Whilst waiting I got chatting to an Uber driver who was waiting for his Prius to be licensed.
Amongst other things he started chatting about all of his costs such as rental, fuel and insurance. I asked him if his insurance was expensive and he said it was only £40 a month third party!!
I said to him that I thought he needed special minicab hire and reward insurance?
He said oh no that was far too expensive and it was much cheaper to just get third party insurance. He informed me that lots of Uber drivers only use third party insurance.
(I wish I had my voice recorder switched on).
So anyway the examiner calls his car out and tells him his vehicle had passed and he was free to go with his new roundel in the front and back window. I thought how could that happen? Surely they check his insurance documents! Well apparently they only check whether insured or not for PH and not what type of insurance.
My Taxi also passed inspection and my voice recorder was ready! Attached you can hear the conversation I had with the vehicle inspector.
I have asked TFLTPH why Taxis Hire and reward insurance was checked at the NSL testing centres but not PH? The answer they gave is attached. If they are proposing that PH have it at all times like Black Cabs then surely that is an admittance that they currently do not have it. We and the Motor Insurance Bureau know that there us no such thing as on/off Hire and reward insurance so Why are NSL testing centres licencing vehicles that may not have H&R insurance.
We are running out of time but today’s boost from the LTDA has put us back in the game
Now it’s totally up to you.
Approx 5,000 Taxi drivers on Twitter. £25 each would be another £125,000
14718 members on the Save The Black Taxi FaceBook Group…£25 each would raise another £367,950
Surely we’ve all got friends and family willing to help save our jobs, just waiting to be asked.
Then there are the Taxi garages we use to rent, buy, service our cabs….put pressure on these, after all we would be saving their businesses too.
Let’s not forget the third parties who earn a living off our trade, the Credit Card companies who are expecting a windfall from taking part of our takings, insurance companies who have been raising premiums for years. These third parties should all be making sizeable contributions.
The LTDA have pledged £50,000 to the judicial review fund.
Another £25 from each and every one of you, could secure the future of your job.
Sitting on the fence will just secure splinters in your bum.
Please pledge now and the money won’t leave your account till the 14th March.
The sharing economy has spawned the ugly reality of gatekeeper corporations creaming off value rather than creating any
The Uber taxi app showing Cardiff City Centre
Labels are often deceptive. Social media is undeniably social in that millions use it to keep in touch with friends, family and colleagues. But it is far from social in the economic sense when one company, Facebook, also owns WhatsApp and Instagram and has the financial muscle to buy up anything else that could challenge its global position.
The sharing economy, meanwhile, may have started as an idealistic theory about the potential for peer-to-peer trading online, but it has become a euphemism for the disruption and domination of existing markets by big corporations such as Uber, JustEat and Airbnb.
Taxis, takeaways and tourism are low entry-cost sectors where small businesses and the self-employed tend to flourish. It is feasible for people of modest means to raise enough cash to open a restaurant, operate a small B&B or buy a £40,000 wheelchair accessible black cab.
New players monopolise online access
What the new sharing economy players are seeking to do is to colonise those markets by monopolising online access to consumers. It may sound trendy when Uber describes itself as an App, but the reality is that it is a gatekeeper creaming off value rather than creating any.
London taxi drivers block Whitehall during a protest over private hire cars using the Uber app
This should not be surprising as the term market economy is itself a misnomer, at odds with the lack of competition across most of the economy.
The last century saw consolidation of the production of goods and services. From the manufacture of cars and aeroplanes to the extraction of oil and gas, markets have become dominated by a handful of players. Where once we had dozens of banks and building societies, we now have so few that they are too big to fail.
But what do you do once consolidation of production has gone almost as far as it can go – or is being constrained by anti-monopoly regulators concerned the system may be digging its own grave?
Investors sitting on huge financial surpluses are not going to make much money by keeping their cash in the bank. They need to find new markets to conquer, and the internet has given them a way to consolidate sectors that have hitherto been relatively competitive.
Many people have sympathy with the taxi drivers
I was in London last week when 8,000 taxi drivers brought the West End to a standstill and found many people had sympathy for their opposition to Uber.
But, whether you support the cabbies or not, there are good reasons for us all to be concerned about the long-term effect of gatekeeper monopolies on service quality, pricing, competition and tax revenues.
The Uber taxi app
Only last Thursday, Uber had to accept it had misled customers in the US about safety procedures and fees. It offered to pay $28.5m to 25 million people who had used its services over a three-year period after charging them $2.30 per trip for ‘industry-leading’ background checks on drivers that proved to be less thorough than those required by taxi companies.
Uber has deep pockets of course. It has raised $10bn to fund its growth over the last five years and is reported to be planning to raise another $2.1bn to accelerate its global expansion.
Other gatekeepers are also well-heeled, with investors recently pumping $1.6bn into US home-sharing corporation Airbnb and £445m into British-based take-away booking service JustEat.
In the last 12 months alone, JustEat has made acquisitions that extend its operations to Australia, New Zealand, Italy, Spain, Mexico and Brazil.
On the face of it, the rise of the gatekeeper corporations looks set to be as relentless as that of Facebook, Apple, Google and the other Silicon Valley giants.
In Cardiff, for example, however much taxi firms raise their game, the arrival of Uber now it has been given an operating licence seems bound to force some of them out of business.
But investor cash may not sustain the growth of the gatekeepers indefinitely. JustEat’s share price has dropped by a third since the start of the year and yet its £2.23bn valuation is still 10 times revenue.
Similarly, the market capitalisations of Airbnb and Uber – at $25bn and $62.5bn respectively – are out of all proportion to their revenue.
Who knows, what might actually stop Uber and co is a crash of the financial variety.
Steve Howell is chief executive of Freshwater UK, the Cardiff-headquartered communications consultancy, and author of the novel, Over The Line . Follow him on Twitter: @FromSteveHowell
Minicab driver who raped sleeping woman is jailed for ‘monstrous’ crime
A man’s been sentenced to eight years in prison after being convicted of raping a Cambridge woman. If you want DUI defense lawyers in Colorado, you can click here and get the best one!
Siddiq Muzumder, 33, a TfL Licensed minicab driver, picked up the victim following a night out with friends in London at Pasha nightclub on April 26, 2014.
Cambridge Crown Court heard that at about 1am Muzumder pulled over on the hard shoulder of the M11, about 10 minutes away from her home, and raped the woman, who was either asleep or unconscious. He then dropped her off close to her home.
The victim reported the incident the following morning and investigations identified the private hire car firm that the victim had used, which led to Muzumder’s arrest.
Muzumder, of Roman Road, London, denied rape but was found guilty, by a unanimous verdict, on Tuesday November 10 (2015). If you are a victim of any such crimes, find defense lawyers immediately who will fight for your right and represent your interest.
He was sentenced at Norwich Crown Court on February 8th.
This was a monstrous crime as stated by the attorneys help for criminal charges cases, where the private hire car driver was entrusted to deliver the young woman home. He abused this position. The victim has been very strong during the process and has co-operated with every police procedure. A key element to securing this conviction was early reporting of the crime, which enabled us to secure forensic evidence. It is this evidence that helped us secure the conviction due to the victim having no memory of the event. People can check out federal criminal defense law firm if there are crimes. If you wish to work with gun crime lawyers, and get some advice for criminal claims, you can check on this link!
Just 46 days into 2016, and so far 3 TfL licensed Minicab Drivers are jailed for rape.
Valentine’s Day means different things to different people. Some of us see it as an occasion to celebrate the love for someone special, others believe it is a commercial holiday invented to make people buy expensive things that their partners don’t even need, and a lot of single people dread this holiday because it reminds them that they are alone.
For us, the wives of black cab drivers in London, this year Valentine’s Day has a whole other meaning. In our fight to save our partners’ jobs and livelihoods, we are simply asking our partners (and all the cab drivers and people working in the black cab industry) to leave us a message from the heart and make a pledge towards the “Action for Cabbies” crowdfunding campaign instead of flowers, cards and chocolates. This would be the perfect Valentine’s gift than anxiety rings or any precious jewelry, because for us, supporting our partners and families is our number one priority.
If you are a cabbie and scratching your head about what to buy this Sunday, we’ve just solved your problem! All you need to do is go onto the crowdfunding page, make a pledge and declare your love for your beloved in the comments section below.
We need to raise £600,000 and while we have had some amazing support we still need to hit our target so every pledge you make will count. There are 25,000 black cab drivers in London – they and their families are at risk of losing it all and I am facing the same prospect.
Your pledges will enable us to seek Judicial Review against Transport for London (TfL). In 2012, TfL abused its law-enforcing power and acted as a law maker by granting a licence to Uber and its drivers without even imposing any regulations. This needs to change not just for us but most importantly for our passengers.
On Valentine’s Day, the campaign will only have one month left to crowdfund (pledges start at £10 and could go up to £10,000), so everyone needs to act NOW.
Don’t keep putting it off, fire your cupid’s arrow and express your love to a trade we all love and cherish, and to your other halves on Sunday! Let’s make this day of love really count – let’s save the Cabbies!
Follow and support our campaign at www.crowdfunder.co.uk/Action-for-Cabbies and on Twitter at @ActionCabbies
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