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The Casey Column
By
Wayne Casey LL SC
The views expressed in this column may not be those of the National Taxi Association
Take a chill pill
Taxitalk have been receiving enquiries as to the LL and SC abbreviations at the end of my name. I don't get many plaudits, so when I do I tend to grab hold and keep them. SC isn’t short for Stupid Clutz, its Star Columnist, and LL isn’t Lazy Lad, its Leading Light.
Please stop the phone calls.
Its learning Jim, but not as we know it
I was going to write this month about my recent conversion to the new god of training, however, the more I learn about the courses the more I become confused and the greater my scepticism.
Believe it or not, and judging by your responses you probably will believe it, I left school with no qualifications at all. No English, no maths, no history, no nowt. Yet for very little other reason than pure bad luck, I have became a complete and utter cynic who happens to be looked upon as the taxi trades saviour. I’d have preferred to have played golf really.
For example, I bet no other person writing in any trade magazine would actually write something so controversial as; ‘I quite like our Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, because she has large bezonkers’. Okay I disagree with her on everything, but her bezonkers are beyond reproach.
You see, I hear the calls that we need to be professionalised, I hear the calls that we need to make a quantum leap, but I see leaches, people selling courses to councils for a quick buck, and selling courses that are of no use whatsoever to any of us.
Yes, I want our trade to be seen as a profession. Yes, I want to see an element of worthwhile training, but the current shambolic effort is like buying a plasma television and then trying to do the ironing with it.
The NVQ method would appear to be a complete and utter disaster for our trade and one that could potentially suggest taxi training will bankrupt the entire country.
Has someone sat down and done the mathematics here? There are 250 licensed drivers in Carlisle, which is pretty small compared to those large towns and cities out there. Yet if our council were to say ‘right lads and lasses your all gonna get free NVQ’s from the local college’, our 250 people would cost someone about £450K.
The NVQ’s only benefit is the free funding it attracts, this leads the way for the add-on’s it can bring, this allows the equally [edited by admin] poor BTEC to be taken on, as well as perhaps the arguably more sensible literacy and numeracy learning.
The NVQ itself would appear to be labour intensive, taking a minimum of 10 hours per student and slightly longer for the retarded ones. Going back to Carlisle, that’s 2500 hours of assessing for our 250 drivers, 104 days solid, if we had say 3500 drivers like Sefton that’s 1458 days solid or almost 4 years.
The paper trail and evidence required for the NVQ will potentially mean the reams of paper will decimate a few million trees on route, which is good news for paper suppliers, but bad news for squirrels!
I’m sorry, as much as I want to see our industry as professional, doing all of this meaningless bureaucratic bullshit is just plain costly and expensive, merely makes and justifies jobs.
We have a system, yes its old fashioned, but it does tend to get results. It’s called complaints. If a driver smells to high heaven the customer phones the council and says the driver they hired was a ‘minger’, then that puts the licensing officer in a position where he or she has to deal with the dirty b*stard or tell the complainant her nose maybe to close to her backside. A clear and effective route!
If a driver cannot speak English, then why are they given a badge?
If a driver cannot fill in an application form in front of a licensing officer, because they cannot write, then why are they given a badge?
Are licensing officers so worried about being politically correct that they cannot say errm go away, learn the language and we’ll go from there? I actually think they are worried, which is sad, and perhaps why these training schemes are brought in, which means the motive has more to do with LO’s looking after themselves than towards any interest they may have for the trade.
Its strange that an LO is apparently very prepared to use delegated powers to suspend a driver, but not so quick to refuse applications ain’t it? Its perhaps the criteria stupid?
Let’s look again at the system.
The course has a module, which has got to be a decent size to attract accreditation, so it is, and the justification is that people like big books rather than short stories? For flips sake my granny could do better, and she’s dead.
Will taking one of these courses make you a better cab driver? Pretty doubtful really, most of you do the job properly anyway and have done so for many years. After-all, an unblemished record of 30 or 40 years without complaint and repeat business must stand for something mustn’t it? Errm, well according to some it doesn’t stand for anything, indeed, you could be the Basil Fawlty of cab driving or Mother Teresa, the end result is you’ll have to do the course.
Lets go to the leeches.
Yep, taxi driver training has taken on a whole new form of leech. The fly by night training company.
Whilst I accept some are perfectly legitimate and I will say here and now this is not aimed at them, some are charlatans, quick buck merchants who are not bothered about the travelling public but more interested in the cash the courses can attract. They’re like those top hat, one bottle fix all, elixir salesmen travelling the wild west.
The legitimate training companies, the ones who take pride in their work, have to compete alongside quick buck merchants who will give a certificate for a days attendance on a course. Of course, it is a little difficult to teach a 70 odd hour course in 8 hours, so that basically suggests short-cuts arte being taken.
I have heard stories of private hire operators being offered a bounty for each driver delivered, I have heard similar of others, apparently well respected people in the taxi trade who should know better.
Is this the way we want this to go? I seriously don't think so.
Can someone please explain to me how these qualifications, some of which are being taught in pub’s, are going to be of benefit to either the local authority, cab driver or most importantly the travelling public?
How can it be justified for example that a PH Operator can become a training provider? Is there not a touch of interest there? It’s like giving the fox the keys to the henhouse!
Whoever is reading this, read this as a cry for help, we seriously need looked into, the NVQ is being looked upon as ‘Not Very Qualified’ and nobody wants that, even me, and appreciate this also, people don't want to waste their time on some sh*t certificate that isn’t worth jack.
Lets go to our councils
In all fairness to our councils, they are nice people, and I know some of them have high standards, but in fairness, some are a tad innocent with the ways of the world (or perhaps not as the case maybe). It seriously worries me that a driver can have a license revoked for illegally plying for hire and showing porn in his PHV, only to have a license granted in another area, within weeks, by a more liberal minded licensing committee.
That aside, and from personal experience (at least in Carlisle), whilst I don't always agree with the chair of our regulatory committee, the guy is a former policeman, and he seems to know bullshit when he see’s it
As a good number of people will know, the past couple of months have seen me tour the UK. This would ordinarily be described as a alcohol fuelled orgy of mayhem and destruction, with a convenient excuse of speaking to taxi people on route, albeit, depending upon the time of the night, in Swahili. The past couple of months have made me see the light.
It’s a known fact that when work is sparse, such as now, cab drivers often feel that competition from such unscrupulous b*stards as the private hire industry is a bad thing.
You see, even though private hire may have been giving Mrs Miggins a service for the past 18 months, taking her from her door to the post office for her pension, before taking her shopping then home. Whilst the Hackney Carriage was too busy to do that because the ranks were busy and times were lucrative. Now times are harder the reality is different.
Now Mrs. Miggins is a complete bitch who doesn’t understand the cab trade who felt that during the busier times Mrs Miggins should wait until he could provide himself at his convenience.
Of course, the PH driver is a complete b*stard, undercutting HC at every available opportunity, especially during these hard times.
I don't know if some within the hackney carriage trade are stupid, no, I’ll rephrase that, I know some within the hackney carriage trade are stupid. Be they those cherry-picker’s who charge £30 to go through a tunnel under the Mersey, or those other hackney drivers who seem to think they should be excluded from RTFC work.
Either way the public do remember being ripped off and they do remember a crap service. We are not so much giving customers to private hire as driving them away.
What surprises me is that still the HC trade wonder why it’s quiet.
This recession is going to hurt the taxi trade, arguably we have been feeling the pain of it before it was actually official. At the time of the last recession most of the country had regulated numbers policies towards hackney carriages, this time almost three quarters of the country are deregulated.
We are faced with people entering our job and simply buying a cab and licensing it.
As many of you will be aware, I am not a particular fan of driver training. Indeed, I did once see GoSkills as the axis of evil.
However, my tour across the UK is leading me to a conclusion that not only do we need trained, we need trained pretty damned quick.
The one thing most of the trade, myself included, have continually stated is that if training comes then it should be the trade training the trade, as opposed to the leaches robbing the learning and skills council of a few quid then buggering off never to be seen again. We have all heard stories of certain training companies approaching councils and basically telling blatant lies, these include such porkpies as; training will become law, funding will run out, you bear a corporate responsibility etc.
We have heard similar stories of private hire companies being approached and ‘bunged’ a few quid for each driver they send. Indeed, some have even resorted to going down cab ranks and telling lies to stupid taxi drivers.
If you have heard of similar occurrences please contact the magazine, these companies are operating against guidelines, and will be removed from training when caught.
Unfortunately the route of the trade training the trade seems to attract jealousy in certain quarters; unsurprisingly it’s from the taxi trade. In effect whilst we want to train people ourselves, we don't want our own people doing it. This is an unsurprising position; after all, the trade has an inbuilt desire to self destruct.
I can understand this to a certain degree. I don't believe for example private hire companies should be permitted to train anyone outside of their own people. Local associations are of course different.
The thought has occurred that I have been a little like King Canute here, as much of a dent as it is to my ego no amount of huffing and puffing is going to stop the tide of driver training, the best I can probably hope for is that the training is delivered by the bodies that represent us.
More and more local authorities whilst not exactly going down the route of mandatory qualifications are actually insisting that applicants for such things as council account work have the correct qualifications, in the case of the taxi industry its the NVQ and BTEC.
How long will it be before health authority and government accounts have the qualification prerequisite?
Is training such a bad thing? Again I wonder.
One thing a good number of committed drivers complain about is the lack of respect from the public. We are invariably seen as a trade people fall into in between ‘proper’ jobs. I get annoyed at this, as I know many of you do as well. I’ve done this job for most of my life, it is a profession, yet for the most part it is a profession without qualifications.
Do drivers need to be taught to assist people with luggage? Probably not, however, we all know certain drivers who appear to have been super-glued to the driver’s seat.
Drivers often complain about having to lift heavy wheelchairs and luggage, are these drivers aware of manual handling regulations and risk assessments?
How many drivers check such fundamental items such as lights, tyres etc on their vehicle on a daily basis?
How many drivers know how to correctly treat disabled passengers or are even know about disability awareness?
In actual fact, you could honestly say if we as a trade are so much aware of all the regulations, byelaws and conditions, why do local authorities have appearances from drivers who flout the rules on a monthly basis?
Further to the above it’s quite obvious some within the trade are illiterate. How do these people write receipts, fill in application forms or read taxitalk? Surely the trade needs a degree of literacy?
I don't know if any readers have travelled up to the North East of England, but if have and you’ve hired a taxi in either Newcastle or Sunderland then the chances are the driver was uniformed.
Companies such as NODA, the NHDA, Station Taxis (Sunderland) and Deans have requirements for driver uniforms and have had them for many years. Indeed, in a recent trip to Leeds the company Streamline / Telecabs had drivers who wore smart but casual company issued attire.
Those against some-kind of dress code maybe perhaps retarded. I wonder what people would think if, next time they go on holiday the pilot wears a string vest, pair of shorts, smells of body odour and wears flip flops?
I know how a cab driver is dressed doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll be a better cab driver, but I ask what type of public image to we wish to project? Driving a cab you don't know who the next fare is going to be, do people seriously want to be considered trampy [edited by admin]?
I find the fact that some council’s are pushing dress codes quite sickening, you see I don't think we need to be told or have conditions applied to licenses. It’s down to self respect. The trade should never be put into a position where they are considered to be dressed like tramps and a dress code is needed.
Whilst we can shout against dress codes, the shouting will fall on deaf ears when it comes to certain rail stations, ferry terminals and airports. A condition of contract could be that whichever company has the rights of access then a driver dress code should be enforced.
Perhaps the transport interchanges don't like trampy vagrants who drive cabs on their premises, they smell to high heaven and make commuters scared?
I realise the major majority of drivers have a degree of self respect, unfortunately and as ever its the minority of badly dressed tramps that let the trade down.
The trade tells people its a profession, yet it seems to do everything it can to suggest it isn’t, more worryingly it doesn’t actually look like a profession but more a ragtag and bobtail outfit full of people who cant do anything else.
Personally I’m sick of that image, and I’ll do my best to change it.
The trade will eventually come into the 21st Century, it may come kicking and screaming, but eventually it will arrive.
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Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
George Carlin
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