Top row Kahn, Kalifa, bottom row, Sloman Liebreich
Jamie Hawes works out of Heathrow and recently discovered the credit card machines TFL have approved for cabs were supplied by Worldpay, whose vice chairman happens to be a Ron Kalifa.
This man is also a newly drafted in member of the TFL board.
Obviously, he and Worldpay stand to earn a considerable chunk of money from this but, for some reason, TFL failed to mention it when they announced plans to force this on us.
This got me thinking so I decided to do some digging myself.
I looked at TFL’s board members including their registered interests and found some interesting stuff.
Firstly:
Sadiq Khan is Chair.
His brother Arif works for Hays Recruitment and has been assigned to TFL as an infrastructure engineer.
He’s brother-in-law, Tahir Ahmad is director of Project Leaders LTD, a management consultancy with Network Rail.
Second:
Ron Kalifa, as stated above is vice chairman of Worldpay.
This is a card payment company that TFL has approved for use in cabs. What I discovered was that he has an interest in the growth of contactless payments and pre-pay cards, something TFL have been keen to promote.
Third: Dr. Lynn Sloman.
She’s founder and director of Transport for Quality of Life and specialises in all things green.
Amongst her company’s clients are Department of Transplant UK, London Borough of Southwark and curiously ASLEF, RMT, TSSA and Unite.
She’s also a board member of cycling England.
Fourth:
Michael Liebreich.
Chairman of Bloomberg Advisory Board of New Energy Finance.
He’s also a director of Pearlshare, a travel app but more interesting is that he’s a director of Chargepoint Inc.
This is a company based in US and supplies charging stations for electric vehicles, it’s one of the largest vehicle charging networks in the world.
Any alarm bells ringing??
In plan sight, see all the TfL board members and links to conflicts of interests. >CLICK HERE <
Add to this lot in pic number three, paragraph 3.4 you’ll notice that Bob Oddy and Steve Wright have been removed and are no longer on the board of TFL. They have not been replaced with anyone from the Taxi trade.
So in summary, in-spite of his promise to save the cab trade, Sadiq Khan has
• Sorted his family out, brought a man in to force in the CC issue and fleece us of thousands
• Bought in a woman who is obviously green mad and bent on making London a cyclists paradise whilst strangling it to death.
• Appointed another who’s destined to make millions from installing charging stations that we’ll be paying for to power up the cabs we’re being forced to buy.
And all of this is happening without any representation from our trade being allowed on the TFL board.
Now, in light of what you’ve just read can anyone honestly feel that Sadiq is still our man?
The right people are being menouvered into the right positions in order to slam shut any possibility of a return to the trade we remember.
The media once again slammed us for disrupting people’s lives last Tuesday, with never a mention of the shattered wreckage of our lives left from the wake of 16 failed TFL years.
I don’t believe Tuesday’s demo was the success it hailed to be.
The police controlled it from start to finish with great effect. Those in Whitehall were naturally jubilant at their efforts, especially delivering a letter to no.10 as they should be but London was not locked up as it should’ve been and in that respect I was disappointed as were others.
Add to that the drivers (scabs) that were working despite a demo state being obvious and I think a new approach needs to be put into motion.
It’s plain to see TFL, Khan and co. have no interest in us whatsoever.
As with all politicians, his promises were obviously made just for the campaign and in reality complete bullshit, there’s no other explanation.
TfL are still churning out an extra 600+ PH per week, still Uber accidents each day, etc, etc. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING HAS CHANGED.!!
Christmas is looming which will be closely followed by January, eventually followed by May with Uber’s license renewal date. I’d say if we carry on with the current plan of being good, predictable little cabbie chappies that renewal is cut and dried.
We need to change tack, take back control of demos, control of our ranks and control of our future.
The orgs are bound by procedures, due process, rules, regulations and time, they do their best. But time is a luxury we don’t have.
We must make what little we have left count.
It’s clear to so many people that we need to bring London’s corporate giant down to a fair fighting level, one where the odds and laws are not stacked in their favour.
A fair level playing field with everyone playing to the same rules, that’s all we want. Up to now we tried to use the law to fight our corner but it’s failed and I think we’ve been duped into the trick of misdirection.
While we’ve gone down the legal route, our enemies have been laying the groundwork for their future in our trade, e.g., Worldpay and Chargepoint Inc.
I was recently described as an angry man, I am.
I’m angry at TFL, Uber, the general publics desertion of us, the orgs, those within our trade who’ve not proved as genuine as they should….But most of all I’m ashamed at the cab trade for allowing this to happen.
The trade’s full of fairly hard men who stand for no nonsense at all yet as a trade, with the obvious exception of the demonstration faithful, we really are gutless. Much to TFL’s joy.
As a New Years resolution can we all do something that I’ve never seen in 23 years and actually come together, stand up and fight for something we all earned the right to do on the Knowledge.
Show some bulldog spirit and take our future back from those greedy, vile, thieving bastards who suck the lifeblood from the working class because nobody says no.
If we all say no and stand firm 2017 could be a good year instead of just being insignificant like last year, and the year before that.
The orgs will say great strives have been made and to some degree that’s true, but it’s not enough because we’re still struggling.
As I’ve said many times before, we have no friends in high places so it’s all down to us.
On Sunday we had the remembrance services in Whitehall, a day of pride and remembrance and as usual hundreds of cabbies gave up their time to ferry old soldiers round London free of charge, but you won’t see that in City AM.
You will see the disruption we caused on Tuesday though because that’s what we’re up against, the power of misdirection illustrated right there.
The media have that power but if we create so much disruption, in much greater numbers they can’t ignore us when we try and get our points across.
The damage we could inflict on London could be so severe the public would demand an in depth explanation, therefore giving all media outlets no option but to allow us to speak unhindered.
Perhaps I’m talking crap but we’re no further forward than we were this time last year, so what have we got to lose?
Drive safe and be lucky
Harry Wall.
