Taxi Driver Online

Dear All

You should all be aware of how we have conducted our campaign openly, laying before you at each stage precisely what we are doing. We have adopted this strategy because we know that we have right on our side and nothing to fear from doing so.

This letter is addressed to the Regulatory Committee, senior elected council officials, Corporate Services and its Legal Services team along with licensing, other elected officials in the council and to the two MSPs, Kenny MacAskill and Fergus Ewing, who have engaged the debate but who seem to be lacking in understanding about what the reality of the situation is.

We believe that the Courts agree with our stance in the matters relating to the conduct of the council's handling of taxi trade matters. Indeed it is readily apparent that the council seems set to receive a bloody nose in respect of its appeal to the Court of session to deny Salteri et al their licences, properly applied for and improperly dealt with by the Regulatory Committee.

Indeed it should be borne in mind that because of the huge legal expense, the defendants have not represented themselves in court throughout the appeals process - a damning indictment on the council should its expensive legal team be defeated, as seems quite likely. Just imagine, the council shadow boxing with these cases and the shadow dealing it a knockout punch?

In the continued spirit of openness, please find following a copy of a post made on www.fastblacks.com which quite clearly lays before you where we are in the campaign to modernise the taxi trade in Edinburgh and remove the current restrictive practices being stoically defended by politicians who should know better. It was written to the administrator/owner of the site and a senior member of his team. Let me preface by saying that these two gentlemen seem in denial about the basic facts of the situation.

Fact - The problem is that you two wouldn't accept a fact if it was to strike you in the face.

Fact - You are both so entrenched in maintaining the status quo you are wholly inflexible. Luddites.

Fact - You deny plates are being sold. Yet De Facto transfers are a reality. Sure, incorporation allows this. The Act expressly doesn't. The council tells us repeatedly that plates have no intrinsic value. You claim the value accrues in the "business" yet, the business has no value without the plate. Logic dictates that the plate is therefore what truly has the "value", again which the Act says it doesn't.

Until you guys can recognise that your argument is illogical and plain wrong then there really is no hope for you.

Fact - Rentals, you deny the level of rentals. Yet positive proof was given of a £350 rental being charged. But it was proof you didn't want to face so you stoically deny it. Luddites.

Fact - You deny that private hire are destroying our trade and refuse to recognise the incursions they've made, or just don't care about it. Yet, it is undeniable that there has been a meteoric rise in PH over the time I've been in the trade, upwards of 600%, yet our fleet has expanded by only 20% in that time. You staunchly refuse to accept that the demand which should have been met by hacks has effectively given away to PH.

Fact - You fail to accept the simple fact that the nightbus service has impinged on our work. Or that taxibuses will have a similar effect. Both owned by the council which has to be a conflict of interest you have no wish to contest. Yet, both these services would have been better contained if our trade had maintained the numerical presence to dent their business model for expansion. Even a baby new to business concepts would see that.

You stoically refuse to acknowledge the council's difficulty with the interested parties list, another little wheeze that the trade has acquiesced with. The simple fact is that it is illegal. It has no place in Law. As soon as the council tries to issue from this list in isolation there is nothing to stop anyone who wants a licence from applying. There is no provision in the Act for anything other than each licence being considered on merit, in sequence. The council has no power to pick and choose. That being the case, everyone who applies has equal access to a licence. This is fact.

Fact - The council has made a complete hash of administering the trade over recent years, particularly with this Regulatory Committee. (Arbitrary flawed wheelchair policy which poses health risks to drivers as confirmed by the Health and safety Executive; unnecessary and expensive removal of Fairway vehicles; draconian bans on taxi drivers while a convicted felon is allowed to retain his restaurateurs licence etc.)

Fact - This happened on Donald Anderson's watch. And he was aware of what was happening while it was happening. I have documented evidence which shows that I made him fully aware.

Fact - This campaign does not end with the issue of licences to Salteri et al following the cases in the Court of Session.

Fact - All of those on the current RC, and Donald Anderson, will be brought back and held to account for their decision taking.

Fact - Jim Inch will be pursued until he is forced to resign for his part in the disgraceful way our trade has been run.

Fact - The council made a complete hash of the appeals. Asked by the appeal judges why the council didn't simply refuse the licences in the first place, QC Armstrong said it couldn't because it would fall foul of Coyle. Yet this council is once again manufacturing information to deny licences - mine. Dear oh dear.

Fact - The remainder of the 41 applications WILL be back in the frame.

Fact - Those on the interested parties list are going to be spitting feathers that they have waited up to 15 years and yet other licences are going to be granted.

Fact - The council has no reasonable option but to grant my licence. It has stopped answering my questions. It is prejudicing my case by doing so. I asked them on 12th November for specific information they had. They didn't answer. I applied on the 27th November, no information was available - remember Coyle.

Fact - Jim Inch has gone on record to say that my licence would be deferred until the April meeting by which time demand information will be available. This acknowledges that no such information was to hand when my application was made. Remember Coyle? Incompetent or devious comes to mind.

Fact - Jacobs survey was a pile of merde. I will easily be able to refute this survey to a Sheriff. Indeed Cllr Wigglesworth has gone on record to agree that it was flawed (yet he still complied with its use to deny licences). Asked to confirm this, not that we needed him to, he failed to confirm or deny. Damning. Yet, the trade still places faith in this document to "protect" itself from modernisation.

Fact - The April meeting of the RC brings me a victory either way. If the case goes to the appeal court I have no doubt that a Sheriff, particularly given the council's shenanigans over Salteri et al, that my licence will then be granted. I look forward to the opportunity to humiliate the council for what it has done. I have no problem with this. Be in no doubt this would indeed be a real victory. Should the council grant in April, then a victory of another type will be mine. Lesser, but a victory nevertheless. Bring it on.

Fact - The matter will be taken to the Ombudsman and through further legal means as required. There is no way that departing councillors, and council officials, are off the hook either way. They will be held to account. The propriety of the political process demands it. A process which has been let down by elected officials failure to address the issues and hold unelected officials to account - the democratic deficit.

Fact - This whole argument is plain and simple about modernisation, about removing restricted practices. You're both supposedly intelligent men who must be able to see that operating a restriction is anathema to a modern free market economy. Yet you will seek some spurious notion of the advantage of restriction in your own skewed belief it delivers you a benefit.

But it doesn't, the trade goes backward as the remainder of the unrestricted people carrying market expands and thrives while the restricted section withers on the vine. This is just such plain logic I'm amazed that you can't see even this.

Fact - What I am arguing, what I have always argued is nothing more, nothing less than the London Model. It is somewhat curious that you fail to appreciate the benefits this would bring, both to drivers and to the paying public.

Fact - There should be a serious attempt to develop quality controls. I mooted three areas yesterday, there are of course many more. Control of numbers through control of quality, all while offering equal opportunity to all to operate in a free market, applying the entrepreneurial skills which can build a better trade and service to the public.

Fact - The plate value is history. It is simply waiting for the coup de grace to be administered. The timing of this is the council's last prerogative. It can happen following the judgements, it can happen after the election, but it will happen. Be assured of that. The council were quite happy to allow incorporation while it was widely accepted in the trade and no one made a fuss about it. But I don't accept it and I am making a fuss about it. And the council are clearly embarrassed at the mess it now finds itself. Indeed it is this embarrassment and how the council digs itself out of its hole that is determining the timescales being applied to this process. Nothing more, nothing less. But, the council knows full well what it is being forced to do.

Final fact - All the posturings of the STF, Muldoon. Colquhoun, Fleming, ETIG, MacAskill, Ewing, the HCLCG et al are all for nothing. What you guys fail to appreciate, perhaps you already do, is that this process is being driven in Edinburgh by Taylor and Thomson and their background supporters. Your single failure is that you failed to engage with us, you are now paying what you perceive to be the penalty (I don't believe it is a penalty). Until you get it into your brains that you can never defeat us, because we will prevail - we will not give up on this campaign ever, you will not be able to move on.

You all fail to appreciate that the various consultation group exercises are a complete sham and a waste of time. We have conducted this campaign, and are winning it, because we have done nothing other than apply the terms of the Act to support our campaign. The difficulties the council finds itself in is purely and simply because of the way they've played fast and loose with the law in all matters dealing with the taxi trade. They've been pursuing some ego control trip, bending the rules, making it up as it goes along - primarily at the instigation of Inch -and just plain getting it wrong. Now, while this is no different to what has probably happened all along, the difference now is that we are saying it has to stop. We can read, we can understand logic, we understand the Law. We say, adhere to the Law and nothing else. The Sheriffs will support us in this logical and legal stance.

So, you aren't being beaten because we're breaking the rules. No, you're being beaten because we are sticking to the rules. It is being right that drives us on. And there is every indication from the actuality of the recent Salteri et al case that shows the justiciary agrees with us.

Either way, the argument prevails. You may not like it. It doesn't matter whether you do or not.

You may denigrate it, deny it. Who really cares if you do?

You may even want to ignore it. That would be folly.

Because what I've described above is going to take place. We're only awaiting the court decision. And, I have to say that it doesn't matter a jot what that decision is. The campaign will prevail until the objective is achieved.

I wonder how much easier it will be for the council when licence plates are transferring for £100,000 like they did when Dublin caved in, rather than the £50,000 they're transferring for here and now?

Doesn't this suggest things are only going to get worse?

Isn't it only de-restriction with real quality controls, as per the London Model, that fully gets the council off the hook for granting licences to Salteri et al; the rest of the 41 applications wrongly denied; the interested parties list; ludicrous plate values; extortionate rentals etc., poor peak time service to the public?

Or, perhaps you have another solution you would like to share with us?


Jim Taylor

PS Let me finally share with you a conversation I heard on Talk107 last night.

A taxi owner was asked what time "chucking out time" is. He replied 3 am. The presenter then asked him what time he was finishing. His reply was 2.30 am.

And there isn't a taxi availability problem for the public?

JT