Taxi Driver Online

Deregulation......It's a political thing.

We seem to be rather keen on consipracy theories at the moment, deregulation obviously emotes a strong emotion within the taxi trade.

Mr Button, in his book, "Taxis, I know best", went to great lengths to explain why taxis are delimited and not deregulated.

As you will be aware, after taxis are deregulated, they still have regulations to follow, as laid down by the local authority. The only aspect that is deregulated is numbers control, and we are led to believe that this is no longer deregulation, but a more easy to swallow term called delimitation.

As you might expect, I dont really see it in the black and white terms of the eloquent Mr Button.

As regulations on numbers control are effectively deregulated, the term deregulate is actually just as true for the hackney carriage trade as it is for fishing, electricity or any other form of industry.

The fishing delimitation / deregulation is a quite interesting analogy, fishing permits have always been regulated, yet as soon as they issue more they become delimited. Of course fishermen state that issuing more licenses will deplete fish stocks, whereas would be permit holders claim the contrary.

The very fact that great lengths have been gone through to avoid the word deregulate, does actually tell you something about the public nervousness over the issue.

We have been told to trust the markets, a free market will dictate and competition will reduce prices and improve service.

The fact of the matter, in terms of formerly state owned utilities, is that the profits made now go to a small number of shareholders as opposed to back into the country.

An interesting point was privatisation, which was effectively deregulated control from public to private ownership. The rail industry, which is a particular favourite of mine, due to family links going back a generation or two, since privatisation has recieved billions of pounds of tax payers money. Indeed, far more money that it ever recieved whilst in public hands. This is obviously to the benefit of a few people, as opposed to the people of the country.

Indeed, it has been stated that the lack of investment, whilst in private hands, led to failures that has caused crashes killing people.

One fear of the hackney trade is that dregulation will lead to similar occurances within the hackney industry, although it is generally accepted that vehicles will still be tested by local authorities.

When people advise that these businesses never made a profit whilst being state owned, they seem to forget that they were never designed to make a profit, they were designed to offer the public a service.

Of course, the question should be asked as to whether there is a certain degree of corruption here, is it a complete mystery that the former goals of the British Labour Party seem to have been dropped in favour of the free market? The political scene now has three political parties with virtually no differences, save for the Lib Dems anti war stance.

Only the fringe parties such as the Socialists and the Greens have came out and stated their position concerning deregulation.

Indeed the greens recently stated this:

"The uncoordinated privatisation and deregulation of many parts of the UK transport industry has contributed to a lack of coherent transport policy for freight and passenger movements. The Green Party believes that public regulation allowing democratic accountability of transport providers is generally the best management system."

The greens do tend to have a point, it is sad their intelligent view of how public transport should be managed will not see the light of day under any government.

I would additionally state, for the record, one aspect of deregulation that Mr Button seems to have forgot, its only a small point, but relevent to the argument of deregulation.

A private hire car and company are precisely that, a private hire, it is the individuals choice to pre book and hire that vehicle.

A hackney carriage is a taxi service, it is obliged by license to perform a service at a fare decided upon by the local authority.

_________________
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
George Carlin

Further to the points raised above.

The British do not seem content to only extort money from people within its own boundaries, we are now encouraging the spread of deregulation abroad.

"Privatisation of services in developing countries – The UK has taken the lead in promoting privatisation of public services in developing countries, despite the increases in poverty this has brought. DFID has channelled millions of pounds from the aid budget to privatisation consultants such as KPMG, PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Adam Smith Institute, engaged to ‘advise’ developing country governments on the privatisation of their public services."

You really got to ask if there is not something more sinister about deregualtaiuon than you are being led to believe. Years ago we had an Empire ruling the world by the gun, far more honest than ruling countries because we hold the purse strings.

The point I am trying to get across is, the true deregulation concept actually benefits the few, to the true cost of many.

In Carlisle this week a local pub, popular with students and the younger generation was fined £10,000 for keeping dirty kitchens. Whist you may think this has nothing to do with deregulation, I believe it has. An entire street in the City has been transformed into a location full of pubs and clubs, naturally the increase in pubs and clubs has led to the same number of people being spread out, whereas once there was a limited number and everyone was making a living. Now we have more and obviously the money earned is less well spread out. The upshot is that staff are reduced and corners are cut.

The same scenario as mentioned in my last post regarding the rail privatisation, no real difference just different industries.

The bus service in many towns has been a victim of deregulation, from the hands of public ownership and operating in a manner aimed at service, we have it now in private hands operating for profit. Non profitable routes are ceased and profitable routes are concentrated on. This is obviously okay if you happen to live on a profitable route, but if you live in the countryside you are invariably less well served than before deregulation.

_________________
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
George Carlin

So CC what your saying is that councils should properly consider the number of vehicles required to service the need of the consumers, then do everything within their power to match that need to provide the right number of vehicles in order to maintain the best level of service possible, or resonably attainable.

B. Lucky

The problem with the two words is that we are dealing with councillors who really know nothing about our trade, thus when people speak of deregulation, councillors, in the main, think of sheds with dodgy drivers. Whereas when people talk of de-limitation, councillors still haven't a clue what its about, so they have to ask, not assume.

Personally I believe that those that mention deregulation, do so to scare-monger.

_________________
IDFIMH

Hehe,

No GA, I actually trying to start my own political party cant see where you drew your conclusion from

hehe Sussex, I knew you'd say that. I think Mr Button thought that too.

and I aint finished yet.

Captain cab

_________________
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
George Carlin

Source, the Green Party;

The 1985 Transport Act saw the deregulation of all local bus service in Great Britain except London. London, which relied most heavily on public transport was seen as too difficult. Since 1986 anyone has been able to operate a bus service, with no restrictions on timetables and fares. Indeed, there is not even a requirement to inform local authorities, PTEs or even users of the timetable or the fares.

Local authorities and PTEs were expressively forbidden to run any bus services themselves, to subsidise any service that was is competing with a privately run service, or to subsidise any bus service except through competitive tendering on a route-by-route basis, which made integration with other bus services impossible.

Local authorities and PTEs were expressively forbidden to introduce any integrated ticketing scheme without consent of all private operators. Any such scheme then had to be operated purely in the interest of the private operators.

The immediate result was sheer and utter chaos - the bus wars had begun. While the number of buses increased dramatically, the number of passengers, which had been stabilising in the early 1980s, fell dramatically again. Overall, bus patronage outside London fell by 7% in a year, and had fallen by more than a quarter by 1993.

Bus fares also rose, in metropolitan areas by more than 40% in real terms in the first eight years of deregulation.

Bus operating costs did fall slightly (by about 10% between 1986 and 1999), mainly because of the wholesale sacking of middle management and a massive reduction in average wages of drivers. Lack of supervision and driver vacancies are still major causes for the unreliability of buses in many towns and cities in the UK.

Meanwhile, the government increased its pressure on local authorities to sell off municipal bus companies, often by withholding parts of local authority's block grant, while "allowing" them to use the money from any privatisation of local services. Today, there are only 17 municipally-owned bus companies left, yet it is no coincidence that cities that are still dominated by locally owned bus companies (like Edinburgh and Ipswich) tend to have the best bus services.

_________________
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
George Carlin

Generally I agree with that, but in Gateshead for example when the restriction was maintained for saloons but WAVs were granted "new" HC plates THE COUNCIL used the termanology DEREGULATION OF NUMBERS.

Now we have had this "discussion" before Suspicious, the problem being when you mis-quote you normally edit that statement and remove the "of numbers" bit, then claim that I'm misleading.

That is why I agree with your statement above, as you use the term deregulation far more often claiming that is what we have said, when all we want is proper investigation and correct policy to supply the services expected of us, rather than your idea of complete delimitation without justification which has been proved to cause hardship to the majority of people curently involved in the trade.

B. Lucky

Of course whilst I was referring directly to industry, we should not forget the deregulation of another less well publicised industry, one that has a turnover of millions of pounds and indeed leads to its own specific by problems.

The gaming and gambling industry

If I can quote;

"During the summer the National Audit Office published a report on the Lottery. According to the Labour MP Alan Williams, it exposes the "worst administrative incompetence" that he has ever encountered. Apparently of the 21 checks devised to be run by Oflot on Camelot only one had been fully implemented. (5) As a result one national newspaper has called for his resignation or dismissal."

so much for the regulators, put in place to keep an eye on the deregulated trade.

Captain cab

_________________
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
George Carlin

Now did I mention the food and slaughter industry being deregulated?

To further the point about deregulation being good, perhaps we should go back a couple of years to the foot and mouth outbreak;

"The deregulation of the meat industry has only added to the problems of mass culling. Due to the closure of two thirds of Britain's abattoirs, the transport of animals over long distances has spread the disease. Now there is a shortage of slaughterers to carry out the culling, and over 100 volunteer vets have had to be brought in from abroad to oversee the process."

_________________
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
George Carlin

Oh yes, I forgot to mention that BSE was also a fault of deregulation.

"Last week the British Government made a highly emotive attack on the Medina report. But what was significant was that no attempt was made to contradict one of the central messages of the report: that it was the British Government which was principally responsible for BSE because of the deregulation of the meat-rendering industry in the early 1980s."[/quote]

http://www3.europarl.eu.int/omk/omnsapi ... CTPERS=159

_________________
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
George Carlin

I think the point I am trying to get across here is valid.

Delimitation is wordplay, as Sussex even pointed out, the term Deregulation creates public uncertainty and fear. If deregulation was the good thing, why should it create fear?

It was Mr Button who favoured the term delimitation, in terms of the taxi trade being deregulated. Why? to make it easier for the public to accept.

If the government cannot get something as important as food right, if they can manage to create a worse bus service, train service etc, why the hell should we trust them to get the taxi service right?

All the above industries have watchdogs, and all have screwed up at somepoint, so the watchdog proves what?

If people state delimitation the public will not care, if it is stated as deregulation, they'll want an input, due to the incompetence of deregulation in other industries.

Captain cab

_________________
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
George Carlin

http://www3.europarl.eu.int/omk/omnsapi ... CTPERS=159[/quote]

SUSSEX..have you been eating deregulated meat??? explains it all mr T..

hehe Mr T, not my main point but I suppose someone was going to say that

I thought this provoking thread would have caused more of a flutter, either I'm right or the points been missed or the words are too complicated*


(*delete as applicable)

Captain cab

_________________
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
George Carlin

The concept of deregualtion was "always" attributed to numbers. It was never attributed to standards or regulations. Mr Button in all his wisdom knows this. I have never read his book but I don't have to. When people talk about deregualtion with regard to the taxi trade they mean numbers and nothing else.



What a masterfull deduction. I bet it didn't take you long to come to that conclusion?



Since when has the fishing industry been subject to deregualtion? Licenses are restricted because of conservation and have been since 1971 after we became part of the European common fisheries policy. You probably havent got a clue as to what fishing licenses are allowed in the uk and why they are allowed. Your anology is just pie in the sky because the fishing idustry is not about equality, growth or supplying a better service its all about conservation of fish stocks.

If you havent already realised? the exact opposite applies in the service industry. The service industry which the Taxi is a part of, Is all about competition, or has that concept escaped your mind.

Best wishes

JD

The heavy sarcasm in the above response I find very typical of recent posts, it does the site no favours, so I'm off to pastures new.

Concerning fishing, I dont recall mentioning this country, let alone the european continent.

_________________
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
George Carlin