edinburgh boy wrote:
The sad thing is mr failor has been down every ave to try and get his free plate and is now SADLY going on 24/7 about a poor girl getting raped to try and get his FREE plate. what a SICK OLD MAN.
All cities have a shortage of cabs at peak hours, restricted cities even more so.The whole point of the restriction is to limit numbers and therefor limit competition.
Restricted plate numbers result in a greater lack of available taxis at peak hours. That's an undeniable fact. This in turn means people waiting longer at ranks or having to walk. By restricting plate numbers, CEC have allowed this to be a bigger problem than it would otherwise have been.
As I said earlier, at 2am the public don't care if a PH is allowed to pick them up or not, they will use one if they can. The cops don't care either, they just want the streets cleared.
CEC are responsible for PH licencing but have failed to stamp out this practice.
Now the only difference
to joe public between a licenced PH and a perv with a mondeo is the plate on the back. PH have no roof sign, no signage and in some cases no meter. Meters and radios are easy to come by on ebay anyway. If the passengers don't look round the back, they may not realise that the car they are getting into is unlicensed or the driver unchecked.
They just assume it's a PH car when it isn't. An easy enough mistake to make on a cold, wet night with a few drinks in.
This is how one thing can lead to another and then another, and then to a tragedy. It may or may not have been forseeable, that is neither here nor there. It has now happened and CEC, Edinburgh police and the trade need to see what can be done to prevent it happening again. Or at least make it harder for the pervs.
It is in a way unfortunate that jasbar was the one to draw attention to this, since it gives those who don't want change the opportunity to claim he is only interested in furthering his own agenda. It is always easy to shoot the messenger, just because you don't like the message. That doesn't make the message any less true.
If this had been highlighted by someone else, especially someone with no interest in taxi politics, how would the message have then been received?
The burning question now is - does keeping a policy in place mean more to your council than the safety of the public ?
Someone needs to look at this from a fresh perspective, before it happens again. Next time there could be a fatality. It does happen.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/nor ... 168436.stmThey just assume it's a PH car when it isn't. An easy enough mistake to make on a cold, wet night with a few drinks in
Its not Just PHs they think theyre getting into....they get that p*ssed they wouldnt tell a fully illuminated taxi from Strawbale with wheels on...theyd mistake any vehicle when they get rat arsed...so dont lay the blame just on PHs.