Taxi Driver Online

The Reiver

London Cab Drivers vote themselves best in the world

The lack of worldwide events has led this writer to trawl the depths of depravity and ask a cross section of London Cab drivers who they thought the worlds best Cab drivers were.

To a man they told me they were!

A driver only wanting to be known as ‘Reg’ told me;

“Without a shadow of doubt London has the best Cab Drivers, I’ve been in cabs outside the M25 and those people are rubbish, I’ve even been to Spain, and those bleeders are worse, hangin is too good for em”

I got into another cab, parked on a rank and asked the driver to take me a short distance. The driver politely refused saying he was having a rest, this was obviously after finding out where I was going, where he politely declined by saying.

“I’m having a rest mate; you wanna phone for an Addison lee mate, those people do those jobs”

Announcement

The National Taxi Association Yodelling Club will not be meeting in October due to the AGM and Conference.

Drivers in

Sutton in Bashfield are to face new measures when they infringe anything at all in the district.

The taxi hating council have agreed that the first born child of each licensed driver will be kept in the cellars of the council offices “Just in case” any driver thinks about committing any misdemeanour whatsoever. These offences include, looking at people in ‘funny ways’, ‘talking with their mouths full’, and ‘leaving the table without asking permission’.

Councillors are additionally considering a new penalty points system, however instead of accumulating penalty points drivers will be forced to sacrifice fingers.

The Licensing Manager of the district, Kev Hitler, stressed to reporters that this wasn’t a final solution and although a distant relative did have a final solution, his had nothing to do with that.

He told taxitalk “Taxi Drivers are [edited by admin] sons of the devil, they deserve it, I don't enjoy cutting off digits, but it certainly brightens my day”.

Nigel Merchant spokesman for the taxi drivers told us “This situation seems to have got worse since the ‘Saw’ films were released on DVD”

No councillor was available for comment, presumably because they were in Madame Sins parlour of punishment.

Racing Disaster

I don't care what spin Carlisle TOA put on the new arrangements for taxis at Carlisle racecourse, drivers are well miffed with whatever arrangements are made.

Numerous drivers found themselves waiting in the taxi holding area, some for over one hour, whilst ‘free buses’ (which were so free they charged a reported £2 per head) carted off passengers usually hiring taxis.

I don't use the term ‘unmitigating disaster’ out of proportion here, but it would seem the taxi trade were cut up by three things, firstly the racecourse, as the public were unaware of the holding area, secondly the buses, who as explained in a previous issue are driven by lesbians, and thirdly their colleagues, who saw the holding area then switched off their hire lights and went merrily about their way collecting un-booked fares from an area they were banned from.

As one who was stuck in the holding area for over one hour, I will inform anyone who cares to read this, Carlisle Races can go do themselves, I’ll go home when the races start and drink myself silly.

S*d the races, you can have a lot more fun with Corals football betting anyway.


Sub Contracting of work across local authority borders

In the last couple of years three companies have gone to the wall and in the process they have cost the ‘taxi’ trade many millions of pounds. The companies involves, Fraser Eagle, Connect Point (who appear to have been a phoenix company of Fraser eagle) and Elite Cars, were arguably operating illegally by sub contracting the work they received across local authority borders.

This sub contracting was specifically shown to be illegal in the case of Shanks vs. North Tyneside Council, nevertheless, through reasons such as train operating companies giving local taxi firms no choice, the law was ignored, and again, it cost the trade millions.

For those of you currently thinking, I’ve gone ‘whacko’, he’s writing in riddles, I’ll give you the SP.

Well, the station master at the local rail station suddenly realises a number of passengers have got off the train and due to the usual errors the train didn’t arrive on time and the passengers, through no fault of their own, missed their various connections.

In the old days, the station master would call a local cab company and get the passengers delivered to their destinations. The cab drivers either as individuals or as co-operatives would invoice the rail company for the fares.

Now, with train companies trying to streamline, and them not wanting different invoices from cab companies the length of the UK, they sub contract the job to a company which is effectively a broker. A kind of one stop shop that will get them a cab and deliver them a single invoice. This means one invoice to check at the end of each month instead of hundreds and presumably satisfies all those bullshit things such as service standards.

Hmmm service standards, to any right minded person that means a company that will supply a driver who is decent and clean and a fairly good cab......in reality to the broker it is the price the mug will do the job for.

Anyway, I digress.

As you will be aware, the Private Hire sector are very proud of being private hire, so much so, in many areas they call themselves taxi companies. I’m sure there is a good reason for doing this, and I’m sure it has nothing to do with misleading the public, but again I digress.

So basically, what seems to happen, a company that has ‘won’ the rights to a particular rail companies work, will seek a local operator to cover the rail replacement work.

Being extremely attentive, they seem to concentrate on the price as opposed to the type of vehicles actually carrying out the job on the ground.

Therefore Private Hire companies and vehicles are often the ones doing sub contracted rail replacement work, which is via the booking being placed in a area many miles away from where the vehicle is actually licensed.

For reasons known only to rail companies, the DFT and whoever else, this, in my view, illegal (well according to the judge in the Shanks case) is conveniently ignored.

Is it a surprise?

I am sure you’ve heard the rumours, but there’s apparently a recession going on. Things are, according to the grapevine, tight, so much so, even local authorities are looking at the budgets of the licensing departments across the country.

This means that in order to justify their employment, a number of local authorities seem to be taking a pro-active stance on enforcement, admittedly this beats the hell out of sitting on their backsides drinking coffee all day, but the people in the firing line, are seemingly us.

The actions of a number of councils, vigorously pursuing those drivers committing the heinous crime of ‘over-ranking’ is one obvious stroke, another of prosecuting a HC driver for not having a PH Operators license, is not only silly, its actually taking the p*ss out of caselaw.

At some point this trade of ours will need to make a stand, yet it’s sadly only when the sh*t hits the fan many of you only become interested in associations or heaven forbid, unions.

If every proprietor and driver gave £1 per year, to a body such as the NTA (for example) I guarantee you such things would simply not happen to the taxi trade, the reason local authorities get away with such stupidity and pigheadedness is due to our own built in mechanism to self destruct. To put this quite simply, Taxi Drivers are stupid.

A local council, due to the ignorance of many within the cab trade, who don't actually have any interest within the profession, could send out a letter to all drivers quoting bits of the 1847 act, bits of the 1976 act and bits out of Star Wars the revenge of the Sith and I truly believe almost all would accept it as fact.

BBC Radio Cumbria

Those travelling through Cumbria will be aware that the local BBC radio station is Radio Cumbria. It generally does topical local stuff, like ‘Lamb Bank’ which appears to be a dating service for farmyard animals. I must state, it was excellent during the Carlisle floods of 2005, and this year when Derrick Bird went berserk the radio station kept us informed of the latest from terrified West Cumbrian residents and eyewitnesses.

That aside, the local association secretary was asked to appear on the show one morning to discuss a possibly increase in Cab fares in the City.

The presenter come interviewer obviously see’s himself as a budding Paxman, he subjected the TOA secretary to a barrage of questions, without actually waiting for any answers or seemingly listening to the answers given.

One person texted into the morning show that as an ex cab driver himself he was earning £50K per year....Hmmmm if that was true bet he didn’t tell the tax man that one.

So what is being suggested in the cab fares that provoked such hostility?

Well it is being suggested that as there has been no increase in cab fares since 2008, and with Carlisle’s running mile at £2, the fare increase should go onto the flagfall, making it £2.50 and Carlisle’s cab fares the most expensive in Cumbria for a 2 mile journey.

Amongst the much neglected things stating in the radio show was the fact that Carlisle is the only area in the county which is actually a City, indeed, its the only area which has a policy of WAV only vehicles (under 3 years old) on first license, its also got a pretty arduous age policy towards vehicles and a testing regime that see’s taxis tested up to 3 times per year.

If Radio Cumbria wants cheap cab fares, no problem, allow proprietors to buy vehicles that they can afford; dispense with the age policy and relax the testing regime, and then we can all buy 10 year old vehicles for the public to throw up in.

The problem with standards is that someone ultimately has to pay for them, unfortunately that’s the passenger.

The programme then stated it intended to address the subject of a taxi drivers dress code the following week. It’s nice to see the BBC are now dictating how cab drivers should dress, perhaps they’ll cover the expenses claimed by BBC staff the week after?



The Reiver

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