Taxi Driver Online

Would it make sense if the council were to say that in x years time, trading of plates shall cease and any plate owner wishing to move on hands their plate back to the council who then distribute it to people on a specified waiting list. this gives current owners x years to pay off their plate ?? thereafter it would make the trade more accesible to more people, avoiding people getting into ridiculous debt and mean that drivers rentals could be reduced accordingly (and possibly taxi fares) whilst avoiding the nightmare of de-restriction ???? i'm not sure what x years could be - maybe 5 ???

Just a thought - could be a load of s***e and no doubt some will say it is !!!!

There is a huge argument about Human Rights and the way the council abuses them through applying section 10 3.

The council refuses to address the matter because it knows that to retain its status quo all it needs to do is ignore them.

Sad fact is that this is not how a responsible accountable public body should operate. That it does so proves the scant regard our local politicians have for those they are supposed to represent.

Fortunately, rthe 6 outstanding appeals cases don't have any need to resort to HR and the long expensive haul that would be. The council will give up the licences because it adopted a flawed process, our applications highlighted the flaws before hand, and the Sheriff's decision supports this.

What we now have is a situation where the Sheriff says that licences should have been applied chronologically, and soneone on position 105 was granted a licence incorrectly, when all those before him were refused.

Quite simply, if it is wrong to ask the council to rectify the matter by removing this guy's licence, it is equally wrong that those who were on the list before him aren't given equal status and licence granted. We don't anticipate the Sheriff having any difficulty with this on appeal.

We also have the situation where the vice convenor announced at the outset of the hearing that she "had 27 licences to give out".

Apart from the fact that the licences were not in her "gift", how was it possible for anyone to get a fair hearing under such a circumstance? The Sheriff on appeal will come to understand that all decisions relating to the remaining applications were made well before the hearing took place. This is not how it's supposed to happen.

The councilscrewed up big time with how they handled the whole scenario. We already have a judgement which says this, all we're gonna do is add to the pile of shecht the council is going to have to explain in court.

The problem for the council is that when it gets into court, they could well end up going down a road they don't want to go down.

What price half a dozen licences eh?

There is a huge argument about Human Rights and the way the council abuses them through applying section 10 3.

The council refuses to address the matter because it knows that to retain its status quo all it needs to do is ignore them.

Meant to have a think about this, but I still think the human rights case isn't as obvious as it seems, since the discrimination is essentially random or pot luck rather on grounds like that the applicant is black, female or LGBT, for example.

But as I said on the other thread perhaps something like indirect age discrimination could be a goer. You point out that the vast majority of plates were first issued 20(?) years ago, thus prospective applicants will be a lot younger than the original licensees, thus the effect is to indirectly discriminate on the basis of age, since they either can't get a plate - and thus pay inflated rentals - or they have to buy one on a black market.

And even if it doesn't work it could serve to highlight the whole rotten mess from the political perspective.

The trade is already derestricted. It's called Private Hire. Hadn't you noticed.

I've just spent the last week driving past taxi ranks stappit fu and picking up passengers further down the road. Restriction doesn't make it easier for customers to hail a cab. Any wonder they just dial a number and cut the taxi trade out of their loop?

if you can't understand your own market, then what right have you to hold any opinion about restriction or otherwise. Most other councils don't restrict. So how do they manage? No shortage of guys driving cabs anywhere.

Look around at the problems the trade has got. If I had a buck for every time I've heard someone say how bad it is. But it's restriction that delivered this for you. If you can't see that ...

Had to laugh at one of the responses on the Edinburgh forum in that thread about the booking offices blackballing the new plates. He said more plates would mean:

If the slaves were freed many of them would be forced to ask for the removal of their chains

Can't quite put my finger on it, and maybe I'm misrepresenting him, but over the years I've developed this notion that Gary doesn't hold the Edinburgh taxi trade in particularly high regard.

Illusion is what you create to conceal your inadequacy.