Deliveroo and Just Eat and the like make UK cities creepy and miserable

[Pavementworrier]

Guys in balaclavas with no traceable identity (and often no right to work in the UK) racing around on electric bikes in the dark bringing shit cold food to fat lazy punters while cafes, bars and restaurants erode and hospitals fill up with diabetic foot merchants.

I wouldn't ban them but I'd make them treat every single takeaway bandit as a full employee with id checks, criminal responsibility, tax and employment rights.

And people who use them kind of make me sick.

😆It is true. And everyone would bring their bins in, converse at length with their neighbours and never have to go to work or be disabled.

The world is going to hell on the back of a Deliveroo bike!

Yes some are housebound etc as you say, but alot of people are lazy now.

We don't talk because they're skanky and smoke stupid amounts of weed that makes my house smell. As well as not bringing bins in. Polar opposites.

I mean they are expensive and the food is nearly always cold*.

If some people want to make a charitable donation to keep delivery people in business then fine.

I prefer to fetch my own.

*I've only every ordered about 3.

I also never understand the whole:

“How do you think people got by without it!”

I don’t see why people shouldn’t make use of things that are available to them just because the convenience of it didn’t exist in the past. You can apply that many things.

Driving a car to get from A to B instead of walking everywhere. Yeah I bet a lot of people do that without thinking, “Hmm should I really drive this car today because what on earth did we do before cars existed?”

The whole food delivery service seems completely unregulated. I live somewhere where the bikes are on the pavement, no lights or ID , masks/ balaclavas and often poorly ridden and parked.

It is regulated. People are not allowed to ride souped up ebikes. They need a helmet, tax and insurance for a moped. Lights in the front and back. Stopping a red lights, not riding on the pavement. It’s the law that employers check immigration status and age of every worker to combat illegal working.

That’s all law. But it seems in Glasgow at least that Border Force and the Police are turning a blind eye.

Exactly lol.

Also, 20 years ago was 2005 not 1920. People just used to order a takeaway by calling.

Everything is regulated but it depends if someone is actually watching it.

Home office is now working with these companies to do better.
I wonder about the people renting out their accounts and their taxes tbh.
It's a problem everywhere.
Also.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8e16463yjro

Yes, and? Very often I'm also lazy when it comes to cooking. I work full time and often cannot be arsed to buy groceries and cook, so I'll order some deliveroo groceries or a kebab. What's it to you? Not you personally, I mean in general.

Deliveroo and JustEat are parasites.

Hey, OP, aren't you worried about the carbon footprint these rants of yours are using?

And speaking of services that apparently didn't exist 20 years ago so aren't needed, why not go back a bit further? You don't technically need indoor plumbing, electricity, central heating, a phone (and on and on). Yet, you choose to use them. I'm sure every company that provides those services does so ethically and with fantastic labour practices. Lithium batteries and microchip components are particularly labour-friendly endeavours.

I mean, by all means, put pressure on governments to regulate labour practices and cities to police out of control bikes, absolutely in favour of that. But that's not what you're doing. You're just being racist and trying to shame people you assume might be fat, right?

Just admit you're too fat to crawl 😂

I'm desperate for a neighbour who would count my takeaways.

I’m about to have a katsu chicken for my dinner. Might go and wave it around the street so everyone’s aware.

“THIS IS A PSA. I HAVE BOUGHT A CURRY FROM TESCO, IT CAME VIA UBER EATS.”

I actually did just walk to the chip shop.
2 minutes up the road.
Ironically I went there because my Iceland delivery has been delayed so my originally planned tea is stuck out there in a traffic jam. I was going to have vegetarian spag bol.

I am kinda fat 😂

I hope you have a balaclava. Can I ask, are you sure you're not too fat and unfit to wave it around? Do you still have both arms? Not lost any to diabetic complications?

@Pavementworrier Can I thank you for starting this thread? I've so enjoyed picturing you, sitting, banging angrily away at your oversized newfangled desktop, longing for your old manual typewriter, hair tightly permed, ruffled collar done up to the very top button, lips pressed into a tight line of disapproval. Fuming away at those immigrants and fat folks.

To be fair, I am fat.

But it’s not the curry, it’s the pure lard I inject into my veins for breakfast.

I very much hope you walk for your lard injection in person, like people did 20 years ago.

😂😂😂

I did just walk downstairs and microwave/airfry my dinner. That’s my allocated walking done for next year.

I did this year’s when I put the bins out!

Apologies if someone has pointed this out already but do you know WHY they are allowed to sub-contract their work - even though it means that a completely untraceable person could be knocking on your door with your pizza etc? It’s because the IWGB union tried to organise riders in Camden so that they could join a union and get better terms and conditions. Deliveroo were so horrified that they gave the riders the right to pass their log-in details to any complete stranger off the street. This is to ensure they cannot be classified as ‘workers’ (with rights to eg health and safety protection, holiday pay etc and crucially they don’t have the right to organise for union recognition because they are not ‘workers’.) Instead they are thousands of individual small businesses riding around your town. Ha ha. And that’s also why there is no obligation on Deliveroo to make sure they have the right to work in the uk. It’s because they are NOT WORKERS. Welcome to the Alice in wonderland world of 21st century employment rights.

Guys in balaclavas with no traceable identity (and often no right to work in the UK) racing around on electric bikes in the dark bringing shit cold food to fat lazy punters while cafes, bars and restaurants erode and hospitals fill up with diabetic foot merchants.

I rarely use food delivery services but you don’t seem to have any empathy for these low paid drivers, it’s all about the aesthetics of your city.

They work because there is a demand for their services. I don’t see you advocating for fair pay and benefits for them.

I rarely use food delivery services but you don’t seem to have any empathy for these low paid drivers, it’s all about the aesthetics of your city.

It's not all about the aesthetics but that does matter, in that it creates the ambience and how people feel about where they live - and whether they feel safe.

Some 10-15 years' ago, can't remember exactly when, I used to walk home from work in inner London at 21.00.

I used to see a number, maybe a handful, of Deliveroo guys on a pedal bike and the large blue bag on their back. I used to feel sorry for them as they looked like pack mules with this big square bag strapped to their back and of course no e-bikes so they'd be pedalling along in all weather. It looked a hard way to earn a few pounds.

The vibe now is so very different - there are numerous e-bikes, at all hours of the day and night, including those speedy black ones with the big tyres. Many of them are on the pavements, rarely stop at red lights, etc. Groups of men hanging outside outlets with their filthy bags often on the floor, bikes parked all over the place.

It's not reactionary to object to this often lawless behaviour.

Well, of course, delivery services have existed in some form or another for hundreds of years - but not the type of delivery service that is referred to in this thread.

FYI, Just Eat was launched in the UK in 2006, Deliveroo was started in 2013 and Uber Eats in 2016.