Next week , a UK court will decide whether Bolt has “workers” or is simply a facility for the self-employed to get work. If people who contract with Bolt for work are seen as Bolt workers they will have more than “access to a company pension” (the FT’s phrase), but will have a right to a contribution to a monthly payment from Bolt equivalent to 3% of their earnings within a band defined by auto-enrolment regulations.

We have been here before with Uber, we will be here again with the next gig employer who challenge the right of gig workers to be deemed “workers” and get basic employment rights.

Of course such rights come at a price. Bolt recently put up its fairs to reflect increased workforce costs, Bolt’s cut of the fares earned by its drivers may also increase. But it’s hoped that the Estonian company will accept a drop in margins too. There can be no short-cuts to profitability by short-changing those in the gig-economy.

Normalisation

We are going through a short hot summer of hate against immigrants. The torching of cars, attacks on police officers , looting of shops are focussed against Muslim people who are being linked – without any evidence – to lawlessness and in particular to knife-crime.

The best way to stop this is to embrace young Muslim men and women into our day to day world, that means treating them as normal in the workplace as well as accepting that they have as much a right to practice their religion and continue their cultural heritage in their daily lives as everyone else living on these islands.

Hopefully, Halal as an investment concept will be integrated into investment practice as ESG has been. There is much in the Sharian code that can be adopted into mainstream investment practice and offering financial services that are compliant with Sharian law should not be considered wokery but good practice.

I am still shocked that Adecco, which effectively chose the workplace pension for Uber workers, selected NOW which at the time did not have a Sharian fund to offer staff. I am still amazed that net pay maaster trusts are being used to offer low-paid gig-workers pension benefits (when they are least suitable to net pay pensions).

Consideration of the needs of young and disadvantaged people working in the gig economy seems beyond the professional compass of staffing agencies and some workplace pensions.

The future for many of these gig workers is promising. The generation of business people who arrived in this country from East Africa in the early 1970, displaced by tyrants such as Amin, is now at the heart of British business, fully integrated into the economy and harmoniously absorbed into our multi-cultural society. We and they are as one.

That process of normalisation needs to happen with the Muslim community growing up in our large urban centres and now threatened by right wing thugs. Thankfully the police are protecting not just law and order but the rights of Muslim people which are the same rights as those enjoyed by the thugs.

Hopefully, out of the disgraceful behaviour will come not just a revulsion for the perpetrators of violence but an increased understanding for the diverse value that having a new talented hard-working generation of Muslim kids , brings to this country. We may look back in thirty years at these thugs as we do at the antics of the National Front 40 years ago. We may ask ourselves why we ever thought that the respected elders of the Mulsim faith were denied basic employment rights (including pensions) when they were in their twenties.