Who Holds The Power Of Legal Seniority, TFL Employees, Or Elected Politicians ? By GreenBadgeJohn.

TFL do not have the authority to sell our business to a competitor, but they do have the powers to destroy it for a competitors benefit and this has clearly been happening.

Uber has a massive cash burn structured philosophy which is being reported throughout the world of financial journalism and their losses to date amount to a staggering $3 billion,although it would have been far cheaper to buy the London taxi & other markets outright if that possibility existed, but it doesn't!

So, the alternative plan relates to all the underhanded back-roomed brown enveloped duplicitous double dealing fraudsters who are busy trying to destabilise The London taxi markets and others with the clearest assistance imaginable.."TFL".. who being the designated Licensing Authority has shamefully ridden roughshod over clear written private hire licensing regulations in apparent cahoots with cash bought lawyers and sadly influenced Judges by clever strategy and lobbying.

The Mayor and the London assembly are our legal political representatives and are paid between £63,000 plus ex's for members, £73,000 for Chairs of bodies, The Deputy Mayor gets £95,000 and Mayor Khan gets £144,000 and all minimum and currently under review,
but wait for it.... Tfl's Transport unelected employees such as Mike Brown (according to London Love Business)gets £373,000, and employee Leon Daniels gets £358,000, and the not so recently departed high priest who originally allowed ubers under the radar licensing Sir Peter Hendy was paid £652,000, so who holds the power of Legal seniority TFL employees or the elected politicians?

    Image Taken from the Londonist 

The recent Mayfair meeting of Daniels and Brown, plus clandestine meetings with  Uber's Jo Bertram came as no surprise, but the following reported suspension of the taxi driver for recording and posting the Mount Street  meeting online, demonstrates the complete malevolence of the structure which governs our industry and we must keep on challenging this cancerous cell of authority and protest at every level and opportunity. 

It is widely reported Uber heavily subsidise all fares whereas the passenger only pays 41% of the break-even journey amount, and their drivers struggle to survive in the clear attempt to bankrupt all competition (free new years eve £15 or less uber travel showed that ploy), but New York's Yellow taxi's dispatch are still completely dominant and so are we, so make no mistake how the game is being played out at ubers complete loss... who blinks first!

There is also reports of angry taxi drivers being driven to use freely available GPS Jamming devices and Whilst it is understandable and causes the UBER model to completely collapse as they are all lost without GPS, it is also causing havoc with emergency services and it therefore lies with the national Governments to address and underpin the laws surrounding all aspects of decent uncorrupted business models in society, as a £5000 fine for telecommunication violations will be no doubt counter-balanced under real honest scrutiny with swarms of illicitly Licensed GPS drivers unfairly monopolising all taxi trades from honestly qualified drivers,....be warned and make no mistake...the writing is clearly on the wall we will all take what ever hits necessary and fight fire with fire to overcome this corrupted corporate illegitimacy.

Be Lucky and keep up the winnable fight

Happy New Year

greenbadgejohn

from Taxi Leaks http://ift.tt/2hQJBhF
via IFTTT

TfL And Local Councils Not Keeping Taxi Ranks Clear + Uber Slave Rebellion In Paris

This abandoned Golf has been sat on Stringfellows rank for a week, so therefore it's was also there on New Year's Eve. 

It could have gone bang at any time. 

The authorities know about it, because it has two parking tickets.

It is unroadworthy, with two bald front tyres. 

This, if nothing else highlights the lie of the government who tell us an attack is imminent. 

A frightened public is an easily controlled public. Divide and conquer.

Reported by Paul Coghlan on FaceBook.

How many times do we have to ask TfL to make it clear to PH drivers not to stop, wait, pick up or park on our Taxi ranks. Most of these drivers think is perfectly OK to sit on a Taxi rank to wait for their passengers. 

TfL should be writing to all 120,000 PH drivers and telling them to stay off.....it's not as if they are making money from enforcing the parking on our ranks. Westminster do occasionally ticket private cars that have been left on ranks while the owners go to the theatre of a restaurant. But they allow PH drivers to drive off unpenalised most of the time.

  

Every PH driver should be given a printed sheet of do's and dont's with their Licence. At least we would know that 600 PH drivers were being told not to frequent our rank spaces. 

Ands it's getting worse as drivers who have been contravening rank parking restrictions are getting more and more aggressive when approached and asked to move off. 

Personally I ask drivers politely to move and if they get aggressive, I whip out the phone and start to video them. Normally they calm down. This happened Monday night at Hakkasan restaurant in Bruton Street. A Mercedes V250 minicab pulled onto the point of the rank as the front two taxis pulled off. 

I went up to the driver and asked him 'politely to move'!

He then went into a torrent of four letter words.

I went back to my cab and got my phone and he suddenly stopped the language....but it did calm the situation down. 

See video below.

However, even with another driver reinforcing the fact that he was parked on a Taxi rank, he still wouldn't move. 

    

Yet, how often are we told that TfL are taking action against Licensed Taxi drivers for over ranking at Station ranks, or of forming unauthorised ranks. 

We complain constantly about minicabs forming unauthorised ranks at night venues, yet TfL turn a blind ear and eye. More evidence that their is a TfL definite agenda against the London Licensed Taxi trade.

MEANWHILE IN PARIS...UBER SLAVES ARE REVOLTING 

Uber drivers in Paris have rebelled against their slave masters. Riot police had to protec Uber's HQ as drivers threw eggs at the doors and windows. 

    

from Taxi Leaks http://ift.tt/2hNqcuJ
via IFTTT

Open Letter To Val Shawcross.... From Cabby Alex White.

Dear Val Shawcross

Firstly happy new year to you, whilst I am a licensed black cab driver (London Green Badge) I am not writing to you in that capacity mainly, I am writing to you in the capacity of someone who witnessed the devastation of a family losing a loved one in a car accident. Just over 10 years ago two very good friends of mine were killed in a car accident, there was a third person who died in the car but he was not known to me.

It was myself that put the initial call into girl who died parents, warning them that the police were on their way and were going to deliver the worst possible news, I was too far away to get there quickly to be with them and suggested they get a neighbour to come round and sit with them whilst the police deliver the bad news. On that day I lost two of my best friends, I had lived with both of them previously, the girl was the person that introduced me to my wife of 15 years, these were very good friends to me.

My wife and me helped the families dismantle their dead children's lives, we helped clear their house of belongings etc, but the lasting memory for me was on of watching a mother who had lost her only child, sprinkle her ashes into the sea, this is something that will live with me for the rest of my life, this is sorrow on a level I have never experienced.

So here we are we are on the 2nd of January 2017 with the first fatality due to a minicab not paying enough attention to the road, u-turning on Great Eastern Street taking out a motorcyclist in the process, so a family now is 'getting the knock on the door' from the police, sitting them down and giving them the heart breaking news that someone has died. 

My heart goes out to the family and friends of this person it really does. But tempered with this sorrow is anger, anger that this was avoidable, TFL and city hall are preceding over a city where there are so many people being seriously hurt or killed unnecessary. TFL are culpable, condoning to some degree and I believe it is only a matter of time before someone brings a corporate manslaughter charge against the directors of TFL.

I have no problem with normal private hire, the guys that see this as a profession, see this as a job to slowly enhance their skills, to get better and better at their job, but anyone who relies on sat-nav to the degree an Uber driver does will never improve, they will always struggle to driver around our great city, the business model is deeply flawed and cannot improve whilst there is such as reliance on technology.

Now in my capacity as a taxi driver I invite you and 3-4 of your fellow members of the GLA to take a ride in my cab in the evening around the west end to see what taxi drivers have to put up with, we now need eyes in the backs of our heads to work out what stupid manoeuvre is coming next from cars around us that seem fixated on a device stuck to the windscreen. Unfortunately the police clamping down on phone users is not going to stem the tide of accidents whilst one operator has in their business model an app that the driver has to keep on referring to whilst driving.

Val I would like to bring up another point with you, this I believe is a very significant issue, this is about bus drivers that are 'moonlighting' as Uber drivers, whilst TFL say they cannot link the two professions, I believe this is incorrect, TFL issue bus passes to all bus drivers so they have a database of bus drivers somewhere, now in my capacity as a computer programmer and currently holding the Microsoft Certified Database Administrators (MCDBA) qualification (as well as a number of other IT qualifications) I know that to join two lots of data say on postcode is a pretty easy piece of work, to then produce a report that matches postcode of a private hire driver and then bus driver on postcode with the names and house number of both sides listed so perfect matches can be found would be around two hours work for a proficient programmer so I don't believe TFL are doing enough. It should not be possible for a bus driver to also be a private hire driver, this is putting the public at significant unnecessary risk.

So here is my second offer, I offer my services free of charge to TFL to align this data for easy reporting, I would think this is no more than 2 hours work, I am happy to sign confidentially agreements/non disclosure agreements or work on a structurally correct dataset without any data in it.

I await your reply

Kind Regards

Alex White (76695)

from Taxi Leaks http://ift.tt/2iJEQEX
via IFTTT

Great New Site On FaceBook....Black Cabs Lost And Found

              GREAT NEW SITE ON FACE BOOK :

Cabby Gareth Williams has put together a great idea for a new site on FaceBook called;

               BLACK CABS LOST AND FOUND.

Every driver who has a FaceBook account should sign up to receive regular updates from the site. It's a great way to repatriate property left in Taxis with their owners.

With most of the police stations in London closed at night, some shut down altogether, it's becom difficult to find one open to hand in property left in the cab. 

With this new site, details can be uploaded in seconds and with any luck, return to the rightful quite quickly. 

Well done Gareth, another brilliant idea for the Taxi trade.

But it can only work with your help so sign up today.

from Taxi Leaks http://ift.tt/2iHa6EC
via IFTTT

Yet Another Holiday Inn In Kensington...But They Don't Want Us

I've been off work for a while, so this may not be cutting edge news. I had a job to the Copthorne Tara Hotel last night and noticed that the Kensington Close Hotel had a new look, rebranded as another Holiday Inn Kensington.

I parked outside and went in to see if the new management was ok with drivers using the facilities. But when I got inside I noticed a large sign on the reception, advising their patrons that the management would be more than happy to provide the guests with the 'Hotels car service, for all their transportation needs, giving prices to Heathrow and Gatwick'. 

But notice the caveat....prices 'start from'... !

Every time you take passengers to hotels in the area, don't forget to tell them that Black cabs are cheaper and we only have the one price, regardless of the number of passengers or amount of luggage. 

from Taxi Leaks http://ift.tt/2iuR98d
via IFTTT

Sadiq Khan Has Issued 17,000 PH Licenses Since Becoming Mayor...by Dave Davies.

Khan and TfL To Dump The 'Boris Bus' Because It's Too Expensive. Can We Now Drop The TX5 ?

Too many buses, with deadly pollution causing gridlock day and night. Generous subsidies, make it more economical to run empty vehicles, than parking them up for the night.

• Boris Johnson introduced new fleet of red double-decker Routemasters in 2012
• He described the new buses as a 'stunning piece of automotive architecture'
• Transport for London has spent £350million on 1,000 of the new Routemasters 
• But TfL's business plan states: it will 'discontinue purchases' of the buses

Sadiq Khan has dumped the 'Boris bus' because it is too expensive to produce.

Boris Johnson introduced a new fleet of red double-decker Routemasters, in London four years ago, which have folding doors to allow people to get on and off easily.

He described it as a 'stunning piece of automotive architecture' and they were quickly dubbed the 'Boris bus'

They were supposed to use the latest green diesel-electric hybrid technology. In test conditions they produced just half the carbon dioxide of conventional diesel buses. But in practise, many of the batteries failed. These proved too expensive to relace and so much of the fleet ran on pure diesel adding dramatically to the pollution levels, especially in Oxford Street, making it the most polluted street in Europe.

Transport for London spent £350million on 1,000 of the new Routemasters at £350,000 each, while a normal hybrid was about £300,000. Wasting £50million of taxpayers money.

Johnson's Mayor of London successor, Sadiq Khan, said he would stall purchases of the the new fleet to save money and freeze transports fares. Khan has said nothing about the poor green credentials which go with this bus.

TfL's business plan states: 'new capital investment will be reduced significantly as we discontinue purchases of new Routemaster buses'. 

The buses were designed by Thomas Heatherwick, who gave it a 'modern Londoon look', before being built by Northern Irish firm Wrightbus.             

Asked to comment on the move, a spokesman for Khan said TfL would instead be investing in a new generation of buses that would help to improve air quality.     

Editorial Comment :

This whole Boris Bus project was thwart with problems that came directly from bad design and planning on the part of TfL. 

The bus had no air con, with windows that didn't open. It came with a back door and rear staircase that proved unsafe and therefore unused most of the time. The proposed conductor's role soon disappeared.

In typical TfL style, it was one cock up after another.....and then the scandal broke that the majority of the buses were being run on just diesel, adding to the horrendous air quality, responsible for many thousands of preventable deaths in London.

Boris and TfL's Surface Transport Directors, should all stand trial for Corporate Manslaughter.

from Taxi Leaks http://ift.tt/2imetak
via IFTTT