Is our insatiable desire for food delivery ruining people's lives as well as London?

AS synonymous with London these days as black taxis or red buses, food delivery drivers are visible everywhere as they weave in and out of traffic on their bicycles and mopeds, lugging their branded backpacks through heatwaves and hailstorms.

- Anna van Praagh

But even though they are visible everywhere, unless their takeaway Big Mac is running late, do people give them any thought at all? Acton, where I live, is full of young men driving around on scooters carrying Deliveroo or Uber Eats or Just Eat bags, and I worry about them.

Thirty or so of them are in a perpetual ever-changing flock around the McDonald's on the High Street, always with L-plates. Their work looks arduous and precarious, too.

As they are self-employed contractors, they don't have the same rights or benefits as someone fully-employed, but, like many people trying to make a living in the gig economy, some say that in order to make enough to live on, they can never stop working.

Drivers get paid per delivery with a variable distance fee, but some complain that it is not clear how the changing rates are worked out.