Official! London is hard work

Early starts, lunch at your desk, late nights in the office propped up by coffee ... do you ever feel you're working too hard? Well, it's official, you are. Londoners are the hardest workers in Europe, putting in over 30 hours a year more than our colleagues across the Channel.

On average, we put in 1,787 hours annually, with the average for western Europe being 1,757 hours.

And that's not all. We Londoners also have to put up with the fact that our city is the world's second most expensive to live in, when rents are included, with Hong Kong top and New York third.

And to add insult to injury, Britain's gridlocked mainline rail network is also the most expensive in the world. For a 125-mile trip out of the city in second class, we pay £42.49 compared to the global average of £11.61.

Feeling hard done by? Well you should. But it could be worse. Spare a thought for workers in the Kenyan capital Nairobi who have to toil for over three hours - 185 minutes - just to buy a Big Mac.

Whereas it takes people in Miami, Chicago and Los Angeles just 10 minutes, and Londoners 16 minutes, a report by Swiss bank UBS said.

The UBS report analysed prices and earnings around the world, investigating which cities were the most expensive to live in and which citizens had the greatest purchasing power.

Highest taxes can be found in three Scandinavian capitals - Oslo, Copenhagen and Stockholm - along with German cities Frankfurt and Berlin, as well as Canadian cities Montreal and Toronto.

The relationship between prices and earnings - known as purchasing power - showed that workers in Zurich and Luxembourg had to work less to afford the same basket of goods and services.

A worker in Lagos, Nigeria, would have to work 10 times as many hours to achieve the same purchasing power as someone from Zurich.

Food costs the most in Tokyo while men's clothing is cheapest in Philippines capital Manila, Romanian capital Bucharest and Bulgaria's capital Sofia.

Eastern Europe, meanwhile, is cheapest for household appliances.