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The Casey Column
By
Wayne Casey
(LL SC NTA & BAR)
The views expressed in this column may not be those of the National Taxi Association
You know its quiet when...
You find yourself watching the Jeremy Kyle show on a morning, repeats of North & South on an afternoon and the X factor on a Saturday evening.
At this rate I’ll be looking forward to episodes of ‘Shaun the Sheep’!
Has my life declined to such a level where I find myself watching such drivel as people from council estates, possibly inbred, on daytime television? Is this something I’d rather do than sit for 90 minutes between jobs for £2.30?
Where the hell did the public go, selfish b*stards, don't they know I’ve a wife and kids to feed?
I really thought at the start of the summer, with decent weather forecasted and the pound doing badly against the euro, that we would have a decent amount of trade, with a good number of tourists. Most of this summer under my breath I’ve been calling the met office a bunch of b*stards.
The reality is that we seem to have had the worst summer in terms of trade since the Black Death.
It would appear from reports, all over the country cab drivers are saying there are too many taxis, I’m glad they’ve caught on, we’ve been saying this since I started writing in taxitalk, and now people take an interest?
I wonder how they noticed? By being the 437th cab waiting to get on the rank perhaps?
Whilst ceasing to issue licenses will help, it’s hardly going to solve the problem, that’s like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. What we need are fewer taxis, which will be difficult, nay impossible to do, a little like finding the bolted horse and shooting it. The problem is, with so many bolted horses, which ones do we find and send to the glue factory? Not mine, or yours either I guess.
Whilst having a bath this morning I did carefully consider this dilemma and I have a number of ideas how to achieve this task, most of which are probably illegal, these include banning people from driving cabs who have either ginger hair or beards, those who live on council estates and anyone called Reg.
Alternatively, let’s leave it to the local authorities whose policies seem to be one of making us all bankrupt or dead.
Justifying their job
I received a rather alarming phone call the other week from a strange place in Kent. Weirdly enough it links to a recent editorial.
This particular place is deregulated, and, as ever, the local authority has failed to keep any form of link between license numbers and rank spaces, the effect, especially during the quiet summer, has been over-ranking.
Obviously the local authority had to do something about this heinous crime.
“Ten years ago, a cracked traffic warden was sent to prison by a military court for a crime she didn't commit. This woman promptly escaped from a maximum security psychiatric hospital to Canterbury Council. Today, still wanted by the government, she survives as a Licensing Officer making a fortune. If you have a parking problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find her, maybe you can hire... The Licensing Department.”
If I tell you reports suggest a licensing officer stood in front of a cab which was waiting to get on a cab rank, told the driver not to move and then instructed a traffic warden to issue a parking ticket to the taxi, you might think I was taking the p*ss. Yet it would appear this has happened.
Who the hell does she think she is? Joan of Arc?
Now I don't mind being ordered around by woman, especially if they come in a pair, with thigh high leather boots, but this didn’t happen. (I suppose that isn’t politically correct either?)
I wonder what would have happened if the drivers foot had slipped off the clutch, attempted murder charges perhaps.
If the driver of the cab had moved he may have found himself in trouble in respect of obstructing a licensing officer, he didn’t move so he was issued a parking ticket.
I don't know about the cab driver, but at first glance a decent defence of the parking ticket would be the obstruction of the vehicle by a pedestrian, or road kill if she’d tried that with a number of drivers across the country.
Somehow I don't see this as quite right, I can only imagine the licensing officer has a deep seated, almost psychopathic, dislike of cab drivers, it isn’t normal behaviour. I wonder if some gay cab driver ran off with her husband?
This is the same officer who apparently immediately suspended a driver for a major facebook incident (see the Reiver last issue); where a driver was suspended for nothing more than a ‘tiff’ with a private hire company.
I wonder if similar action is taken against other road users in the area, particularly those who park on taxi ranks. Somehow I can’t see it.
Why do cab drivers put up with this kind of sh*t? In any other job it would be seen as harassment.
A council issues 300 odd licenses, then doesn’t provide anywhere for them to stand, and then wonders why cabs park everywhere?
Obviously not all licensing officers are like this, I also know in some cases cab drivers are quite stupid, park in daft places and will pleasantly tell people to ‘eff off’ if they ask them to move, however, it also appears some licensing officers, a minority, see cab drivers as a hindrance to their jobs, not the purpose.
Stuff the councils, I’d rather be judged by Simon Cowell
If Martians were to send a scouting party to Earth prior to an invasion and land in Britain, the chances are they’d look at our licensing system and realise we already had enough anarchy and would bugger off to invade somewhere more sensible.
Imagine how confusing our ‘taxi’ (word used generically to avoid further hate-mail) licensing system is to foreign tourists going to different parts of the UK, not only that, imagine how confusing it is to people who live here.
Firstly we have two different licenses, hackney carriage and private hire.
Although on the surface they do similar jobs, taking the public from point ‘a’ to point ‘b’, they serve two different functions, one can be hired immediately and another must be pre-booked. The majority of areas carry out the same checks on all licensed drivers, but some are governed by ‘byelaws’ and others are governed by ‘conditions’.
If you cross a licensing authority border the chances are the licensing conditions are completely different, as are the colour, make and models of taxis.
You would have to ask, if, when coming up with our licensing system, the government of the day sat down and specifically worked out a system that would be the most confusing possible.
If you work in one area your cab must be tested mechanically once per year and can be licensed until its wheels drop off, if you work in another it must be able to cater for a section of society that will almost certainly never use it for immediate hire, they’ll phone for it, to a firm that is not actually required to have any. I’m quite sure even the society of dribbling knife wielding lunatics couldn’t have come up with this system.
In almost all cases drivers are judged by people who have no actual idea or empathy for the physical job they are there to judge. That’s another peach, you are judged by people who not only have no grasp of licensing law, but who are so ignorant of the rules, they actually employ people who are equally ignorant.
This true Corinthian spirit is perhaps something people are happy with, however, I’m personally getting a little tired of it.
We have licensing policy, which affects us all, made up by people who have no actual idea about our job, or more worryingly of theirs. We may as well go to the local mental hospital and ask the patients, the end result will at least the benefit of giving us drawings in crayon.
I get the distinct impression from some areas that the qualification to be a committee member, whose purpose is to decide its local transport policy, is decided by people whose only ability appears to be able to stick up their right arm and say ‘yeah I’ll do that if no one else will’.
It also appears the government have given our local authorities so much power they are like kids in sweetshops, it’s like giving the girl guides full access to our fleet of nuclear submarines. We have read in recent months how some local authorities have grasped the government change in the law allowing them to suspend drivers on the spot.
This power was originally given to councils for the best of reason’s, after all, we don't want suspected sex offenders, bank robbers or terrorists driving cabs, so an immediate suspension could and should have been a good idea.
Tragically its been the worst idea since allowing banks to run the country as we seem to now have licensing officers who appear to believe they are the reincarnation of Jesus Christ, this coupled with the system of delegated powers has seen a serious erosion of the rights of licensed drivers.
The attitude of some officers is one of “If you don't like my decision take the council to magistrates court”.
In some cases this power has been used on people who commit such heinous crimes as doing 35 in a 30mph zone, advertising on facebook and parking on double yellow lines.
I don't condone speeding, but even I know there is a distinct difference between doing 20 mph on a sunny afternoon past a school at kicking out time and doing 35 past the same school at 2am on a morning, if you follow my point. But the law is the law and the driver broke it, so he will then be given the same type of judgement as a person who was caught having carnal relations with a farmyard animal, only with more severity because the speeding couldn’t be explained away as part of some bizarre religious belief.
Why do I have visions of my mate Edward Woodward (he was in my cab once) and ’The Wicker Man’?
Indeed, whilst some local authorities would readily hang a cab driver for over ranking, they have a far more blasé attitude towards illegal plying for hire, where they consider a once a year cull, if we’re really lucky, sufficient enough to justify their jobs (or perhaps overtime, when needed prior to their holidays).
In some respects the government are culpable, they have after all placed additional burdens upon licensing authorities, the department that issues you a license also issues a license to a zoo, so basically your licensing officer must not only know about laws governing you since 1847, but also all the acts covering the keeping of wild animals and endless other licensing functions.
However, in some cases you have to blame some LA’s, they haven’t increased staff and they find themselves a little like that Dutch boy with his finger in the dyke. (Or was that a movie on channel 5?)
If I can make a swift reference to limited numbers policies. As many of you will know, I don't like deregulation and councils issuing an unlimited number of taxi licenses, I very often wonder, if council policies are based on licensing officers not being arsed, after all limited numbers may mean having to sort out illegal plying, that would mean being at work out of office hours, so why not encourage no limit, that way you can watch Eastenders in peace?
The British have always had a distinct predilection with its glorious past and in the majority of cases it’s been to its cost, the thought occurs, it’s now to ours.
Till next month
Wayne Casey ©
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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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