Jochen Lembke wrote:
Hello from old Brighton (at the minute) on this thread.
I just want to drop a line in here about a rumour I heard at the HCO here about the new cab act.
Obviously these dire times where they had to march along the ranks in Prague begging the colleagues there to come to England for they have no more applicants are long gone.
Now they are apparently discussing that an application for a new licence may only be possible after 5 years UK-residency, for CRB check reasons.
Obviously this wouldn't bother anybody here (than, erm, perhaps me), but I wanted to say that anyway.
It's not a failing of foreign folks Jochen, it's liberty taking English folks who can't get other English folks to drive for them anymore due to cheap fares, high rent and vile public at certain times of day, the oversupply of hopeful foreigners has meant that a nasty job that used to pay reasonable is now falling behind the min wage in this country.
I heard recently the local PH driver lifespan was now 2 weeks, I used to estimate it at 3 years, but the roll em in roll em out machine now means it takes just two weeks for a driver to work it out he took £370 and paid out £340 for a car and fuel leaving him £30 profit, personally I'm disgusted that foreigner's are being sourced in their own countries, fair enough if a man made his own way over eyes wide open, and especially the ones that are poverty spec anyway like Romania,Bulgaria etc, it's probably cleaning them out just to get here, we have enough unemployed people here already, they could drive the cabs if need be, basically the taxi trade is now dragged so far down it's becoming a 4 seater bus service.
I'm surprised you wanted to come back, I assume you are German but get about Austria and Switzerland? as well, I know Brighton is a nice place, but most of the UK is a depressed slum.