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Before I go out I've just observed that the NTA website doesn't have a link to the most populated and informative website on the Internet, that being TDO. Yet it does have a link to LTI and your own forum, which incidentally is in the death throws of extinction?
Do you not think the NTA should take account of popular informative forums such as this and post a link to TDO considering TDO has a link leading to the NTA website? Don't you think it's about time those at the NTA realised where the real action is and buried their prejudices towards free thinking sites such as this?
Do you agree Captain?
Regards
JD
The NTA links page is for members only, TDO isn’t a trade member and therefore isn’t permitted.
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I don't know if Jimbo meant to restrict his comments to Eastern Europeans or to include all immigrants? However if his thinking was to restrict the immigrant intake to just eastern Europeans then I expanded it to all immigrants. I don't suppose you have a politically correct problem with that, do you?
I don’t have a politically incorrect problem with it JD, but doubtless others may have.
I tend to believe a lot of our Asian drivers in this country were actually born here and they are as British as myself. Indeed, if they come originally from a country such as Pakistan I don’t have a problem with that either, because they were part of the Empire, Eastern Europe wasn’t.
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My whole point is that standards need to be raised from the level they are at now. You are on record as saying that Go skills should be abolished and their projected standards are too high. So you and I have a distinct parting of the umbilical chord when it comes to standards?
I didn’t actually say GoSkills should be abolished, I said I didn’t recognize a lot of the people on the various boards of GoSkills and I have a deep seated mistrust of people coming into the taxi trade telling us how crap we all are one minute, then telling us were the fastest growing area of the transport sector the next.
Of course GoSkills is employer led, I presume you realize what this will mean to your Average Joe cab driver?
Indeed, I pointed out above that I presumed Plymouth had standards of a sought already in place, yet East Europeans were successfully passing the local conditions which virtually include all of those wonderful things that GoSkills want us all to take. This has been confirmed by steveo who told us the following;
Plymouth PH take the same knowledge test as HC, but with a slightly lower pass mark accepted, however most seem to pass with 90% or more. they also have a medical, a Plymouth Council hour long driving assesment (similar to the DSA one) and a CRB check from their home land. the Taxifast training teaches them what they need to pass the test, get them all first aid trained and a few customer relations things.Quote:
The standards I speak of are undoubtedly high and that is why you don't like them. You think they are too high for the average immigrant to pass but most of the standards I speak of can be found in the Go Skills blue print. It is precisely because of the representative Taxi trades stand on restricting numbers that we find ourselves even discussing this aspect of quality entry control.
High entry standards should have been implemented years ago and it's only because of the fragmentation of the Taxi trade and the lack of lobbying from organisations such as the NTA and others that they weren't introduced.
You don’t speak of any specific standards, you merely cite standards should be high, without mentioning what they should be, similarly with the TDO document citing ‘quality control is the key’, which speaks of quality without actually saying anything other than restricted numbers is a bad thing.
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It is precisely because of the representative Taxi trades stand on restricting numbers that we find ourselves even discussing this aspect of quality entry control.
That is your opinion as opposed to fact, you should perhaps refer to the minutes of recent NTA conferences, I think you will find you are incorrect in your presumption.
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At the moment standards are a matter for each individual licensing authority but that has always been the case. There is no earthly reason why that could not change. If the trade was united I have no doubt that such changes would be implemented, whether it be to a national standard requirement or local standard requirement incorporating minimum national standards such as bylaw and legislative knowledge.
It may come as a serious shock, but I don’t actually disagree with the principle of a national vocational qualification for the licensed trades.
How it is coming about is what I take exception to, as I believe we all should.
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I have no idea what the standards in Plymouth are, do you? They certainly wouldn't incorporate the high standards of entry that I advocate? And they certainly won't incorporate the high standard of entry that Go Skills have highlighted. So your presumptions of the quality of Plymouths standards are more than likely incompatible with my own standards, and probably those advocated by Go Skills?
I find your take on this rather difficult to accept.
You state you have no idea about standards in Plymouth, then follow with words to the effect that the standards you don’t know about are not up to your own high standards? (which you don’t seem to have highlighted aside from verbal, written and otherwise basic English tests.
regards
CC
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