Taxi Driver Online

Good for a wind up Nidge lol, "if it was meant to be factual it failed dismally".

Best wishes

John Davis
Manchester

John, don't give up the day job mate because you'll never make a comedian. What do you mean if was meant to be factual? If you write off to the DFT they will outline all the ins and outs of the survey, go back 10 years when the buses got dereglulated, how long did that take to push through?? More than 10 years.

I was responding to your mythical letter which you stated came from the Ministry of Transport. If you intend to try to miss inform and deliberatley lie then I suggest you do a little research into how Government departments work.

In order to educate you in this matter I can point you in the direction of a good book called "The People and Government" written by Andrew Wallwork.

You stated in your mythical post that the mythical person who wrote it said
It will take ten years for any legislation to be enacted. You are obviously not aware of the fact that civil servents are not allowed to make statements of fact on legislative matters concerning the Government of day, it is beyond their remit and forbidden.

Secondly it is patently obvious you know nothing of how legislation in this country works. The mythical person who supposedly wrote to you would know about the workings of our legislature, if he did indeed work at the Transport Ministry. He would have informed you that any specific change to current legisaltion including section 16 of the Transport Act of 1985 could be enacted within a very small timetable by way of what is called an Enabling bill. He would have also informed you that should the Ministry of Transport decide that a section of the act is not working in the way it was designed to work or it conflicts with other legislation they could issue what is called a circular. the circular advises local Authorities of how the transport Ministry believes a section of the act should be interpreted.

They would have also informed you that EU legislation overides Uk legislation and that any UK legislation that isn't compatible with EU legislation or DIRECTIVES, EU Legislation will apply.

Its about time you took on board the fact that you can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you cant fool all of the people all of time, esecially with the lack of knowledge you obviously portay.

Best wishes

John Davies.
Manchester

So in short John, you disagree with Nigel's post.

_________________
IDFIMH

John you obviosly have a problem towards people's views, why don't you write to him, here is the address

Rupert Cope
Head of Taxis/ PHV branch
buses and taxis division
3/12
76 Marsham Street
London.
SW1P 4DR.

There you go John please take timeout to write to him, it might take you down off that little soap box you are on. Another anti HC boy, Ive sh*t em.

'Another anti HC'!

Please pay attention, John was accusing me of being a HC hating PH yesterday. So he can't be one.

He writes very well though. Seems very up with legal areas of trade. Wonder what his 'commercial nous' is like though?

As for Rupert! Have you met him. Not exactly a storming personality. Very cagey civil servant man, never keen to voice an opinion.

Much prefer Mr Ellis at PCO. Now he has some sense of reality.

_________________
A member of the Hire or Reward Industry

Even assuming that your letter is genuine (maybe someone was taking you for a ride Nidge, as you well know there's a lot of that on on forums and the like) it seems unusual for a civil servant or even a minister to make an apparently definitive statement of fact like this, as John said earlier.

Enacting legilslation basically comes down to political will - we all know that the legislative timetable is crowded, but if the Govt wanted to do it now, then they could, and have legislation enacted within a handful of years, which is the minimum timetable possible for any Act of Parliament - it just can't be rushed through in a few weeks unless it's some kind of dire national emergency.

However, as we've been over umpteen times before, in 2001 the Govt enacted the Regulatory Reform Act - this allowed ministers to 'fast track' amendments to Acts of Parliament with just a Regulatory Reform Order, which could be passed a lot more quickly than a full blown Act, and the procedure is a lot less cumbersome. As you also know, a couple of years ago the Govt published the RRA Action Plan with proposals for reforms to be made under the Act, and among those was the proposal to remove LAs' discretion to restrict taxi numbers - this was the now infamous clause 1.147c of the Action Plan.

So it could certainly be done within a fraction of the ten years you mention, with or without a full blown Act of Parliament. Who knows, the Govt might be minded to phase in de-restriction to give plate holders who have large debts a chance to pay them off, hence the longer timescale, but ten years seems a bit much even in view of this.

Dusty

Exactly Dusty but it won't be top of the Goverments list of priorities will it, same as I said further up the board they have better things to discuss.

And indeed that is why Parlimentary time will take a while to achieve, particularly as many more things are more important to many more people.

OFT recomendations will not be directly applied, they will be considered along with any objections before deciding Policy or legislationary change.

In the mean time the OFT INFORMED each council of their rights to deregulate, a point which Nidge's letter seems to have added that a council has no responsibility to deregulate and current legislation including regulating H/C numbers still remains fully under their control.

What exactly are the EU regulations regarding taxis then Mr Davies, every single EU country I have visited have very few WAV's and isn't the insistance that ALL taxis are WAV's also a EU directive. It seems to me as though they hold any water anywhere else.

Maybe a H/C driver should take their council, this government, the DfT and the OFT to the European Courts of Human rights as their actions are causing hardship, poverty as well as pain and suffering as their business is effectively forced down the pan.

B. Lucky

Did you not read the bit about the RRA?

If the gov choose such a route, the time scale will be very short.

That's the whole point of the RRA.

_________________
IDFIMH

The fact that OFT reminded councils that, to me implies that action will be taken to remove the quotas.

They were telling councils, that although it may take a little while to legally kill off section 16, there is no excuse not to locally kill it off in the meantime.

_________________
IDFIMH

Why write? when he's just at the other end of the phone line.

Mr Cope and I had a very interesting conversation with regard to Mr Nigel Marchant. It appears he has never heard of Nigel Marchant from Mansfield or anywhere else. He has looked through his records and he confirmed that he has never sent Nigel Marchant a letter of any description or ever corresponded with a Nigel Marchant in any way shape or form. He also stated that he would never say "it would take ten years for legislation to be enacted" because that is factually incorrect.

So now we know that Mr Cope never wrote to you so it just remains to determine why you posted an untruth in this forum with the specific agenda to mislead.

You could of course prove Mr Cope and myself wrong by scanning the letter on to your hard drive and showing us all how right you are and how wrong Mr Cope and I are. But of course you don't have the letter do you?

Best wishes.

John Davies.
Manchester.

The way forward on the OFT reccomendations will first be discused in Cabinet, if it is then decided to repeal section 16 of the Transport act the RRO will go ahead. It would take aproximately 14 months to complete the time table of events which the process has to adhere to. The last RRO apertaining to Transport concerned the water board. One section each, of two different transport acts were amended. That information is freely available on the internet.

What you have to consider is when the recomendation goes to the commons if MP's decide that a proper bill is needed then it could reject the RRO and ask for a full blown bill. Having said that, none of the RRO's that have been before Parliament have been thrown out. Also if it is backed by the Government its passage should be secure.

Best wishes.

John Davies
Manchester

Mr Davies, is the "approximate timescale" the "minimum timescale" or are you making an asumption based on the actual time previously taken to fulfil a Regulatory Reform Order.

I don't believe there will be no action following the OFT investigation, but I believe that it didn't go far enough to ease the confusion we all feel when attempting to gather information when we find so many contradictions between the 1847 and 1976 Acts partcularly when the answer is contained within them both.

I wanted the OFT report to clearly identify a brand new CAB ACT, and to remove outdated legislation contained within ALL previous Acts.

Some members declare all they want is fairness, but how can it be fair that a bloke can be allowed to re-mortgage his family home to purchase something, with the full knowledge and consent of the licensing authority. I don't believe that is fair and I don't believe that any resonable minded person would agree that the purchaser should suffer.

The councils should have insisted that the plates were NON-TRANFERABLE when they were first issued and continued to enforce this regulation, I believe they are responsible because the plates always belong to the council and always remain under their control. If they lose control of them surely every plateholder who paid a premium, with the full knowledge of the LA, has a case for compensation. I would have no objection to the LA then seeking the costs from the people who originally got the plates for free and illegally sold them without the consent of the council.

If, and I believe it should be, the world was a fair and resonable place people would consider what effect their requests had upon others, particularly when it their own benefit that they constrewed to be FAIR.

B. Lucky

Angel you're probably a very nice guy but one thing you have to realise I'm not your nurse maid. If you want to know about the RRA go and do some leg work and look it up on the net. All the information you require to make a judgement is contained therein. It is all self explanatory. Good Luck.

I'm off out to surf the streets of Manchester, if you get lost on the Net you can reach me on my mobile.

Best wishes

John Davies.
Manchester.