Taxi Driver Online

I see what you did there, because I think 'midwit' is just a slightly softer way of saying 'half-wit'

(Or 'midwit' is just a euphemism for 'half-wit', technically speaking ).

But seems quite an in vogue word among certain political commentators and the like - suspect they'd really like to say 'half-wit', but 'midwit' doesn't sound quite so harsh and patronising

A couple of definitions of midwit. I prefer the second one



The New Statesman also seems to have done an article about it, but can't be bothered reading :

https://www.newstatesman.com/comment/20 ... idwit-trap

Further steps taken as investigations continue into Uber drivers 'touting for business' at Gatwick

https://www.sussexexpress.co.uk/news/po ... ck-4672588

Letters are to be sent to Transport for London, the Department for Transport and Gatwick Airport Ltd about Uber drivers ‘touting for business’ at the airport.

The situation was raised during a meeting of Crawley Borough Council’s licensing committee on Tuesday (June 18).

Officers are already carrying out an investigation into claims that licensing rules are being breached to the detriment of local drivers.

But committee members voted unanimously to take further steps.

While officers were asked to complete the investigation ‘as speedily as possible’, chairman Imran Ashraf (Langley Green & Tushmore) agreed to put pen to paper, sharing the committee’s concerns.

He will write to Gatwick Airport Ltd asking the company to engage with licensing officers to ensure provision for licensed vehicles at the airport is compliant with licensing law.

He will also ask Transport for London to carry out enforcement visits frequently and/or authorise the council’s licensing officers to act on their behalf.

And he will write to the Department for Transport expressing concern that the current licensing regime makes it increasingly difficult to address breaches, and asking for the law to be looked at again.

Gatwick taxi drivers gathered in numbers outside the town hall before some moved inside to watch the meeting.

Safety and the financial cost of losing business to Uber were their top concerns.

Don Barnes, Unite branch secretary, who works for Airport Cars, said Uber cars were parking up in the Authorised Vehicle Area, coming and going at the rate of one a minute while the drivers licensed for the airport were ‘sitting in the crew room for two hours before they get a job’.

Calling for Uber to be geo-fenced from both Gatwick and Crawley, he said: “Gatwick is not in London – Gatwick is in Sussex. Uber are not part of Sussex – Uber should be removed. Simple as that.

“They are breaking law, they must be held accountable.”

Nick Venes, a licensed driver and Unite representative, speaking for 315 drivers at Gatwick, called for protection from the council as licensing authority.

To applause from other drivers, he said: “We pay nearly half a million pounds to be not protected – we are not protected at all. Why is that? Are we just a cash cow?

“We need help. We need people that are going to be in that licensing department actually for us, not against us.

“You should be here helping the licensed drivers. That is not happening.”

The meeting was attended by MP hopefuls Peter Lamb (Lab, Northgate & West Green) and Zack Ali (Con, West Sussex County Council).

Mr Lamb said the national licensing system was ‘fundamentally broken’ and was getting ‘harder and harder to enforce’.

He added that until any changes came into effect, the council had ‘a duty, not just to [drivers] but to the public at large, to ensure that licensing rules are enforced for their safety and for the safe operation of the trade within Crawley’.

Mr Ali said: “When we have a company operating here and drivers which are not licensed in Crawley, a company not permitted to work in Crawley, freely working day in day out – hundreds of Uber drivers picking up jobs over here – we need to take action and we need to take that action now rather than later.”

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IDFIMH

They are. Uber drivers don't wait at the airport as it's £10 an hour to park there. They wait in Crawley. So maybe that councillor needs to write to himself to explain matters.


I think that is the most sensible path to take, but by asking the law to be looked at again the councillor is saying existing laws allow Uber drivers to do what they are doing. So exactly what are the licensing officers going to investigate FFS?


Why not enlighten us all as to exactly what laws are being broken?

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IDFIMH

Saw this in the Argus rehash yesterday - I mean, you'd think there would be a bit more clarity on this kind of stuff, nearly a decade after the Deregulation Act, and several decades since the likes of Delta working cross-border on an industrial scale under the triple lock


https://www.theargus.co.uk/news/2439364 ... port-uber/

And the worst thing is that the likes of TaxiPoint and PHTM will rehash all that sort of stuff without batting an eyelid, and without even mentioning the words 'private' and 'hire' at times. And use terms like 'ride-sharing' or 'ridehail'.

Which suggests to me that they either don't understand what's going on, or they're trying to spin a line, or it's just plain old disinformation

And the likes of Dave Lawrie on the Preston Police Facebook page the other day lecturing them about using the wrong terminology (Don't know if he's still part of the NPHTA, but he was secretary for a while, I'm pretty sure )

https://www.phtm.co.uk/news/6828/phtm-n ... uber-again

https://www.taxi-point.co.uk/post/cross ... licensed-u

Accidentally put in the same PHTM link twice earlier, but that's it changed to the TaxiPoint article.

But while the PHTM piece doesn't even use the term private hire, at least TaxiPoint does differentiate taxi and PHV. But later it just seems to use the word 'taxi' generically, which hardly helps clarify the issues in a trade journal.

And also uses 'private hire taxi'

I think most of the little trade press we have just tell members of the trade what they want to hear.

The truth or sense of those articles matters little.

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IDFIMH

Saw another piece on TaxiPoint, which rehashes yet another BBC piece. (I think this is a new piece, but have read so many recently in various publications I'm losing track.)

The TaxiPoint version states this again, specifically:


What's to stop the Crawley-plated cars working in Brighton, say? Nothing, I'm pretty sure.

So there's no 'regulatory disparity'.

And, indeed, it may be 'detrimental to the local economy', but, er, that's what happens in 'economies', rightly or wrongly. Just like big local private hire firms will crush smaller local private hire firms, and individual drivers. There are umpteen bigger taxi firms in St Andrews and similar independents who are detrimental to me, but there's not that much I can do about it, other than trying to do likewise. But simply can't be ar$ed

The BBC's piece uses that suspicious line 'touting for business'. Which as usual suggests the criminal offence of actually touting, or approaching/soliciting customers

But I suspect it doesn't mean that at all. Nor even illegal plying for hire. Instead it probably just means picking up fares at Gatwick

But the 'touting for business' line apparently comes from the council's licensing function. Maybe they should be asked to clarify what they mean, rather than using something largely meaningless like that.

However, this is perhaps the killer line in the BBC's report:


I suspect that sums things up better than a few thousand words in the press reports.

Saw this in TaxiPoint yesterday - I think they think this helps the case of the Crawley trade, and undermines Uber's case.

However, I think it actually confirms what I often say - the likes of the Lakes article makes it sound like drivers are commuting from Wolverhampton to work in the Lake District, or whatever

But they're actually just going to the Amazon of 'taxi' licensing, because it's easier, quicker and cheaper to badge/plate-up there

So the point about lots of TfL-plated drivers living in Crawley simply confirms that it's not about London-based drivers working in Crawley rather than local drivers working under a national brand, rather than a local brand

(Of course, some of the drivers plated by TfL and living in Crawley could mainly be working in London, and effectively just commuting from Crawley into the smoke. But, equally, there's no hard and fast rule about all that, particularly for a national brand like Uber, so it's all probably very, er, fluid.)


https://www.taxi-point.co.uk/post/gatwi ... awley-area

It also worth mentioning that the distance from Gatwick to the first bit of South London is only 13 miles, so we are not exactly in Wolverhampton territory here.

I suspect many of those 300 do work in London, and at least 50 of them will be working the Emirate’s contract at Gatwick.

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IDFIMH