MR T wrote:
It makes me laugh when they state that out-of-date laws are the cause of their problems, when in fact the old out-of-date laws stopped it from happening. If you look at the sequence of events that lead up to where we are now you will see 1) the Conservative party a few years back suddenly started getting hefty donations from A.Lee private hire, and then 2) the Ministry for Transport decided that it would be best for the Law Commission to hold an enquiry with the purpose of bringing our rules and regs up to date. 3) And guess what? after many hundreds of thousands of pounds being spent, the rules they want to change are the rules that give Uber and the like the ability to work from one end of the country to the other, sidestepping local licencing authorities, and taking ph back to where they were before the 1976 Act came in. 4) The recommendations made by the Law Commission and acted upon by the persons responsible for their inclusion in the de-regulation act are now responsible for the situation that London and local councils find themselves in. It's almost as if a group of people have been playing a game of chess moving their pieces into the correct position for their next move. Where will Uber finally makes its fortune for it backers? The day it is floated on the stock market and shares are sold. In the meantime investment money invested in Uber is a nice little tax loss. 5) Call me an old sceptic but I would be interested to know who the chess masters are.
All very murky, but to be fair to the Law Commission I think the process would have kicked off before the threat from Uber became obvious, or perhaps even before they were in the UK.