Skull wrote:
Sent to the entire Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce
From: Tony Kenmuir <tkenmuir@taxis-edinburgh.co.uk
Date: 21 February 2013 06:56:00 GMT
Subject: Challenge to Taxi contract award at Edinburgh Airport
Dear Colleagues from the Chamber Transport Group
I hope that this email finds you well.
You may have noted in the press that a £30M contract has been awarded to Edinburgh City Private Hire to take over management of Edinburgh Airport Public and Private Hire Ranks for the next five years. This has far reaching implications for the image and reputation of Edinburgh Airport, access to the Airport, the first impression that business travellers and tourists will have of our Capital City, for the local economy and for congestion and emissions on the west side of the city; the already pressurised “Corstorphine Corridor” in particular. As the largest taxi company in Edinburgh, Central Taxis disengage at the Airport 250,000 times a year and habitually join the rank, producing almost zero impact on the congestion or emissions. We will now be driving back to town empty. The PHC vehicles at the airport will be largely dedicated to the airport rank. Around 500,000 journeys a year originate from the rank. They are unable to use the green lanes so will be joining traffic for their onward journeys and then criss-crossing with the empty taxis as they make their way back empty to the airport. If I’ve got my sums right that means and additional 750,000 taxi/car journeys to and from the airport; a million of which will be sitting in traffic and half of which will be empty vehicles.
I am keen to inform the Transport Group of this development but had no desire to embarrass David Wilson, the Airport Chef Executive Office who has attended our last two meetings. As such, I decided not to raise this at the meeting but to send you some information afterwards.
I would like to highlight some of the issues:
1.
Links between shareholders and directors of ECPH and organised crime, widely publicised in the press and

presently causing great concern to the justice department.
2. Companies House website values ECPH at - £1.5M - this raises service delivery and reputational issues.
3. Replacing licensed taxi drivers who have proven and tested local knowledge with private car drivers – serious compromise to customer service and visitor experience.
4. Replacing licensed taxi and quality estate cars with compact saloons-unsuitable for airport use and affecting visitor experience.
5. PHC cannot use green lanes –massive increase in congestion and emissions forecast in the west of the city during rush hours.
6. PHC cannot use green lanes – significant increase in journey times and cost to passengers.
7. 5000 self-employed, full time, invested taxi drivers on middle class incomes being replaced by part-timer workers on £7 gross hourly rate; ECPH shareholders retaining most of the revenue generated from fares – local economic issues.
8. Huge decrease in availability of wheelchair accessible vehicles.
9. Pressure on CEC to grant access to green lanes – implications for bus services and potentially blurring the lines between licensed taxis and private hire cars across the city.
10. PHCs must be “pre-booked”. They cannot legally form a rank but the PHCs will be joining a stance and picking up on a first come, first served basis in what is termed a “holding area” with a “booker” at the front. However it is dressed up this is not legal: See Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982. “Licensing Conditions”.
11. As all passengers must be “pre-booked” there will be significant delays in people entering a vehicle and departing the airport.
12. The taxi and its driver are very often THE FIRST IMPRESSION that visitors have of our capital city. Lowering of standards in every respect has far reaching implications.
The Scottish Taxi Federation, The Edinburgh & Lothian Taxi Partnership and Central Taxis will challenge the procurement process and the contract award at every level. If you can offer and guidance, advice or support it would be gratefully received. If you would like any further information please do not hesitate to contact me. We are led to believe that one Licensed Taxi company, City Cabs has been persuaded to support the move in this time of challenging trading conditions and join the “holding area” alongside the private hire cars. This only increases the tragedy for our trade as a whole.
Thanks for your kind attention and best regards,
Tony
Tony Kenmuir | Director
Apart from the simple and true premise that Tony Kenmuir's letter, presumably sent with the knowledge of the Central committee, assuredly proves that he is an intellectual dwarf and incompetent to be the officer of a multi million pound business, two things immediately spring to mind.
First, given that none of what he said is true or reasonable, and obviously the rantings of a commercial lunatic, never minding the loss of any involvement for the airport, and almost certainly for ever, the Company, and he and the directors personally, are going to be royally shafted when the matter does come to court.
His opinions about the circumstances surrounding the tender process are just that. Opinions, and irrelevant.
The claim of criminal involvement by the owners/shareholders is so wide of the mark as to be ludicrous.
This paragon of commercial enterprise has to be aware of the exercise his own company was obliged to undertake during the application for a base licence. ECPH underwent precisely the same process. They are squeaky clean. Whiter than an England rugby shirt immersed in Vanish, steam cleaned and washed on a G setting at 65% temperature, 10 times.
And the exercise of ECPH exacting retribution is going to show everyone they will come into commercial contact with, just how squeaky clean they are.
What Central have done is take taxi rank tittle tattle, add into the mix allegations and aspersions published by the press in their drive to sensationalise a non-story to sell their paper, and purport it all to be fact.
Well, it clearly is not fact.
And, how would anyone know what is going on in the justice department? They brought in base licensing to weed out criminal involvement, drug running, money laundering, tax evasion etc. They were all over all the applicants, ECPH included and found nothing. As any reasonable thinking individual would assuredly know.
ECPH are rightly on a slam dunk here, its a done deal.
Add into the mix that ECPH, through their lawyers, allegedly and reasonably offer to allow the feckwits on Central's committee to retract the statement, which was allegedly refused by them, and these stupid people's calumny is magnified.
Given this, aren't Central owners clearly stupid?
I wish ECPH well in rightly seeking redress here, because Central are not only bring their Company into disrepute, but also the trade, and the entire political machine, and all based on subjective rank opinion and a wish that it would be true.
BTW Even Alastair Kinroy could win this. Unless Central hired the Skull and Jasbar, of course
Secondly, the bigger picture has to be from the response by the airport management and the resulting opinion of the recipients of the letters when the case is dealt with.
Whether overtly or otherwise, why would anyone with a contract with Central wish to renew it, given that its management behave so commercially unstably? "Wouldn't touch them with a bargepole" comes to mind? Certainly the tactics used with Chamber members can only have the effect of anyone of them renewing a contract to ignore Central and turn to ECPH, City Cabs and even Comcabs.
So, what are the stupid Central owners who proxied the intellectual dwarves back onto committee going to do when contracts disappear like snow off a dyke as the Company is now a commercial pariah? Discount even more. Force drivers again to pay for their mistake? Or are the drivers going to say enough is enough and vote with their bums, and place them in the saddle of cars with those companys who have behaved commercially responsibly?
Finally what these stupid Central committee nutjobs have done through their actions, is give ECPH the cleanest bill of health possible. And when they take their business proposition to prospective clients they are going to be fully aware of just how clean they are, and the whole of the hackney cab trade is going to suffer as a result.
And this is what the proxie doxies, too lazy to even turn up at the meeting, far less understand the issues, have achieved.
Stupidity and Central owners are now synonyms.
