Attempts to discredit Taxi Driver Online will not work.

The ethos of the witch-hunt and more modern manifestations of this (such as McCarthyism) are well known in history, and indeed any group of people is likely to see the similar persecution of those who proffer unorthodox opinions, whether the group be a country, tribe, political party, religion, trade or profession, to name but a few.

Of course, the taxi trade is no different, and this mentality is particularly evident in relation to the restricted numbers - the 'big issue' in the trade.  For example, in the wake of the OFT's report the editor of Taxi Talk magazine complained:

"Just like you people I want to see these cowardly faceless and bigoted bureaucrats challenged. Who do they think they are? Are they in cahoots with the pin striped suit brigade, perhaps collaborating to relieve the entire taxi trade of their hard earned income at every opportunity? Indeed, they no nothing about our trade and yet they can just come along and dictate our future."

Leaving aside the fact that any income lost would be as a result of the ending of the taxi plate cartels rather than anything 'hard earned', and the irony of using terms like 'bigotry' and 'dictate' in relation to anyone who questions these cartels, the paragraph nicely demonstrates the witch-hunt mentality, and similar sentiments have been evident in Private Hire and Taxi Monthly and the T&G's Cab Trade News.

While unlikely to make the annals of history, Taxi Driver Online has recently been subject to a minor witch-hunt itself, seemingly orchestrated by two long-term contributors to our discussion forum, ably assisted by several others.

While it is difficult to rationalise the methodology and thought processes of these people, the chain of events seemed to go something like this:

- a provincial newspaper article relating to the trade contained the name and city location of an individual who supplied some information for the piece;

- since these people did not like the contents of the newspaper article they assumed that the named individual was part of Taxi Driver Online;

- since Taxi Driver Online knows slightly more about the law than these people then they assume that we must be solicitors(!);

- ergo, if they find the name of a solicitor identical to and in the location of the person who supplied information for the newspaper article, then he must run Taxi Driver Online.

- for good measure, add a few arms and legs to this fantasy, and this solicitor who is supposedly running Taxi Driver Online is also using the site to sell legal services to local authorities.

Thus the following allegations appeared on our discussion forum:

This site is in place to front an attempt by a "specialist" taxi solicitor to convince every council that he can give them advice, at a cost, that will increase their revenue and get them out of trouble with the DfT, even though they aren't in any trouble in the first place.

I'll tell you what this person has done Sussex, he has seen how much consultancy work is undertaken by a person with more trade knowledge but less qualifications and guessed how much he could make from that. Then you add into the equation the "forming a policy which will withstand legal challenge" argument.

You see Sussex this bloke is telling councils that he will assist them in forming policies which will stop the need for court cases, claiming that his costs are lower than if the council had to defend either policy in court.

The solicitor's surname is used in subsequent messages, and his full name, business address and telephone number were published on a taxi firm's website as part of a claim that he runs Taxi Driver Online.

This is all errant nonsense.  The named solicitor has nothing whatsoever to do with this website, and we understand that he specialises in sports injury litigation.  Of course, since the claims are defamatory we will not repeat the name of the individual in question. We did contact him several weeks ago to inform him of the allegations, but we understand that he was in hospital undergoing major surgery and was thus unable to deal with the claims.  However, when contacted regarding the allegations a colleague of his described the claims simply as 'rubbish'.  At this point in time it is not clear whether or not the solicitor intends taking action against the conspirators, but for legal reasons the allegations have in the meantime been left in situ on our forum.

The conspirators were not happy with this however.  Another claim was:

I believe that the claims made within this website are defamatory, some of the claims made within Myth and Reality are equally questionable.

At least a thousand rambling words of other allegations were posted, including such heinous crimes as gathering information and sending it out again!

All this is nonsense.  We have never received any allegations relating to defamation, or any other impropriety, and we have refuted these and any other allegations of this type in a statement.  We would admit to doing research and disseminating the results of this, but mere common sense dictates that this is what the site was set up to do, whereas the conspirators make these things sound like some kind of Orwellian plot to indoctrinate the populace in the gospel according to Taxi Driver Online!

Of course, people of this nature are well known on the internet, and even have a specific term (troll) to describe them and their associated troublemaking, malicious and occasionally threatening behaviour.

The main conspirators have been intent on discrediting this site from day one.  False accusations (for example, that we misquote official documents), juvenile debating techniques (for example, ignoring counter-points but then raising the original point at a later date), abusive and often menacing messages seems to be their stock-in-trade.

Entirely without any rational foundation they thought nothing of publishing the name and contact details of a person completely unrelated to this site and did not even bother contacting this person to check the allegation.  Yet these same people have in the past complained when information that they themselves put up on our discussion forum was read by the public, and a further irony is that this apparently stems from a past claim that one of the conspirators had his vehicle 'torched' because of claims he made on another website.

Yet another irony is that the only complaint we have received as regards defamation related to claims made by one of the conspirators about a local authority, and his main co-conspirator had in the past to remove allegations made by himself on his own website.

One of these individuals recent appended the following to all his messages, presumably intended to be some kind of pathetic attempt to be able to say whatever he wants on our site with impunity:

All comments made by the character [the conspirator's name] should be taken in jest and all accusations are to be termed allegedly which will be stated in a court of law.

A more recent development is the setting up of a handful of discussion forums similar to our own, a primary aim of which seems to be to further disseminate the defamatory allegations and malicious falsehoods, as well as to discredit and denigrate this site more generally.  Amid the 'yah-boo sucks' puerility, the most substantive claim made about Taxi Driver Online thus far is that it's 'churns out biased crap', which is particularly ironic given the paucity of argument coming from these people, and in view of the fact that these people who think they should be afforded preferential treatment regarding taxi plates can accuse those who advocate equal treatment of not being impartial.

Amazingly, these people have been trying to use our forum to promote their own forums and websites carrying the false claims about Taxi Driver Online, and have then cried foul when we have tried to stop this!

In the interests of free speech we have bent over backwards to accommodate these people on our discussion forum, but sadly they have abused this privilege time and time again, have attempted to fundamentally discredit Taxi Driver Online and thus we have been left with no alternative but to ban them from our site.

Of course, these pathetic individuals will now be shouting 'censorship' and portraying themselves as martyrs to their cause, but anyone who has followed the discussions on our forum will be aware of the license that we have afforded these people, but in this regard we admit to misjudgement.  Moreover, when these people ran a website similar to our own they were known to ban people merely for disagreeing with them, an accusation that can never be made towards this website.  These arrogant and ignorant people seem to think they have some kind of fundamental right to use our website to illegally make malicious and defamatory claims about Taxi Driver Online and third parties, but of course we cannot allow this to continue.

However, if this website had been kowtowing to rather than challenging the vested interests in the trade, the actions and complaints of these individuals would never have arisen. If Taxi Driver Online can be accused of any wrongdoing, then Taxi Talk, Private Hire and Taxi Monthly, Cab Trade News and several websites should stand similarly accused.  But the problem with those trying to undermine this website is that they cannot stand the facts being made known and people having opinions contrary to their own.

But, to mix current a 'buzzword' with terminology rooted in the past, being 'off-message' often begets the witch-hunt.  The truth often hurts, but it will out.