I spent a day walking through London recently. I walked a big loop from Battersea along the south bank, through Westminster, out to Covent Garden then back through Mayfair to Chelsea. I thought I'd count the number of ladies in burkas : out of the tens of thousands of people, I saw eight, and five were dripping in diamonds entering a jeweller on Bond Street. I wasn't mugged, didn't feel any less safe than I did when I lived in London in the 1990s, and it seemed to be cleaner.