Concrete, marmite and jam: the fight against Ulez 

‘We’re renegades now. We’re outlaws. Bandits.’ This was my assessment as the builder boyfriend pulled up outside the house in his old truck with a load of wood hanging off the back.

White van man and dirty great pick-up truck man, in the case of the BB, have found a way around paying the Ulez. Mostly, they present their customer with the £12.50 a day charge, which is what they have been doing since the Ulez first started in more central areas of London.

Now it has been expanded to all London boroughs, including where a lot of these chaps live and have their work yards, they have had a go at being more inventive by way of protest. We know this, because it is all over the news, and Iain Duncan Smith has said he supports the men who are pouring cement into the cameras and putting bags over the top of them.

The builder b has not done that, though he has said he would really, really like to. He feels he ought to, in order to do his bit for his country, but he has restrained himself because we just want to give up and leave quietly.

On the first day of the charge coming into force where his builder’s yard is, he drove to work with an essential consignment of timber hanging off the back of the truck. ‘Unfortunately, officer, someone has just smashed it and it’s in for repair later,’ he was ready to explain regarding the front end of things. But no one asked him, and the computer was down anyway, crashed by all the owners of old bangers trying to pay. The system could not cope because so many had not scrapped their old cars, even though they were offered £2,000 to do so by Mr Khan, who is very generous in that respect with taxpayers’ money.