(This article was originally published in Taxi-Today magazine and responds to several matters arising from previous articles.)

Myself and my colleague Alex at Taxi Driver Online seem to have ruffled a few feathers with some of our previous articles, at least judging by one or two of the comments sent to the Taxi-Today editor.

My feature pieces in the October and November 2005 issues (‘Quality control is key’ and ‘Mis(Representation)’ respectively) both made the point that the interests of vehicle proprietors/owners and drivers have to be distinguished, since they are not one and the same.  However, our critics have waxed lyrical about the needs and rights of proprietors/owners, but there’s been not one peep regarding the drivers that they hire – QED?

The well-worn arguments in favour of restricted taxi numbers are trotted out.  Pollution, for example, but since proprietors in many restricted areas make a virtue out of having taxis double-shifted, then surely they’re doubling pollution?  Well, not really, since one doubled taxi in a restricted area generates the same pollution as two singled taxis in a derestricted area, so the pollution argument is specious.  And while there might be a shift from private hire to taxis in some areas following derestriction, thus increasing taxi pollution, it’s not as if doing private hire work is pollution free - therefore the pollution effect of derestriction regarding private hire is largely neutral, and the argument again spurious.

Another suggested argument is that the derestricted taxi trade would not be allowed access to bus lanes.  That’s about as plausible as saying that taxi derestriction would lead to the abandonment of meals on wheels to the elderly – presumably the point is being made just as a prop for maintaining restricted taxi numbers and thus if the two issues were connected then that would just be a mark of the local authority’s vindictiveness. There are certainly plenty of unrestricted areas with bus lane access.

A further critic pointed out the amount of part-time drivers in the trade and claimed that this prevented him earning a decent living.  Indeed, this is a valid point, and is one of the reasons we advocate stiffer quality control, since this tends to benefit committed, professional drivers and deter the part-timers.  And, in any case, in our experience part-time drivers are mainly hired by full-time owners/proprietors (irrespective of whether vehicle numbers are controlled), so perhaps our critic’s grouse should be with them.

Another feature of many in the trade is how woefully ill-informed they are as regards what’s happening, particularly outside their own patch.  For example, the November 2005 letters page stated that “London, Bristol, Manchester, Leeds, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dublin are all deregulated”, but that cabs still can’t be secured quickly at 2 am on Sunday morning.  Well it takes several years to get through the Knowledge of London, so the capital’s trade can hardly be called ‘deregulated’.  If by ‘deregulated’ the author means no numerical controls on taxis, then the rest of the UK cities mentioned have all been restricted for years, except for Bristol during a brief period.  But at least he’s right about Dublin!

Then there’s our friend Terence Flanagan of the GMB, who employs the pretty lightweight trick of throwing words like ‘drivel’, ‘inaccurate’ and ‘hypocritical’ around without actually specifying what he’s referring to and why he came to his conclusion.  This makes it very difficult to counter, but perhaps that’s why he chose this approach.

But, while I can’t speak directly for Alex, my own antipathy towards the GMB and T&G is that in the taxi trade they represent mainly vehicle proprietors and ignore those at the bottom of the pile.

Of course, while our interest lies mainly in the provincial trade, Mr Flanagan is a London private hire man, therefore perhaps his expertise does not extend to the taxi trade outside the capital.  Indeed, in the August 2005 issue he referred to councils removing all numerical restrictions on private hire vehicles in their areas.  Nonsense – no local authority has ever had the power to restrict private hire vehicle numbers.

Thus, since it’s perhaps safe to assume that Mr Flanagan is largely ignorant of how restricted taxi numbers works, perhaps a brief outline is in order.  So there’s 40,000 private hire drivers in London?  Right, put all these names in a hat, draw out 10,000 and allow only them to run vehicles.  So four drivers per vehicle, and the 30,000 excluded drivers have to pay top dollar to rent the cars to be able to work.  And we thought unions were all about equality!

Thus perhaps it’s Mr Flanagan who is the inaccurate and hypocritical one.  In the October 2005 issue he lambasted proprietors for ignoring the plight of drivers, but what’s the difference between those proprietors and taxi proprietors in restricted areas, many of whom care little for the rights of drivers they hire, whether they own one taxi or over 100 (as some people do in places like Cardiff and Liverpool) or whether they actually drive the taxi they own.

One facet of this lack of concern is that however many taxis there are on the road the proprietors will always hire any new driver that comes along, which of course benefits the proprietor since he receives more rental income, but reduces the income of hired drivers because every additional driver means less work.

Therefore to this end proprietors in restricted areas often complain about a shortage of drivers and will often lobby local authorities to make it easier to recruit new drivers (by dumbing down any knowledge test, for example).  This was neatly demonstrated by the article in the July 2005 issue entitled ‘I don’t want to driver the bloody thing myself!’, which I critiqued in my October 2005 article mentioned at the outset.

Likewise, my November 2005 article mentioned that in May 2004 the GMB representative in Manchester bemoaned the lack of drivers in the trade.  He told the Manchester Evening News: "We can't get the drivers. We need more drivers.”  Clearly, when the unions represent the bosses instead of the workers, the latter amount to little more than rental fodder, and the more of them the better.

When union members start blabbering on about the rights of taxi drivers and suchlike, we often ask them to explain the difference between the following from the USA and what’s happening right here in the UK.  The AFL-CIO (the USA’s TUC) said: “Under the current scheme in place in New York City, more than 44,000 workers who drive the city's taxicabs are being blatantly exploited by a cartel of owners who have manipulated the system to deprive the drivers of income and benefits…The system permits the owners of the city-authorized taxi medallions to ‘lease’ the right to drive a yellow medallion cab to workers who have been unfairly classified as independent contractors."

Of course, there are some differences with the UK – for ‘medallion’ read ‘plate’, for ‘independent contractor’ read ‘casually employed’ and for ‘cartel of owners’ read ‘those represented by the GMB and T&G’!

But, apart from that, perhaps Mr Flanagan would like to tell us the difference between the New York scenario and that pertaining in places like Manchester, Liverpool and Brighton – it would certainly be more illuminating to address these kinds of issues rather the Iraq war, Wigan FC and George ‘Dubya’ Bush.  While these are certainly important matters, there are surely better places to discuss them than in a taxi trade magazine?

Finally, before I renew my vehicle, would Mr Flanagan please confirm that if I phone Alan McGinness of the Taxi Centre, Glasgow, on 0141 334 3999, then the one year’s free GMB membership is NOT compulsory?

The reason we set up Taxi Driver Online was to counter some of the myths and hypocrisies pedalled in the trade, and the site includes information like the latest position regarding which areas still restrict taxi numbers, for example.  The site also includes a discussion forum, which allows the kind of spontaneous and detailed discussion that is simply not possible in traditional paper-based trade publications.  Therefore, as well as being more than willing to continue the debate in future issues of Taxi-Today, we would be more than happy to do this on our site.

Click here to read views on this topic or post your own