A mother gave birth in the back of a black cab as it raced along the Albert Embankment to take her to hospital with her city broker husband delivering their daughter on the back seat.
Gemma and Julian Le Witt, 36, welcomed their baby Sienna in the ride to St Thomas’ hospital. Ms Le Witt, a 34-year-old property surveyor, first suspected signs of labour at about 3pm last Saturday and the couple, from Battersea, called the cab through a Taxi app at about 5pm.
Cabbie Przemek Smolarek arrived at about 5.25pm, moments after Ms Le Witt’s waters had broken. By 5.43pm, 6lb 14oz Sienna had been born, two minutes before they reached hospital.
Mr Le Witt rushed in to get help and about a dozen doctors and midwives attended the cab. He was allowed to cut the umbilical cord.
Mr Smolarek waived the fare and the parents stayed the night in hospital. Mrs Le Witt, who has a two-year-old daughter called Chloe, said: “My labour started and it escalated very quickly.
The cab came and 10 minutes into the journey I realised she would be arriving very soon. I’ve been through this before and then lo and behold the baby started to arrive, much to Julian’s surprise.
“We reached the hospital and suddenly, there were 12 medical staff there and my husband was allowed back into the Taxi to cut the cord.
“I was so grateful it was super quick. The midwife said I was really lucky.”
Mr Le Witt said: “It was quite a shock, but it all happened so quickly. Before I knew it I was holding my beautiful daughter. It was incredible.”
Mr Smolarek, 41, has been driving his cab for seven years on night shifts. The Le Witts were his first passengers of the shift.
He said: “Gemma was fine at first look, she got into the cab by herself. When it all started I could see that Julian was trying to help as much as he could.
“My first thought was that ‘this is really happening in my taxi’. Two minutes later I could hear the baby was crying. At first I could not believe it.
Julian asked me to call ambulance but because we were only two minutes away from hospital I suggested that it would be quicker if I carried on driving.”
The couple decided against the name Alberta despite the location of the birth. Mrs Le Witt said: “If she had been a boy, maybe we would have gone for Albert.”
Three years after the English Civil War, in 1654 Oliver Cromwell set up the Fellowship of Master Hackney Carriages by Act of Parliament, and taxi driving became a profession.
This makes the licensed taxi trade the oldest regulated public transport system in the world.
The Public Carriage Office took on and ran the Taxi trade seamlessly for 150 years from 1850 till 2000 when we were seconded to TfL.
In that time, the London Taxi Trade became recognised world wide as the best regulated Taxi service in the world, second to none.
On the 3rd of July 2000, Transport for London took command of the capitals transport system which included the administration of Taxis and the newly licensed private hire trade.
But in just 19 years, TfL have almost destroyed the knowledge and have become a disgrace to public safety.
Last year, Uber were deemed unfit and proper to be a private hire operator. The licence renewal went to appeal and TfL (who put up virtually no resistance) lost the appeal and Uber were granted a provisional licence (the first time in the history of the trade) by a Judge who had obvious conflicts of interest through her husband.
Last Wednesday, at Westminster Magistrates Court, Uber London Limited, were fined £29,600 in total, after pleading guilty to two counts of permitting a Private Hire vehicle to be used with no insurance. They also pleaded guilty to two counts of failing to keep records in accordance with the 1998 Private Hire Act.
It’s also alleged that they were ordered to pay £22,000 in court costs, let’s face it….what’s £51,600 to a company that can shrug off a £4.5bn loss in just one quarter of a trading year.
Any other Private Hire operator in this position would have had their proprietors licence revoked the same day…. but TfL appear to be scared of Uber and have set a presidency by letting them them continue to operate in London.
Our largest Org ( who have just had a windfall of £21.4m with the sale of their property in W9) have informed their members through email, they have written a letter to the Mayor, reminding him of his stance on public safety. That’s it…. a letter to the Mayor?
STATEMENT FROM UTAG:
In light of today’s revelation that Uber has been fined £29600 for Failure to Keep Records, in breach of their probationary licensing conditions, we have been in discussions with our legal team with the view to giving them further instructions to take legal action.
The United Taxi Action Group functions on freely given donations from Taxi drivers and supporting services.
If you haven’t already, please consider donating to UTAG by using the link below.
As General Secretary of the UCG Trevor Merrill’s once said, “ it’s not the colour of the lanyard you wear, its the badge that hangs on it that counts”.
Monday 1st July saw The Albany Taxi Charity Fund return to the seaside town of Margate for its second outing of 2019.
This year Taxis (which can be seen on the MiramarSpeedCircuit website) left from various locations with the vast majority meeting at a school in Oprington where they decorated their taxis with balloons and Yellow Ribbons which has now become somewhat of a signature thing for the Albany.
25 of us met in the Medway Village of Upnor where we were treated to a slap up Full English Breakfast in the Tudor Rose pub after which 5 of the Taxis left to pick up Children from Chernobyl and the remaining 20 went onto to Rainham to collect children from the Step and Learn Centre in Rainham.
Once all of the Taxis had been allocated their children who all suffer from a range of disabilities, we set off to all meet up at the Moto Services on the M2 for which is used as a meeting place for the trip and a short comfort break for those that have travelled further.
At 11::00 am it was all back into the Taxis and the convoy formed up bound for Margate escorted by the Unity Support Riders and assisted by the Police who helped with the departure from the services.
The convoy of brightly decorated Taxis arrived in the Seaside town of Margate at around noon where the drivers dropped their exited children and carers at Dreamland before going off to park up their Taxis for the afternoon.
Once in Dreamland the drivers were treated to a lunch of chicken and chips while the children enjoyed free entrance to the ride’s courtesy of Dreamland.
After the children had enjoyed the afternoon in Dreamland they were then treated to chicken and chips and a disco before heading back to their taxis tired and ready for the journey home.
The journey down was uneventful which is totally different to the journey back home, on leaving Margate we were informed that the M2 was closed due to a lorry fire so alternative routes were required which was fine for those heading back to London but the fire was very close to where we needed to drop our children in Rainham.
After negotiating many Country lanes and getting stuck in quite a few we managed to drop some extremely tired children off at 7:45pm, nearly 2 hours later than expected, the journey home was very testing on all of the drivers so a big well done to you all.
The committee of the Albany would like to thank Dreamland, The Unity Support Riders and of course all of the drivers who gave the use of their taxis and their time for free as without the drivers the trip would not be possible.
The Knowledge, a new band comprising of two-thirds London cabbies, has released their first single “We Are London”. Initially launched via a lively YouTube video, it will be available for full download/streaming from the usual sources from 19 July.
The anthemic song, co-written and performed by London taxi drivers Joe Cartwright and Jon Cox, plus theatre impresario and entrepreneur Vaughan Williams, also features actor Lee MacDonald, best known for his role as Zammo in Grange Hill, guesting on lead vocals with the help of Jimmy John Shark and his team.
It was premiered live at the Taxis Show Talent Charity Gala in April, when it also featured Joe Cartwright’s daughter Ellie onstage.
The song is a tribute to London, with Lee narrating the verses in a style reminiscent of Phil Daniels on Blur’s “Parklife”. Lee went to school with Jon Cox, and recently made a guest appearance on BBC soap Eastenders.
The video also features a cameo from Maureen Lipman, driving the latest taxi on the market, LEVC’s zero emission capable TXE.
The members of The Knowledge first met when Joe and Jon interviewed Vaughan for a London Taxi Radio Video Special, while he was producing the first stage version of Jack Rosenthal’s classic film “The Knowledge”, which Maureen directed.
The band name derives from that interview and the varied links Joe, Jon, Vaughan and Maureen have to the KOL and the taxi industry.
The video includes a plethora of female taxi drivers as well as a number of their male counterparts and a wider selection of Londoners, singing and dancing their way through the track.
Dear Taxi Drivers, this is something you can all help with:
We have a request to ask you all, it will take a few minutes of your time, we have written an email template generator that will allow us to get the reasons why the ITA are calling protests that are happening in Parliament Square to your MP.
Specifically you as a driver go onto the page, put in your home postcode it then gets your MP’s name and email address you then put your full name and full address into the page pick a template it builds the email you sent to your MP, it produces the email address, subject line and the body of the email that you copy and paste into an email and send.
Over the weekend we have already sent an email that was similar to this one to every MP, but emails from individuals carry a lot more weight than mass emails from one source, the house of lords is being lobbied as well.
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