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The madness has to end
I don’t know if it was just me, but December seemed to see an increase in publicity about the perils of illegal taxis and minicabs. I think this needs applauded, public awareness is obviously important and this issue should highlight the need for greater enforcement, but is it as clear-cut as it appears?
The Suzy Lamplugh trust recently reported some quite startling figures. Some 30,000 illegal drivers responsible for an estimated 5,000 sexual assaults each year. In London, illegal drivers are allegedly responsible for raping one woman every three days.
A recent TV programme showed the attitude of a proportion of young females, early evening and sober, telling reporters they only ever use licensed vehicles to get home, six hours later intoxicated and hailing anything on four wheels licensed or unlicensed.
Whilst the above items have been justifiably reported on a national basis, there are some local stories that don’t make national headlines. On Christmas Day, a driver in Portsmouth was subject to an attack by a gang with a fencepost, they robbed him of his cash, stole a ‘Tom-Tom’ navigator and two mobile phones.
In Peterborough, three drivers were robbed during the Christmas period, in one incident a knife was held to a drivers throat and he was robbed of his takings, the situation seems so bad one firm is considering not operating during certain periods.
Indeed, even in little Carlisle, the wife of the local taxi association’s secretary was subject to an assault during December leading to weeks off work.
The size of the Town or City doesn’t seem to matter when it comes to taxi drivers being intimidated; Scarborough and Bridlington are equally as likely to have taxi drivers subjected to abuse as Manchester and London.
It would be remiss of me not to give a passing mention to Bryan Rowland of the trade publication Private Hire Monthly. Each year he correctly advises drivers on how to approach the busy festive period, never keep quantities of cash on your person, keep in contact with each other, radio systems having ‘code-words’ for drivers in trouble etc. Yet, each New Year both Bryan’s paper and this magazine report the consequences of December’s mayhem.
Something, I don’t know what, needs done about all of this.
Its reasonable to suggest if drivers feel threatened working certain periods they will try to avoid doing certain jobs and picking up in certain areas, indeed, they may feel obliged to take matters into their own hands, which I am certain is not what law abiding citizens actually want to do nor could be condoned.
If cameras in licensed vehicles reduce these attacks, and the considered opinion is that they are a deterrent, then we should be given the necessary funding for them or at the very least help and support in finding funding, is the life of a cab driver worth a couple of hundred pounds?
It seems reasonably clear that funding can be found in many areas to finance the use of taxi marshals on taxi ranks, yet similar funding, even by way of grants towards the financing of cameras, seem beyond the reach of both the taxi and private hire trades in many areas (although there are some notable exceptions). Indeed, it could be argued the taxi marshal schemes last for an indefinite period, whereas cameras last for many years.
The attitude of some does leave a lot to be desired. In recent newspaper reported as a result of attacks the trade were wanting funding for CCTV. The following response came from one councillor; "We have told drivers that their taxis are their business premises. If you have a shop what you do inside is your problem. It is not anybody else's, the council or otherwise. What they do in their business premises is up to them."
Which isn’t exactly the most caring response made by a politician, no doubt the person who made the comment will either get promoted, booted out during the forthcoming local elections or, more hopefully, catch some kind of STD. I have to laugh when I see the comment ‘what they do in their business premises is up to them’ because the statement is fiction, local authorities have very much say in what drivers can and cannot do on their ‘business premises’. I wonder what the same politician would say if drivers began to carry ‘Sticky’ the baseball bat or Smelly the CS spray?
Indeed, as many of you will be aware council offices are bringing in more and more security measures to prevent possible attacks upon council workers.
The attacks mentioned are merely the proverbial tip of the iceberg. As you may have guessed, I am a white Anglo-Saxon male; I am rarely subject to racial abuse. Yet, my Asian colleagues, doing the same job elsewhere, are subject to abuse of one form or another on a daily basis, yet for the most part incidents are not reported. It is either a case of drivers not wanting to be of bother, or of drivers, refusing to believe something will be done. Moreover and perhaps more sadly, perhaps it’s accepted as par for the course.
I would not like to suggest the attacks on Asian or ethnic drivers are racially motivated, it is reasonably clear attacks on cab drivers occur regardless of the colour of cab drivers skin, which in a perverse way shows there’s no racial disbarment from British thuggery (good old multi cultural Britain, our thugs show no racial intent?). Although there can be little doubt a proportion of attacks have racial undertones.
In a good many areas the major majority of the licensed private hire and hackney carriage drivers are Asian. It’s reasonably obvious by the use of even remedial mathematics, if the majority of drivers are of a certain ethnic origin, then pro rata the percentages will reflect this.
All I have written will be of any consequence to the family of Mahmood Ahmed, a father-of-six from Keighley, who was brutally murdered collecting a fare in Keighley last year.
As previously stated, attacks on cab drivers are treated as localised issues, yet it is quite obviously it is a nationwide problem. Perhaps it is time for the national taxi trade bodies to take a lead here, whilst condemning attacks and abuse is fine, it actually achieves zero, such a lead would be appreciated by everyone in the licensed trade and long overdue (I might add).
Perhaps hackney carriages should have mandatory driver screens or partitions? I can recall the National Taxi Association’s (NTA) old friend Phil Warren, a respected trade journalist and editor, telling the NTA conference that the incidents of attacks on drivers of purpose built vehicles was significantly less than those upon drivers of saloon cars.
Going back to figures publicised by the Suzy Lamplugh Trust, perhaps the trade need similar figures, ‘X’ amount of robberies and assaults on drivers each year these would be extremely useful figures to have at hand to know the exact scale of the problem, which from newspaper reports seem massive.
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Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
George Carlin
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