I had the trip of my life I hope to visit any time soon in the next years!

Just wanted to express my gratitude to those passengers who were on the train into Waterloo via Staines this morning and who helped me when I decided to take a seat on the floor by fainting just before Vauxhall.

It was incredibly heart warming to see that people were offering to help me and jumped into action. I'll likely never see you again, and I can't really recall your faces, but wanted to say thanks.

I'm fine by the way. Got myself some water and some Lucozade Sport and I'm now in the office. I hope you all have a great day.

Wanted to show some appreciation for City Lit and all the other places where you can take a course in something niche or random or just plain useful with world class instructors for pretty cheap. I just moved back from somewhere where that wasn’t really possible and I will never take it for granted again. It’s so easy to learn things here or indulge a curiosity. Literally dozens of free or low-cost talks most days as well. It’s one of the best things about London.

But according to Sir Mark Rowley there is nothing institutionally wrong with the Met..

Not an original observation, but I thought it was cool to be there for both.

You’ll often hear about shoplifting in London, but there’s another part of the problem that gets less attention: what happens to stolen goods afterwards. 

The Met has heard from independent retailers who say they’re being undercut by businesses selling suspected stolen goods cheaply. Our intelligence also suggests some prolific shoplifters are stealing specific products to order because they know there is a market for them. 

If there’s somewhere to sell stolen goods, there’s an incentive to steal them. So we are targeting both sides: the people stealing and the businesses suspected of buying and reselling what they steal.

Over the past two weeks, officers visited around 400 shops suspected of buying and reselling stolen goods. That resulted in 42 arrests, 11 closure notices and tens of thousands of pounds worth of suspected stolen goods being seized.

In Hounslow, officers seized 300 suspected stolen phones and £15,000 in cash from one shop. In Brixton, dozens of suspected stolen phones were recovered and more than £5,000 in cash were seized from another.  

We’re also working with retailers and Trading Standards to identify businesses suspected of handling stolen goods, including using forensic marking to help trace recovered products back to the shops they were stolen from.

Making it harder to sell stolen goods is an important part of making it less attractive to steal them.

Read the press release here: https://news.met.police.uk/news/met-seizes-tens-of-thousands-of-pounds-worth-of-stolen-goods-in-retail-crime-crackdown-514137

More people in that gaff? Hmmm, makes sense they want to use it for big events like boxing more though.

This is not a post about "look what a decent person I am who cares", but truly a concern about our culture and where we're heading.

I understand that we all should pay a bus fare and nobody is entitled for a free ride etc etc. BUT my mood was entirely ruined when a bus driver didn't take a 70+ yo man in today who asked him for a ride for couple of stops and, apparently, forgot his free pass.

I didn't have a chance to go and press my card against the reader as the driver just said "No!", let him out and moved.

Do bus drivers get any directions on who to help out and take in such situations and who to ignore? Is it entirely on their own discretion or there're some rules? I often see very kind drivers who take people in without much explanation needed but some are just nasty.

If it was a young person who could walk 2-3 stops, I understand, it'd a different situation, but this older man was wearing a thick scarf and kept his mouth closed - obviously, a bit struggling and, possibly, cold!

Also, can't we just, sometimes, leave the rules and capitalism's restrictions aside and simply help and push the culture of kindness and care over greed and strict corporate handbook?

I come from a culture where older people are treated very, very kindly, we give them a sit, we never say rude things to them and we never argue with them and we are just patient with elderly back home. Here, I'm just culturally lost, sometimes. I'm not saying that my culture is better, I know that older people can exploit it and go too far, but I think, we can definitely give them a bigger discount.

I just wanted to share it here. Maybe, if you see the situation like this, just push your own card against the reader and let the older or very young person take that free ride, get that free coffee or bread or whatever they couldn't pay for that day. Let's push kindness against handbook rules which are, sometimes, totally unnecessary.

Sorry for an emotional post. My heart still aches and I feel very helpless, isolated and cold after seeing anything like this day to day.

Hi Everyone,

Wondering if anyone else had had the same experience:

Last week I travelled from Westferry to Haggerston, as I do most days. A ticket inspector asked me for my ticket on the DLR so showed her my contactless card. She scanned it and said 'All good, thanks'.

The next day I saw I had been fined £16 for failing a ticket check!!! She said absolutely nothing about this. If she had, I would have asked her to check again as I definitely touched in (my journey history shows I touch in at Westferry everyday). If it had still come up as an issue then there's a very slim chance I touched my work oyster card in by mistake, I would have given it to her to check. But as she said everything was fine I didn't.

Also, I have to change at Shadwell and my journey history I touched in at Shadwell 5 minutes after receiving the fine, so clearly the same journey. I then touched out at Haggerston and paid 3.10, which is the same fare I always pay when travelling Westferry to Haggerston. I paid the correct fare and got fined at the same time!

I have just emailed to appeal it but I am so shocked they can issue fines like this without saying anything and take the money straight from my bank account.

Has anyone had anything similar?

Are those oud sellers legal? Why are they there?
Is it just me who gets irrationally angry that they’re in the way during rush hour?

Blood delivery driver Mark Okotie - 44, ran over the cyclist in March 2024 in evening rush hour and has been given a 3 year, 6 month sentence after being found guilty of committing GBH with intent at a trial earlier this month. His victim has since needed "numerous plates and screws" in his pelvis and femur.

Full disclosure it seems they had an altercation, Mark drove close to the cyclist who spat at the van at the next set of traffic lights, then Mark drove into him. One set of actions doesn't excuse the other though.

Such a cruel and mindless act, I'd give him 5-8 years tbh.

I have made a list of the all the days and times where the Christmas Lights will turn on. Hope this helps.

🎄 1 to 5 November
• Sun 1 Nov: Leicester Square (time TBA)
• Mon 2 Nov: Southbank Winter Market opens, Queen’s Walk
• Tue 3 Nov: St Martin’s Lane, 4-7pm, switch-on 4:45pm
• Wed 4 Nov: Carnaby Street (time TBA)
• Thu 5 Nov: Regent Street & St James’s, traffic-free 5-9pm
• Thu 5 Nov: Ever After Garden opens, Duke of York Square

🎄 10 and 11 November
• Tue 10 Nov: Chancery Lane, 5-7pm
• Tue 10 Nov: Knightsbridge, Brompton Road (TBC)
• Wed 11 Nov: Marylebone Village, 3-8pm, switch-on 6pm
• Wed 11 Nov: Old Spitalfields Market, 4-7:30pm, switch-on 6pm

🎄 Thursday 12 November (the big night)
• Covent Garden, from 5pm
• Bond Street, traffic-free 4-8pm, lights on 6-7pm
• Strand & Villiers Street (lights on, no ceremony)
• Carter Lane, 5-7pm
• Chelsea tree lighting, Duke of York Square, 5-7:30pm
• Firefly Festive Forest, Sloane Street
• Fulham Pier, from 5pm, light show 7pm
• Churchill Arms, Kensington, from 6pm (TBC)
• Fitzrovia red heart, Little Portland Street (TBC)

🎄 13 to 15 November
• Fri 13 Nov: Christmas at Kew opens (ticketed, from £25.50)
• Sat 14 Nov: Sloane Street lantern procession at dusk
• Sun 15 Nov: Hampstead Village, 4-7pm, switch-on around 6pm

🎄 18 and 19 November
• Wed 18 Nov: Greenwich Market lantern parade, 4-6pm, lights 5pm
• Wed 18 Nov: Ludgate Circus, 6-8pm
• Wed 18 Nov: Boxhall City, Liverpool Street, switch-on 7pm + snowfall (ticketed)
• Thu 19 Nov: Leadenhall Market, from 5:15pm, switch-on 6pm
• Thu 19 Nov: St Katharine Docks (time TBA)
• Thu 19 Nov: Walworth Road (TBC)

🎄 Late November and December
• Wed 25 Nov: Chelsea Winter Village, Royal Hospital Chelsea (light trail ticketed)
• Thu 26 Nov: King’s Cross Christmas opening, Granary Square
• Fri 27 Nov: World’s End, Chelsea, 4:30-5:20pm (TBC)
• Tue 1 Dec: The Shard lights (TBC)
• Thu 3 Dec: Trafalgar Square tree, around 6pm (TBC)

I have posted the full list here and will keep it updated https://www.letsdiscover.app/london/christmas-lights-london

Today on the evening tube (it wasn't rush hour, but was relatively full), a man offered and insisted on giving his seat to me.

I don't really know why, because I'm not old (17) and don't have any disabilities, but that was a nice gesture! I love London