Dusty Bin wrote:
I think that if Offtaxi or whatever is set up, then the aim will be to take licensing away from elected politicians and thus be less susceptible to lobbyists and vested interests, Tom.
After all, councillors, as politicians, can't really act independently, since they tend to avoid taking decisions that will upset the vested interests, and of course there's the question of nepotism and corruption, not to mention that they are professionally ill-equipped to make decisions of this kind.
Economic regulators are normally independent of the political process, we don't have councillors deciding the price of stamps, electricity prices, and major decisions involving the railways, and it does not need spelling out why. But there are properly qualified and independent economic regulators who do so.
Same with TfL/PCO, elected Mayor Ken is the head of TfL, isn't he?
Of course, there is a good recent precedent with the taxi regulator/tsar in Ireland.
Dusty
Dusty,
With all due respect you are very ill informed, niave or both, whatever is set up will be run by politicians.
this whisper is a shot in the dark, but I do wish people who pretended to represent the taxi trade like mick, understood its workings.
how many times has he to be told that a council can only levy fees to cover expenses?
yet he insists that his council do so to levy more money to ofset rates.
they must [edited by admin] themselves at Gateshead town hall, after all its not thier job to educate him, T and G CANNOT GET THROUGH HIS GREY MATTER
and I am sick of trying too.
Wharfie