Lowri Griffiths on North London life, the bus strike, robo-taxis, and why Londoners are both the most resilient and most complained-about people on earth
By Lowri Griffiths | Bohiney and The London Prat
The Big Smoke | Thursday, April 2026
Six pounds. For a flat white. The coffee is good. I note this both as a defence and as a resignation: yes it is six pounds, yes it is good, yes I will be here again on Tuesday because the wifi is faster than my flat and the ambient noise drowns out the sounds of whatever my upstairs neighbour is doing to their floor at three in the afternoon on a weekday. London, in 2026, is a city where you pay six pounds for the right to sit somewhere that is not your house. This is not a criticism. This is a description. The criticism, such as it is, is implicit in the description.
The Bus Strike: Life Without the 253
The East London Bus Strike has reshaped my mornings more than I would like to admit. I normally take the bus from Finsbury Park to wherever I need to be, which involves a pleasant twenty minutes of passive people-watching that I would describe as research and my editor would describe as sitting on a bus. Without it, I have been walking, cycling, and once, memorably, taking a minicab whose driver had strong views about the Mayor of London that I found instructive and also slightly alarming. I support the strike. I miss the bus. Both things are very London.
TfL’s response has been what TfL responses generally are: a press release, a service update, and a commitment to minimising disruption that has been only partially realised. The TfL website has alternative routes. I have tried several of them. Some are alternatives. Some are what you get when an algorithm considers your options and concludes that walking is technically a route.
The Robo-Taxi Cometh
Into this vacuum of reliable transport: robo-taxis. I tried one. It was fine. It was clean. It did not speak. It arrived with the quiet confidence of something that does not experience the anxiety of uncertain traffic conditions, which is the one quality I find genuinely enviable about artificial intelligence: the complete absence of the forty-five-second internal argument that happens when you see a gap in traffic and are not sure whether to take it. The robo-taxi takes it. Efficiently. Without feeling bad about it. I have spent years feeling bad about gaps in traffic. The robo-taxi is doing better than me in this specific department.
At six pounds, the flat white is a bargain compared to the cost of transport anxiety. I am making peace with this.
The North London Report: This Week’s Themes
This week in North London: the Islington road resurface that has been “imminent” since October is now apparently “scheduled.” A planning application for a block of apartments on Seven Sisters Road has attracted forty-seven objections, twenty-nine of which mention parking and eleven of which express concern about “the character of the area” without specifying which character is at risk and from what. The character of the area, in my experience of North London, has always been: complicated, expensive, occasionally brilliant, and firmly convinced that it is about to change for the worse.
Bohiney Magazine’s foreign policy piece and the local planning application share a structural quality: both involve powerful parties making decisions about places and people with a confidence that is not fully warranted by the consultation process. I note this without necessarily having a solution. I am a journalist, not an urban planner. I describe the thing. The thing proceeds regardless. This is the condition.
The Six-Pound Flat White: A Defence
In conclusion: London is expensive and worth it, and anyone who tells you it is not worth it has usually either never been here or has been here so long they have forgotten what it felt like before the city got under their skin. It gets under your skin. It costs six pounds. It is still worth it. Read Bohiney Magazine for the global absurdity and The London Prat for the local version. I will be here on Tuesday. The wifi is good and the coffee is correctly priced for what it makes possible.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/us-foreign-policy-enters-1956-retro-phase/
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