|
Wayne’s World
By
Wayne Casey
Deck the halls with boughs of holly,
I notice that a driver working for that damn app company who knifed his wife to death after googling "the most painful place to stab someone" has been convicted of her murder.
Fa la la la la, la la la la.
This matches the other damn app driver who was jailed earlier this year for brutally murdering a Glasgow shopkeeper.
Tis the season to be jolly.
Not forgetting the other damn app driver who was convicted of knifing people in Leytonstone tube station.
Fa la la la la, la la la la.
As you can see, I’m full of the Christmas spirit, and with all these murders and stabbings directly linked to the damn app company believe me, I laughed so much I almost died, a bit like that poor sod in the tube station, although not through knife wounds.
At what point will all of this madness actually end folks? Please write in and tell me.
I see a damn app company opening an unmanned office and licensing officers having to check bookings presumably by appointment.
I get lovely old ladies calling me from Yorkshire telling me it’s disgraceful that I allowed a company to charge her daughter £75 for an 11 mile journey at 5.30pm at night.
Do you know how difficult it is to explain that it has nothing to do with you to someone who doesn’t know, care, or understand licensing law? – All because some person in a council office thought there wouldn’t be a problem that all complaints would be handled online.
We have a company offering what are effectively bounties to drivers to work many miles away from where they are licensed, and nobody sees a problem with that?
We have an institute (of economic affairs) who espouses deregulation of the UK taxi market, whose daughter in the head of the PR department of the damn app firm who would be the main beneficiary and rather conveniently at the time when a report came out being severely critical of the Mayor of London’s views on capping PHV’s in London.
And of course the pièce de résistance was a go slow demonstration by damn app drivers confusing most of the rest of us because we couldn’t figure out whether it was a go slow or they were simply lost.
I notice guide dogs have again been in the news this past month.
Following an incident in April this year, where a guide dog was refused, a guide dog owner (Mr Bloch) complained to the damn app company, and reported the matter to Leicester City Council's licensing department.
Kayd (42), of Beaumont Leys, was prosecuted and pleaded guilty to refusing to convey a guide dog, an offence under the Equality Act 2010.
At Leicester Magistrates' Court, he was fined £140 and ordered to pay £327 costs and a victim surcharge of £30.
The court heard how Mr Bloch had booked a taxi using the mobile phone app to pick up him and his partner from his home. The passenger contacted the driver beforehand via an option on the app, telling him he would be bringing a guide dog.
Kayd, who had only held a private-hire driver's licence since November 2015, seemed unclear what a guide or assistance dog was and asked Mr Bloch whether the dog would try to lick him, the court heard. Kayd then said he could not take dogs as it was against his religion and he did not like them, despite Mr Bloch explaining that it was illegal to refuse.
In another case heard this month a guide dog owner was again refused Mel Griffiths and guide dog Hudson were refused by Romaios Pappas. She spoke after Nottingham magistrates heard how she was with two other blind people and two guide dogs when refused a lift by Romaios Pappas, 33, although they had told his firm about them.
She said that other cabbies had refused access to her dog and the local council did not prosecute. She thanked Gedling Borough Council for bringing the case to court.
The incident happened while she was with her six-year-old Labrador guide dog Hudson, her husband Gavin, 43, an audio production engineer and a friend Corie Stanfield, 50, a London university manager who had her guide dog Yarna.
The court heard that Pappas breached the Equality Act which insists that hackney carriage drivers must carry assistance dogs. He failed to attend the hearing and was found guilty in his absence.
A £660 fine, £285 prosecution costs and a £66 victim surcharge were ordered.
All of this comes on the back of research that shows nearly half of guide dog owners have been illegally refused a ride in the past year because of their animal.
MPs are discussing with the introduction of a Private Members Bill by Andrew Gwynne MP that is being debated in Parliament.
According to a Guide Dogs charity, there is an ongoing issue with guide dog owners being illegally turned away by drivers who do not want to carry their dog.
New research by the charity shows 42% of blind or visually impaired people were significantly more likely to be turned away by drivers because of their dog, while 38% of guide dog owners have been illegally asked to pay an extra fare for carrying their dog.
The charity said being discriminated against in this way is not only distressing, it can also stop people who are living with sight-loss do everyday things that most people take for granted.
MP’s seem pretty much convinced drivers are refusing guide dogs because drivers are simply not trained.
I find this a very bizarre belief and I sincerely I wish I could believe what the MP’s believe, because in that case I will be eagerly waiting for Santa Claus in the early hours of December 25th.
In the case mentioned above, involving Mrs Griffiths, she states that ‘she had been refused access by other drivers and despite making complaints nothing had happened’.
In the case in Leicester the drivers mitigation seems to have been he had only been licensed a few months and he ‘seemed unclear what a guide or assistance dog was’.
The chap was pretty sure he couldn’t take the dog on religious grounds though when he apparently told Mr Bloch ‘he could not take dogs as it was against his religion and he did not like them’.
Why are people like this licensed? It’s a serious question, why do local authorities grant licenses to people who are socially inept retards.
I notice some in London are getting into a bit of a strop about Transport for London (TfL) insisting all drivers can prove they are reasonably literate and able to read and write in basic English.
Unless drivers can provide evidence they have an English GCSE they must undergo a day-long language test under classroom conditions.
If they cannot provide proof TfL say drivers must undergo a day-long language test under classroom conditions from their recommended provider – Trinity College London.
Imagine the outrage here, I mean, having to prove you can speak the language and write in English, in England of all places. The last thing the private hire trade need is an educated workforce, I mean they just might figure out how much they’ve been exploited since time immortal.
They might figure out that working a 90 hour week for less than the minimum wage isn’t really a good idea, and actually quite exploitative and dangerous. They might figure out that they really should take guide dogs and not to discriminate.
You really have to admire the government’s forward defensive stroke, it is perhaps something our cricket team should learn during the tour of India.
Royston Smith (and with a name like that he had to be a conservative MP) recently asked in Parliament what powers local authorities possess to effectively regulate private hire vehicles that operate outside of their primary licensing area.
Andrew Jones, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary at the Department for Transport replied by saying local licensing authorities in England and Wales have a duty to ensure that any person or organisation to whom they grant a PHV operator’s licence is ‘fit and proper’ to hold such a licence.
The same duty is required when granting a PHV driver licence. Furthermore, once a licence has been issued, licensing authorities should have systems in place, including links with the police and other licensing authorities, to ensure that drivers and operators continue to be ‘fit and proper’.
All PHV bookings, including those received by a sub-contracting arrangement, must be fulfilled by licensed PHV operators using licensed drivers and vehicles, all of whom have met their local licensing standards. The original operator who takes the booking will retain responsibility for the journey, and both the original operator and the operator who fulfils the booking will be under a duty to keep records of the booking and the relevant enforcement authorities will be able to check those records.
The sharing of information between licensing authorities is encouraged and the licence issuing authority can investigate complaints against a driver regardless of where the driver was working at the time. Local licensing authorities are also able to delegate powers to each other to help deal with issues such as taxis operating as private hire vehicles outside their licence area. For example, in Merseyside five licensing authorities have agreed a concordat allowing each other to enforce against all the vehicles and drivers licensed by the five areas.
I am sure Andrew is a very nice man, but I worry about the government view on these things.
Local boy William Wordsworth once wrote;
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of golden daffodils;
Licensing Authorities can barely manage their own fleets of licensed vehicles without having to effectively police another areas fleet of vehicles working across district borders.
I sincerely wish it were just a simple case of say a Liverpool licensed vehicle being stopped in Knowsley, but at the moment we appear to have TfL licensed vehicles in places like York, Brighton and Bristol.
The deregulation act has only exacerbated a truly awful situation in respect of out of town hackney carriages, with private hire vehicles.
It isn’t only the case that the damn app company is lawfully using a particularly stupid bit of legislation, because across the country many private hire operators have done the same, so don’t go pointing the finger directly at California, many localised spivs are also exploiting the system more expertly.
The simple fact of the matter is that taxi and private hire licensing was never designed to be national, it is completely local vision, by stretching it out across the country the government have created an unregulated nightmare.
I wager you’re wondering why I quoted Wordsworth, well its to add a little bit of culture to a rather cultureless column. You all know what a cloud is. You press a button on your mobile phone, let’s call it an app, and the booking disappears up into the clouds.
The passenger doesn’t really care where the vehicle comes from, neither does the cloud, and provided all three licenses match, neither does the law.
Happy Christmas.
_________________
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
George Carlin
|
Login
Register
FAQ
and as usual not ONE suggestion on how to tackle the problems you so well illustrate..................why?