Hand delivered tonight.
TO:
The Convener
Licensing sub-committee
City of Edinburgh Council
Sir/Madam
Following my email to Donald Macleod, please find enclosed my Licence application renewal for 1 year, and my cheque for £52 for the fee.
The reason why I am not renewing for three years is quite simply that I don’t trust you. My experience is that Council officials, elected or otherwise, are not trustworthy honourable people.
Experience shows that you are prepared to use licensing powers against a political opponent, under cover of the much abused “Fit and Proper” test - the wide latitude of which encourages your political excesses - a clear abrogation of everything that is supposed to be decent about out our allegedly democratic political system.
I know that you must be seeking to do the same to me for my continued political opposition to the political and administrative failures of Edinburgh’s woefully failing council as shown by its appalling administration of licensing, incompetent control over the budget, incompetence and duplicity in its handling of the Trams debacle, and the general poor state of our city where it’s what the council isn’t involved in that is great about Edinburgh.
Any cabby’s head would need to zip up the back to offer you the opportunity to suspend a three year licence rather than just a single year.
Take the recent case where you dug out a cabby based on an unsubstantiated complaint against him.
Your procedures say your first step would be to write to the cabby and seek explanation. You didn’t. Failing to follow procedures you yourselves set out, makes you little more than common liars. How can anyone trust you?
You instead passed the complaint to our hapless cab inspector who interrogates under civil procedure without reading rights, for that information to be available for use under criminal procedure. Human Rights never on his radar. So, who can trust a cop? And you have set up regulations to enforce this incredible state of affairs.
Agent Smith interviewed the complainer, seeking the information to make complaint against a personal opponent who has criticised him vociferously. A police officer whose only remit, once again according to your procedures, is to establish whether any criminal proceedings should result. Once again, failure to follow your own rules renders you liars.
Our hapless wonder cop interviewed the complainer, but failed to exercise even the basic investigative skills of a beat bobby - Tulliallan training clearly a waste of time and our money.
For example, he failed to enquire why, by his own admission, this guy was driving so slowly, despite being in a 4x4 ably suited to the road conditions. Nor did it tinkle across his brain to consider whether his mobile phone records would elicit the fact that the reason he was travelling so slowly could have been that his mouth was going faster than his car. A clear danger to other road users.
Nor was any question apparently asked as to why this complaint was made so quickly, in the manner it was. Perhaps a few questions and he may have discovered the complainer’s brother works for Central Radio Taxis, whose company had to pay the cabby a substantial sum of money after they failed in Court to prevent his expression of opinion about the way the company is run, shelling out considerable costs to him as a result. Can’t let a good chance go to waste, eh? Can’t let truth get in the way of a good dig out. And the cops and council were desperate to play along. Quality! What price truth and justice in any part of this sad affair.
Wonder cop wasn’t interested, neither was the council who from the outset realising who was involved, like true Canadian Mounties, deliberately skewed its procedures to “get their man.” A complete abrogation of every political decency.
But this is no more than we’ve come to expect.
You asked for comment about the procedures. You receive a list of 22 Human Rights breaches identified in your procedures. You didn’t even acknowledge them. Can’t let an individual’s rights get in the way of pre-programmed dig-out of a political opponent, eh?
Human Rights? This is Edinburgh City Council, we don’t do Human Rights. We just ignore them when asked.
That’s democracy?
Taking into account loss of earnings and loss of rental to the owner, this case saw councillors effectively dispensing a six grand fine. And this is not an isolated case as you all well know. You happily suspend drivers, some for even longer periods, with no thought for the consequences on the family budgets of those you are “stiffing“.
And we all know the reason you do all of this on the “B” agenda, rather than in the public forum like a real Court of law, is not to protect the individual, but so that your despicable actions are not widely seen by the bewildered herd or the public at large. No minuted record to damage political careers. It’s OK to stiff people, but we can’t tell anyone we’re doing it.
And that’s also why you don’t maintain any records of your punishments that would ensure precedent, equality before the Law for all, as is their right. You don’t want any record kept of the variable way that you abuse your power, and how you abuse licence holders.
In a Court of Law you’d need to be a senior Judge to take such action. But the “butchers, bakers and candlestick makers” on the council committees, without any formal training, dispense such draconian punishment in a heartbeat, without any compunction whatsoever.
The truth is that every cabby’s mortgage, their families’ financial wellbeing, is entirely dependent on the whim of Stepford councillors trotting through an uncontrolled process. They like you, you get to keep your house. If they don’t … - the Sword of Damocles hanging over all our heads. You don’t care. That’s some society you guys have carved out.
In the case above you probably thought you had a victory. The cabby wasn’t even bothered. All you did was add to the unemployment register, another burden for the rest of us to pay for. You must be very proud of yourselves.
The council caps taxi licences, less than 1 in 4 of councils in the UK do so. It stifles enterprise and protects its own vested interest as well as those in the trade - imagine any other business being allowed to set the prices for its competitor or limit the competition. It reduces drivers to little more than slaves, cannon fodder for owners, with no prospects of improving their situation through their own enterprise, all while mitigating seriously against public safety.
Two females were sexually assaulted in Edinburgh, because they got into unlicensed vehicles. The council ignored the first case. The second came to court where the Judge confirmed that all the victim needed was a taxi.
The cap on taxis makes it more difficult to hail a taxi than it need be. That puts the council’s policy firmly in the frame, a point warned about by the government’s own Best Practice guide, which this council ignores. Two girls were harmed.
It’s happened again in Glasgow. It’ll happen again in Edinburgh. Unless and until the council recognises the problem, and deals with its cap policy, it can’t claim that it’s done everything in its power to protect public safety. Because it hasn’t. It will be partly responsible. No council should be even partly responsible for the public being harmed when it has it in its power to help prevent it. You should have your ass sued off for your policy.
But you did put wee stickers onto Private Hires, although you won’t allow them to put their own Company name on their vehicles. Presumably you were hoping that those who are intoxicated by alcohol or drugs, or who only understand foreign languages will be able to understand these, even if visitors know that they exist in the first place. Never mind, vested interest maintained, job done, another box ticked - another female becomes vulnerable, she will be hurt.
The taxi trade in Edinburgh is failing. Partly because the economy is in a poor state, but largely because of the avoidable things caused by the council’s autocratic control over it, where basic commercial common sense is ignored so that councillors can lord it over those scratching to earn a basic living.
Before I came into the trade I’d never had any contact with councillors, police or the legal profession. My own experience now is that they are all just a parcel of rogues, a band of brigands, serving their own interests through adherence to a process designed to stifle real interaction which would be in the public interest. Councillors wallowing in power, cops too lazy to prosecute thieves while hitting on cabbies and lawyers just propping up the system that delivers their wealth.
The Stepford councillors on the committee are in fact the real problem. Rather than trying to make things better, as they were supposedly elected to do, it appears their interests very quickly become to make sure that the system and its process survives at all cost, casting aside common sense, logic and decency to ensure it does.
For example, knowing that females have been harmed because they couldn‘t hail a taxi, why would any female councillor vote for a taxi cap? Why would any male councillor with a wife, daughter mother or whatever, possible vote for a taxi cap? I’m all right Jack? It beats me.
I look at the situation here in Edinburgh, and the councillors administering it, and their conduct in doing so, and I just wonder what those who’ve been brought back from Afghanistan and Iraq in body bags thought they were fighting to protect, what they lost their lives for? I wonder if those whom they’ve left behind realise either?
A councillor’s power to use licensing to dig out and impoverish political opponents? To protect vested interests? To ignore public safety?
It beggar’s belief.
I remain your obedient servant
Jim Taylor
***************
I feel a writ of appeal coming on.
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