Taxi Driver Online

Our council have asked the Taxi Trade to set an association to meet with them as apposed to the old system where they sent letters out to all the owners and only a few turned up.

Has anyone any experience of setting one up?

Any help would be appriciated.

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Life? Don't talk to me about life!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjm2eslm6hI

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Justice for the 96. It has only taken 27 years...........repeat the same lies for 27 years and the truth sounds strange to people!

Firstly well done to your council for making the suggestion.

You need to find out how many people they want at the meeting, and whether they want ops as well as drivers.

Too many folks at the party can be a pain, as you go around and around in circles, but too few and acusations of not representing the whole trade will be made.

If I was starting from scratch I would have two reps from the taxi side, two reps from the PH side and two reps from the circuits as representing the trade. Defo have the police and a licensing councillor, and maybe someone from the highways department.

But whatever you decide, do it without delay and get the thing started.

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IDFIMH

Thanx!

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Life? Don't talk to me about life!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjm2eslm6hI

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Justice for the 96. It has only taken 27 years...........repeat the same lies for 27 years and the truth sounds strange to people!

If I'm in dumbo mode then my last past was replying to something that wasn't asked.

If you are suggesting starting up a new association then there are a few you could get signed on with. But it might be worth just giving every driver on the ranks a slip of paper, with several names on, asking them to vote for who they want to represent them.

It will all go well as long as the reps feed back the info to the lads straight away.

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IDFIMH

Thanx Sussex

We know they want reps from all the HC firms and from the independent owners, they didn't mention PH for some reason, I'll email the commitee chairman and find out why they forgot to invite them to the meeting.

I only went to observe what was occuring too!

We aren't going along a union route so bugger Terry!

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Life? Don't talk to me about life!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjm2eslm6hI

i wonder why that is.

This could end up setting the trade against each other - in East Fife the council communicates with the handful of activists in the association and the rest are kept in the dark, and this often leads to resentment and conflict.

Thanx Fae Fife.

But that's the situation we have at the moment only a few people turn up at a meeting and nothing gets disseminated out to the rest of the owners or drivers. So the council who we all know, know best! Want us to set an association.

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Life? Don't talk to me about life!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjm2eslm6hI

Are you talking about council run meetings?

Non-attendance is clearly a problem, but at least the offer to attend was there and the owners could respond to the council be letter or e-mail if they wanted to.

Here many things are decided between the council and one or two people on the Association and thus for the rest of us it's a fait accompli.

Even the Association members aren't told - they have meetings every few months and there's a bit of discussion, but if anything arises between the meetings then the Chairman and maybe one of his acolytes decide the response.

A recent disaster of that type was an extension of the rank at the local station, which would have been welcome, but the new spaces are a forwards extension of the old rank, which had the front car at the station exit, so now the exit is at the middle of the rank, and the drivers won't move up because they know that many punters will grab the nearest car and the driver will just accept the fare.

I suspect that any driver like myself who uses the rank would have told the council it wouldn't work, but they didn't ask the regulars, and instead apparently asked the association duo who only use the rank occassionally.

I'm not saying that an association isn't a good idea, but the council should be warned that its convenience can lead to problems elsewhere.

It would be unreasonable to say that a council should communicate with the whole trade on every matter, but on major issues that should be the case, and indeed there may well be a legal duty to do so.

Communicating only with a representative group can obviously save the council time and money, but it's not a panacea.

Our LA want us to set up an association. They will not call any meetings any more. They say it should be down to the taxi drivers to get organised and call meetings and invite the LA to attend.

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Grandad,