Taxi Driver Online

Skull ..three posts all devoted to me... what happened... did your brain keep stopping and starting.. keep squawking .. you behave like a headless chicken... and sound like a cracked record.... a very old one at that.. I believe you're very good at your new job walking round with placards... The end is nigh..... I bet you have a N V Q at that

Ps.. I know you're lost as usual... but this is a Taxi form... where people discuss Taxi related issues..... plantpot.

Burnley Taxi Drivers Threaten to Strike

16th July 2008

Angry cabbies have threatened to strike over plans to send them back to school to learn how to treat their customers properly.

Taxi drivers in Burnley have been told that they must enrol on a new B-tec course in customer service before they are fully qualified to get behind the wheel.

And private hire and hackney carriage workers, some of whom have picked up fares for 30 or 40 years, say they feel insulted by the Burnley Council demand.

With fuel costs and insurance premiums already rising, many drivers also resent the £180 fee for the course, which is being offered in conjunction with Chorley College.

The course is believed to concentrate on a number of customer service aspects, including helping passengers out with their shopping and opening doors for fares.

Blueprints for the B-tec scheme have been issued to private hire and hackney carriage drivers, with their respective associations given until the end of the week to make their representations to the local authority.

The borough’s licensing committee will then be asked to consider the plans at a town hall meeting on July 31.

Mohammed Arif, chairman of Burnley Private Hire Association, said: “There was a meeting about this last night and the members overwhelmingly decided that this is going over the top.

“Recession is coming, everyone has been hit hard, and now the council comes up with brilliant ideas and again we have to pay the price.”

Mr Arif says taxi drivers are so unhappy at the moves that they may be force to go on strike, unless their protests are considered.

The private hire association has already been lobbying local councillors, regarding their opposition to the course, ahead of the licensing committee meeting.

Jamil Munir, chairman of Burnley Hackney Carriage Association, said his group ‘strongly opposed’ the B-Tec course.

“The hackney trade has invested many thousands of pounds well before the council introduced deregulation. Maybe it should have introduced the measures then, before new applicants invested to obtain cabs, so they would have known what lay ahead,” Mr Munir added.

But Peter Henderson, principal licensing officer at Burnley council, said: “Through this proposal Burnley, like other areas across both Lancashire and around the country, are seeking to build on the skills existing taxi drivers have, and ensure new drivers meet the standards required for a top quality taxi service across the borough.”

He added: “It is important to stress the training programme is still at the proposal stage and the council will consider all views on the matter before a recommendation is made by the licensing committee and subsequent decision taken by the executive.”

Coun Roger Frost, Burnley council’s environment member, said: “We will work alongside taxi drivers to ensure these proposals deliver a professional taxi service that benefits both the drivers and the people of Burnley.”

Skull ..three posts all devoted to me... what happened... did your brain keep stopping and starting.. keep squawking .. you behave like a headless chicken... and sound like a cracked record.... a very old one at that.. I believe you're very good at your new job walking round with placards... The end is nigh..... I bet you have a N V Q at that

Ps.. I know you're lost as usual... but this is a Taxi form... where people discuss Taxi related issues..... plantpot.

Introducing quality controls after derestricting is madness.

It betrays a council saying eff you. A council, that doesn't know what it's doing, and isn't fit for purpose to be managing a taxi trade.

Such a negative response, from the champions of quality-control.... mind you that is only to be expected.....
The courses are voluntary here..... and being well attendance by new drivers..... all of which I should say are private hire.... I have a feeling that more dinosaurs are about to become extinct...... but I will do the course.... at least then unlike some I'll have a knowledge of their worth...

Go skills is a government-funded agency.... which has had £6.5 million in the last two years purely to sell this idea to all the councils and training colleges across England.
Their remit is to show the colleges how to access funding. and how to set up the courses.

Only dinosaurs and very stupid people will ignore the inevitable..... especially when the courses are supposed to be about driver safety and customer-care.

Sounds like another government scheme to subsidise a failing education sector.

Having spent fortunes to set up a ludicrous level of education provision, which has failed to attract the interest of the illiterate masses, the government now has to pour even more of our hard earned on these useless, ennecessary and unwanted schemes, just so it can justify itself.

Ex cabbies taking the courses. Well doesn't that prove the point.

Really Mr T. It's time you put your wit in gear before engaging your mouth. Keyboard in your case.

Even an idiot could see through this. Which kinda highlights where you appear on the evolutionary scale.

As for referring to Mr Skull as a moron. Tut tut.

Such juvenile meanderings merely illustrate how you've lost the argument. Remember to wash the plasticine of your hands before teacher gives you your morning snack.

OK..he's a Tut tut