Taxi Driver Online

No, it's an imaginary place in which I have lots of blonde moments You having been away perhaps didn't realise this

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Note to self: Just because it pops into my head does NOT mean it should come out of my mouth!!

I am friends with three full time assessors & we eat together quite often; they are all cab drivers. I know several more assessors too.

There are many serious mistakes in the NVQ course booklets, which are in writing & many have been detailed in MR T's post above. Many I knew about, quite a number I did not.

But the one that really irked me was when an assessor / tutor turned to the class & told us all that it is an offence to charge more than the meter rate when taking a passenger to a destination outside your licensed area. It is ONLY an offence to charge more than the meter rate on a hiring terminating outside the licensed area, if the driver & passenger have not agreed a fare PRIOR to the commencement of the hiring. But this assessor / tutor would not have it. The NVQ course booklet said that, so that was correct as far as the assessor / tutor was concerned.

The NVQ course learning materials are quite faulty, in many respects.

When drivers of many tens of years standing, a few with trade representative experience, have to argue with assessors / tutor in a classroom that the NVQ learning material content is erroneous, not once but many, many times, what impression do you think it gives to those many drivers that are 'green behind the ears' in this trade?

It is this situation, more than anything else, that debases the course to the point that it becomes a laughing stock throughout the trade.

Many items in the NVQ course learning material are incorrect. Any educational course regulatory body, worth their salt, would have withdrawn the course a long time ago, corrected all the mistakes in it & re-launched it.

But the impression I strongly get from the course providers & course regulatory bodies is;

You are the students, we are the teachers.

You know nothing, we know everything.

You learn, WE KNOW IT ALL & ARE ABOVE LEARNING!!

And that is the problem.

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Kind regards,

Brummie Cabbie.

Type a message, post your news,
Disagree with other members' views;
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Brummie with all due respect I think you are getting confused between the NVQ and the Btec/VRQ and it's a shame that the assessors you are friends with didn't point that out to you. I am more than aware of the errors in the 3 books provided with the Btec/VRQ and I can understand the concern of the trade when this kind of thing happens. I was told that Bryan Rowlands helped write these books but I don't know how true this is and if he didn't I unreservedly apologise for my ignorance

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Note to self: Just because it pops into my head does NOT mean it should come out of my mouth!!

That one has always been a bone of contention with many people, so let us take it a step further.

Do the LOs have any authority to stop you/I outside of the tariff area, in other words where does their jurisdiction end? The point being is that I do not believe that they or the Tariff have any legal standing outside of the area providing you have adhered to the correct agreeance prior to hire.

Even though you may technically commit an offense outside the given area, I would suggest (I could be wrong) that it might be outside of their powers!

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if you cannot be yourself, then who can you be.

Not only is it 'ultra vires' for LO's, it is nothing to do with LO's powers. It is in fact total against statute.

Section 66 of the LG(MP)Act 1976 clearly states;

66 Fares for long journeys (1) No person, being the driver of a hackney carriage licensed by a district council, and undertaking for any hirer a journey ending outside the district and in respect of which no fare and no rate of fare was agreed before the hiring was effected, shall require for such journey a fare greater than that indicated on the taximeter with which the hackney carriage is equipped or, if it is not equipped with a taximeter, greater than that which, if the current byelaws fixing rates or fares and in force in the district in pursuance of section 68 of the Act of 1847 or, as the case may be, the current table of fares in force within the district in pursuance of section 65 of this Act had applied to the journey, would have been authorised for the journey by the byelaws or table.

And when the NVQ course material literature flies in the face of national legislation, is it little wonder that drivers have little respect for what is on offer?

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Kind regards,

Brummie Cabbie.

Type a message, post your news,
Disagree with other members' views;
But please, do have some decorum,
When debating on the TDO Forum.

That would be the Btec/VRQ course material not the NVQ course material cos the NVQ doesn't have course material as such. The NVQ has a log book that shows when a driver is competent in certain areas of their job.

If nobody tells them that the course material is incorrect it will remain incorrect. Whilst I appreciate they should get it right first time it is plainly obvious that they haven't thus giving taxi drivers good reason to sit on their backsides and do nothing except moan about it.

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Note to self: Just because it pops into my head does NOT mean it should come out of my mouth!!

Why not just scrap these garbage courses and advise all taxistas to log onto TDO for twenty minutes a week where they will find a fountain of useful and relevent info and save the hard done by taxpayer billions or is it that so many influential gits have their snouts in trough

You're probably right they probably would learn more about the legal stuff and they certainly would get opinions some of which will be right and some wrong. They'd also get a free laugh as well, god forbid we should all be boring I doubt it would save the taxpayer billions as the government would probably just find another course to fund. You're probably right about the influential gits as well

The point I've tried to make on several ocassions is that if taxi drivers are to be trained (which apparently they are, like or not) would it not be better that the course has a high input from the trade. How can you just sit there and be so ignorant of what's going on and then when you find out sit there and complain amongst yourselves and do nothing about it

My other point is, we know there are fly by night providers out there but drivers still enrol on their course and then moan about it Why would any sane and rational person do that?

Oh yes did you join the NTA yet?

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Note to self: Just because it pops into my head does NOT mean it should come out of my mouth!!

it wont

some are now paid good money to sit in offices pumping out crap like this using taxpayer and EU monies, its never gonna stop...

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Of all the things ive lost, i miss my mind the most

the question should be

How the f**k do i get on the gravy train...............

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Of all the things ive lost, i miss my mind the most

.......I watched an assessor today evaluating the drivers mechanical knowledge..... he asked the driver to open the bonnet and take out the dipstick..... he then photographed the driver holding the dipstick...... at this point I went into hysterics.... and couldn't stop laughing for the next 20minutes

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Justice for the 96. It has only taken 27 years...........repeat the same lies for 27 years and the truth sounds strange to people!

were is the dipstick then.

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C. Oakes


The Hackney Association Ltd
bbha@btinternet.com

some would say on here

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Justice for the 96. It has only taken 27 years...........repeat the same lies for 27 years and the truth sounds strange to people!

Unfortunately, I too had that series of photographs taken when I was doing the course, before I had to abandon it. So I KNOW what you say is correct.

They are still on my computer.

The photographs are classed as evidence in your work-book, which you hand in periodically for assessment, or at least that is how it is done here.

I just wonder if the assessors would know the difference between an engine oil dipstick & an automatic gearbox fluid dipstick?

And would they know the different proceedures in checking the different levels?

Would an assessor bother to interrogate the photograh to see which dipstick was in the photograph, or, as I suspect, as long as there is a photograph of you holding a dipstick that is all that matters?

For completeness I have just looked up those photos on my computer & the other photos that were taken at the time were of me washing the cab, polishing the cab, cleaning the windows, topping up the screen-wash bottle, checking my lights; the list goes on ......

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Kind regards,

Brummie Cabbie.

Type a message, post your news,
Disagree with other members' views;
But please, do have some decorum,
When debating on the TDO Forum.

Apparently the NVQ is designed so that everybody can provide the evidence required to prove they know what they are doing. If you can't read or write what better way than to show you know you're stuff than with photos of you checking your vehicle. Did you not have to answer questions and explain what you were doing and why?

With me they took photos but it was completely pointless cos when I switch my car on it checks everything for me, that's part the reason I bought it.

Anyway after years of being told that having written tests and exams put people under too much stress and pressure they came out with the NVQ now that's critised as too easy and pointless. There is no perfect system.

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Note to self: Just because it pops into my head does NOT mean it should come out of my mouth!!