Taxi Driver Online

The Casey Column

By

Wayne Casey (LL SC)

The views expressed in this column may not be those of the National Taxi Association


The visit that never was

I promised the Editor that I would, this month, do a report on a visit I was intending to take to the LTI factory in Coventry. Unfortunately on the Saturday evening prior to my Tuesday morning appointment I discovered I had an engagement with Mr Guinness at a 40th birthday party in the Pirelli Social Club in Carlisle, this coupled with an addiction to nicotine, temperatures of minus 30 degrees and an environment echoing that of “The Day after Tomorrow”, as well as of course the insane smoking ban, which incidentally has closed the majority of decent pubs around the country, I caught a cold.

Well, I’m saying cold, it was probably swine flu, or son of swine flu “we mean business this time”, in actual fact I was probably dead, and if I wasn’t dead, I was very probably the illest man ever. This meant I had to make up my hours, possibly being due to the HSBC bank being a gang of thieving parasitical leaches who will willingly take £160 from my bank account if I am a single penny above my agreed overdraft level, so I had to work. Indeed, I’d like to get one of those thieving HSBC upstarts in my cab, I’d prey he was 10p short for a fare, I reckon by the way they do business, I could charge say £100 above the fare, sell his children into slavery and put his wife on the game and still be down on the deal. Of course, I would be liable to prosecution, because the 1847 act, unlike the [corrupt] banking code of conduct, does not permit me to steal money from people.

Whilst I’m on this rant let’s bring the OFT into the equation - I was seriously thinking about forgiving them for completely buggering up the taxi trade with that completely mental report they did. After all, they were going to sort the banks out? You know, the ones charging people a totally disproportionate amount for being slightly overdrawn. The ones who actually seeing money going into your account later in the day, but not quite in the account, so they will stop a standing order, or cheque and then charge you for the privilege, even though by the time you get their ‘rather expensive’ letter your back in credit? No, the OFT completely screwed that one up, or were they ordered off by the government who now actually own most of the banks… smacks in the face of corruption and collusion doesn’t?

Rant over! I suppose the thinking behind listening programmes is that the manufacturer will listen to the buyer - in turn they will provide a product that more or less suits his/her requirements. Unfortunately, this is a rather presumptuous stance by the manufacturer; they never seem (or perhaps they do) take into account that the customer may in fact be a dribbling imbecile.

I have a degree of proof in this, you see experience tells me a number of things when it comes to cab drivers, primarily, if they don't know something, they’ll make it up. Being a cab driver my self, I’m perhaps a little guilty. Once upon a time on the way back from Newcastle Airport a foreign guy asked me to show him the Roman Wall. Those familiar with the A69 Newcastle to Carlisle road will be aware many farmers use stonewalls to divide their fields. Yes, on some Georgian diplomat’s photo album will be a dozen or so pictures of a farmers stone wall marked ‘My visit to the Roman Wall’.

Indeed, if you believe what cab drivers actually say you will very probably find yourself in some type of lunatic asylum, scared of immigrant hordes crossing the English Channel. Did you know that LTI vehicles come in flat packs from China? Well, that was one rumour, and that couldn’t possibly happen, could it? In actual fact for the past three years there has been a Metrocab prototype running around the Scottish Highlands running on the same fuel cells designed to keep Russian nuclear powered submarines under water without surfacing for up to 12 months.

I know I regularly slam councils for a somewhat shoddy attitude towards taxi testing, but in all honesty I cannot imagine for one moment a nuclear powered cab being allowed by even the most liberal minded local authority. For a long time I think LTI has been working under a delusion that cab drivers in London actually do anything approaching the starship mileages achieved by those of us who drive taxis in the provinces. I’m sorry to shatter daydreams here, but my mother in law drives further to bingo than most London Cab drivers. With this thought in mind, perhaps LTI should give a test cab to Shirley, her bingoing buddies seem to knock the crap out of the Micra, maybe her and her smelly mates should be the ones rigorously testing LTI products?

In days long gone there used to be a petrol version of the old FX4 available, I think these days need to return. I want to see a TX with a great big V type engine, maybe with a supercharger or a twin turbo.

Yes I know it’ll be expensive to run, but hey… the guy furiously putting his seat belt on in the back is paying ain’t he? For no reason at all, it needs to go from 0-60 in under 9 seconds, although anything lower is perfectly acceptable and I want the engine itself to be splattered in chrome (even if it’s just for the Cockney Scouser).

It’s got to ROAR too, not roar… ROAR like a demented lion who’s been out all day on the African plains looking for food only to discover the lion next door just messed with his lioness. I know LTI like passenger comforts (as do passengers), that is fine to a degree, but I want more driver comforts. I want a seat where my arse doesn’t get sore because the seat has the feeling of sitting on a plank of plywood for 12-hours. Do away with the plug in chargers in the back - passengers only use them to put crumpled up crisp packets into anyway - and give my arse some extra padding with the money saved, also it would work wonders with the piles!

I’ve been looking at the front of the cab, admittedly the vehicle looks quite nice, apart from the headlights, these appear to have been styled by Noddy. What you need is twin headlights and I was thinking about similar headlights to those in an early Jaguar XJ6. In any decent muscle cab we’re going to need flared arches, we were going to need these anyway, because I want quite big wheels, no, I’ll rephrase that, very big wheels.

Of course, all this is getting to a point. In this magazine, we have the editor and Sheldon Collins (aka the Cockney Scouser), both, without wishing to cause offence to the other esteemed writers in this magazine, love their cabs, so much so, Sheldon probably sleeps with his and his. Both endeavour to add that little bit of bling to their vehicles. Indeed, I couldn’t mention bling without mentioning my own family members Neville and particularly Paul. Both have LTI vehicles and both have blinged their cabs to their own personal taste, especially the latter who has received phone calls for blinging advice. Strangely enough both Paul and Neville were at the factory visit I was supposed to attend, knowing both, I’m fairly sure LTI’s designers are still pulling their hair out.

You see, whatever purpose-built LONDON TAXI LTI design in the future, even the best product in the world would not suit the individual taste of Paul, Neville, Dave or Sheldon, it will still be blinged whatever LTI come up with. I do feel a bit for LTI however; any engine coming after the Nissan unit was always going to have a hard time. The TX4 unit is strangely enough the same as the one fitted to the taxitalk distribution vehicle, and from personal experience that one goes like [edited by admin] off a stick. But then, the editor didn’t ask for such luxuries as air conditioning and all those lovely driver and passenger friendly add-on’s that not only add weight, detract from the performance of the engine and add greater strain. The detractors blame LTI… so do I; they should have gone for the V12 8 mpg version I wanted.

The tide is turning, except in Carlisle obviously

Since the last issue of the magazine was published a number of local authorities have decided to re-regulate taxi numbers, whilst I want to congratulate those involved in the different areas with one hand, both the taxi trade and the councils concerned, I cannot help but think the damage has already been done. I haven’t exactly been over complimentary about elements of the Cardiff Cab Trade in this magazine in the past.

Deregulation there seemed to bring with it an element that the legitimate Cardiff taxi trade were tarred with. This isn’t the taxi trades fault. Taxi Numbers virtually doubled in 4 years, from over 400 vehicles in 2004 to over 800 vehicles in 2008. The situation became so bad even the police, who normally want as many cabs on the road as possible to rid our streets of drunken yobs, actually thought the situation was beginning to get dangerous, in a manner echoing Liverpool in the early 1980s they supported a limit being re-imposed. Obviously with virtually double the amount of cabs on the road, and being in the midst of a recession, the situation will not get any easier for the Cardiff Cab Trade in terms of earnings, but the most important thing is, it will not hopefully get any worse. From sanity finally prevailing in Cardiff, hopefully North Lincolnshire and definitely South Tyneside, I will return to the insanity of Carlisle. As you may recall, in the last issue I told you that the licensing department sent out a questionnaire to Hackney Proprietors, three questions were asked and these were;

1. Do you consider that a taxi demand survey should be carried out in Carlisle?

2. Are you willing to pay an additional fee to cover this survey each year?

3. If the regulatory panel indicate that they would be unlikely to limit hackney carriage licenses whatever the result of the demand survey, would you still want a demand survey carried out?

Not exactly the most taxing of questions, I trust you will agree. Well, 213 questionnaires were sent out to Hackney Proprietors, the council even enclosed stamp addressed envelopes, yet despite this only 121 replies were received.

That’s right, 92 plate holders are so concerned about the lack of trade and lack of rank space, they didn’t bother answering the questionnaire thus suggesting they were against a demand survey and they thought things were fine and dandy.

Of the people who could be bothered to answer the questionnaire, 73 were in favour of a survey. 47 didn’t mind paying for a survey via increased license fees. Finally, 33 wanted a survey even if the regulatory committee indicated they were unlikely to limit numbers whatever the result of the survey.

It’s quite weird this, I mean, a colleague of mine actually pushed the boat out during mid October last year and got 88 signatures on a petition asking the council to limit numbers; during the period between signing the petition and the questionnaire, a number of people must have forgot they signed the petition! Of course, this is democracy in action. I just hope the City Council continue their sympathetic attitude towards taxis over-ranking and don't follow the route, as described in the last issue, made by Bristol, Ashfield and Tendring councils, where drivers have been threatened with (and in some cases received) suspensions.

Indeed, if rumours are to be believed, with Carlisle Citadel railway station plans suggesting both a new road layout and changes to vehicles access, the city’s taxi fleet could find itself either paying Virgin Trains to park on rail property, or alternatively sit on a virtually redundant daytime stand. I did once write that cab drivers were genetically proven to be descendants of lemmings, I think Carlisle is a case in point.


Nazis - A Warning from History

Chaos and Consent …Some of you are bound to be aware that the sub heading above was a documentary based upon the Nazis and the Second World War. Episode one of the series explained how it: “was possible that a cultured nation at the heart of Europe ever allowed Hitler and the **** party to come to power”.

The co-editor and myself recently discussed how something like **** Germany ever came into being, how was it possible, like the documentary states, that a nation like Germany, which for all its faults was supposedly civilised, could allow such horrible acts, ordered by the Nazis, to come into being. Let’s face some pretty horrific facts here. The entire war machine, the entire system, couldn’t have happened if it were not for regular people doing regular jobs. The trains ran on time to death-camps, were these trains, along with the train drivers, signalmen, firemen etc operated by salivating monsters? Somehow I don't think so, I think they went home on an evening and kissed their kids goodnight. But that’s getting away from the warning.

The level of bureaucracy needed to build death-camps, prepare and wage war, at the same time as secretly developing new planes, tanks etc whilst still needing a certain degree of administration to generally run a country must have been staggering - a civil service approaching biblical proportions. The paperwork alone and the mechanism to put in place such could arguably only happen in a country with such a devout attitude to officialdom.

For a slightly a more light-hearted example I will tell you what our lord Jeremy Clarkson once experienced after a flight to the USA. Basically, after many hours travelling Jezza was completely bushed, he was faced with a rather large security guard who was filling in forms at some US airport. Because Jezza was a foreigner, the guard needed to know where he was staying. Jezza told the guard the name of the hotel. The security guard asked for the number of the property, Jezza didn’t know, the guard repeated the question with the emphasis on: ‘the form needs a number’, to which Jezza replied something like ‘25826’. This was fine; he got through and went to his hotel. He maintains the US is like that. People promoted way above their level of their intelligence.

You have all bound to have come across a similar attitude when dealing with certain companies. The character Carol Beer, played by David Walliams on TV’s ‘Little Britain’ does actually exist... "Computer says no..."

This naturally leads me on to the pen-pushers at local authority level. I tend to think local authorities work in a similar certain manner. You must be a window -licking imbecile to get sacked. Basically if you’re completely useless at your job, you get promoted so you get out of trouble. Certain local authorities appear to no longer see you as a name, you are merely a number, a licence number, they need the street number of the hotel, and they need the computer to say yes. They have procedures in place - they have policies.

Heaven forbid if you want them to step outside the policy, because that’s not in the book, the use words such as common sense and discretion are foreign, because those words aren’t in the rule book. What’s in the book is procedure, what to do if an application for a renewal is a day late; to them it is no longer a renewal but a new application, and you must present a vehicle that meets the criteria. If a driver suffers from diabetes or suchlike and this is also in the book and you cannot, despite driving for years, even with a nice note from the doctor, drive a licensed vehicle.

_________________
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
George Carlin