Addison Lee Plying a For Hire At Evolution, While Taxis Are Turned Away By Parks Police.

Last Saturday night, we saw licensed Taxis without the Gett app being turned away from Battersea Park venue Evolution. 

I had a booking to pick up a young lady at 01:00. 

I got there a little early but my approach to the venue was blocked by a parks police officer, who told me that only Taxis with the Gett app on their phone....(notice he didn't say booking, just needed the app on their phone)...were being allowed to approach the entrance and form a rank outside the venue. 

I had to park in the riverside car park some distance away. 

While I waited there, I was approached by a number of people leaving the venue asking if I was for hire.

I decided to walk up and have a word with the Gett Marshal. He agreed that I could come in and pick up my booked job and spoke to the police on my behalf to let me through there picket. 

This behaviour has upset many Taxi drivers who feel that Gett are stealing our work and then selling it back to drivers and have made their feelings clear, widely reporting on social media platforms.

In replies to complaints from drivers about the exclusion, it seems everyone has passed the buck.

The parks police said no cabs were turned away, the event management company said the exclusion was nothing to do with them and Gett said all the jobs were pre booked. This definitely was not the situation that I witnessed. 

Well 'I was there' and I saw Taxis turned away, plus there appeared to be no advice about a Taxi rank in the other car park. 

Gett also released this statement :

Now this week, the same is to happen again, this time using Addison Lee, who have made a statement that all jobs at Evolution will be pre-booked. 

A friend of mine went there last night and spoke to the parks police who tried to get him to turn away by saying all the work was booked. Apparently they were being given a token which they could take to the car outside where they could take anyone of the cars who were ranking there, clearly plying for hire.

The constable said he could drive up and see, but he would be there a long time before he got a job. 

This was not the case. He pulled up outside with his light on and within minutes got a £50 job to North Finchley. 

So if you are passing Battersea Park tonight and fancy taking you chances at Evolution, don't let the park police turn you away as we've been told that the Taxi trade are not excluded from waiting outside for work. 

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BBC London News Broadcast Another Slur On London's Iconic Taxi Trade.

Again we see more anti Taxi bias from a BBC London News reporter, in a broadcast made just yards away from the BBC In Portland Place, referring to the mysteriously hushed up Uber Attack on Exhibition Road, a Taxi incident.

2 minutes 10 seconds into the BBC broadcast below "Exhibition Road, where a TAXI mounted the pavement".

This is extreme bias and a slur on our iconic trade from the BBC, who refuse to accept there is a difference between Taxis and Private Hire.

    

This is completely unacceptable and complaints should be made on behalf of ever London Taxi drivers who feels slated by this unnecessary attack on our good name. 

Coming just days after the media announcements that although serious sexual assault complaints in private hire vehicles had gone through the roof with the fact that last year, not one attack was reported to have taken place in a Licensed Taxi.

They keep getting away with this (even though our name is protected under government legislation), because it appears our representative orgs in the New United Trade group (LTDA, UCG, Unite and RMT) are weak and seem to have no plan, no idea what to do next.

So the ball is now in your court, and it's all up to you.

Get in contact with BBC London News and make it clear that you are not happy with the lazy journalism, resulting in constant slurs on our trades reputation.

Use the link below to contact BBC London News.

http://ift.tt/2zD1BXn

Also, still no word from the NUT group over the announcement of a major road closure in the Bank Junction vicinity, other than to announce the closure....value for money???

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Not The First Time Uber's Been Hacked...And Not The First a Time They've Covered It Up.

Taxi Trade Lied To Over Bank Junction Exclusion - Moorgate To Close For5 Months - New Ranks 🤗

Again we find out, the Taxi trade has been lied to over the Bank Junction...now there's a surprise!

When the trade met with the City of London earlier this year, they were given assurances the Bank Junction exclusion would only go ahead while there were no road closers in the surrounding areas. 

Going by the notice issued yesterday by TfL, it looks like CoL have renaiged on their promise. Moorgate is to be closed off in both directions from South Place, to Lothbury (Bank Junction), for 5 months from Sunday 26th November till the1st of April next year, April fools day.

As far as we know, there has been no previous statement to trade orgs in regards to this closure. 

The New United Trade group (NUT) pleaded with militant drivers to stop the driver lead, daily disruptive action at the Junction and promised that their team of observers would be keeping an eye on proceedings.

When Taxi Leaks phoned the LTDA office earlier today, they had no idea that Moorgate was being closed. Looks like they took their eye off the ball !!!

Will the City of London be announcing a lifting of the Bank Junction exclusion, while these road works take place......we wait with baited breath for their announcement. 

And one from the NUTs wouldn't go amiss.

The Taxi Trade 'Winter Of Discontent' may well now be going ahead.

Other roads updates:

From this Sunday, again til April next year, Chelsea Embankment will be closed to all traffic westbound so that urgent gas works can be carried out. 

Blackfriars bridge is to be closed to all traffic again this Friday night till Monday morning for resurfacing. 

Also, please be careful at the lights, Buckingham Palace Road, junction of Terminus Place, where a new yellow box has been implemented. 

Be advised that this will be heavily enforced with immediate effect.....unless you are driving a bus of course !!!

TAXI LEAKS EXTRA BIT :

At last, there is some good news... In the shape of new ranks.

The HardRock Cafe' now has a nice new rank outside, as does the Charlotte Street Hotel...and Ronnie Scott's, finally has a new rank. 

The rank outside the W hote has been extended and Mahikis rank has been revised.

Please make sure you use the ranks and keep the touts off. 

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How is Uber still even in business at this point?

While no Silicon Valley company is without sin, Uber seems to have plumbed new depths of corporate depravity. There is so much fundamentally rotten at the company’s core that it’s nearly impossible to imagine that new-ish CEO Dara Khosrowshahi can disinfect and rehabilitate a culture gone horribly wrong.

Khosrowshahi’s tenure is already turning into an international apology tour. The latest mea culpa, of course, is that the company covered up a hack of 57 million user accounts in 2016. Hacks happen to the best of companies, alas. But failing to notify the affected account holders is grossly negligent. And paying the hackers $100,000 to keep quiet about it, according to Reuters, is simply unfathomable.

In his apology blog post, Khosrowshahi seems to have forgotten to mention the payment, which was also reported by Bloomberg.

“None of this should have happened, and I will not make excuses for it,” Khosrowshahi wrote. “While I can’t erase the past, I can commit on behalf of every Uber employee that we will learn from our mistakes. We are changing the way we do business, putting integrity at the core of every decision we make and working hard to earn the trust of our customers.”

Khosrowshahi fired the company’s chief security officer and a deputy. The Recorder reported that the deputy was in fact in-house lawyer Craig Clark. We wonder if new Uber general counsel Tony West has reported for duty yet? Welcome to the team, Tony! Otherwise, the executive suite remains a relatively empty place these days.

This latest scandal comes as Khosrowshahi is having to grovel before London authoritiesto get the company’s license restored there. Regulators there don’t seem to trust Uber after years of bad faith and bullying. Surprise! That lack of trust extends to countless other jurisdictions around the world that became fed up with the take-no-prisoners tactics of disgraced former CEO Travis Kalanick.

Kalanick, you’ll recall, was forced out of his own company following a massive internal investigation regarding the company’s culture of sexual harassment. And that investigation came as the company was being sued for allegedly stealing autonomous vehicle intellectual property from Google’s Waymo unit.

Oh, gee, what else? Is it unfair to dredge up things like an executive threatening a journalist? The Uber driver that raped a passenger in India? The Greyball technology the company used to dupe regulators? Booking fake rides to disrupt its competitor Lyft? Spying on passengers using its “God View” technology?

Uber can expect a colonoscopy from regulators over the latest scandal. But why should the company get any more chances at this point? The fact that investors have pumped billions of venture capital into this morality swamp isn’t really a justification for its existence. And neither is our addiction to heavily subsidized cab rides.

I’m sure the new CEO is sincere about being sorry. At this point, I think we’re all a bit sorry for anything we did to support Uber along the way. But now the rest of us have a duty to vote with our feet and wallets by walking away from Uber and leaving it to wither and fade away

Source : Venturebeat.com

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Letter To The Editor: TfL Threatened Me With Temporary Unemployment Over Late DBS Certificate, Unless I Paid More

Taxi Leaks has received this letter from GreenBadgeJohn (on Twitter). It details clearly the fact that Taxi drivers are currently being treated different to not only Private Hire Drivers, but especially Uber drivers, when applying for or renewing their licence. 

John was charged an extra £13, having already paid the full amount for an enhanced DBS criminal records check, or was threatened with unemployment when his DBS was caught up in the system.   

Letter to Editor :

TFl unsuccessfully tried to deny how I was threatened with temporary unemployment unless I paid to join the (non mandatory) Update service because my CRB had not been duly processed due to high demands at that period and even though I had started the process within the prescribed 4 month advanced application period they require.

I was given one option once my old licence expired:

I had to attend TPH's office in southwark and sign a form to obtain a Temporary Measure Licence, but before doing so it was made a mandatory that I joined the "update service" costing a further £13 (although I had paid the full amount required to re-licence) ...."or I would not be licensed to continue working"

I contacted my appointed GLA member who duly emailed TFL about my issue and was emailed with all the facts I state above.

I find it disgusting how Uber has a completely different "arrangement" to me as a licensed taxi driver who has no prior criminal record and as this "record" has rolled over 10 times in 3 yearly stages over the years (not counting the 2 & 3/4 years knowledge) as opposed to new private hire drivers applying to TFL in their droves from places that may not be willing to divulge prior records due to filing inadequacies or from corrupted war torn regions who are given the freedom to continue to work unconditionally or until the dots of acceptability are presumably joined up somehow? (and that is another story)  

Every Licensed London Taxi driver has a history.... 'The Knowledge'... which is a long time based characterisation of every applicant.... new Private hire drivers do not.

As we who have completed the knowledge process know it is more than just showing you can find your way around London as you are tested on characteristics over a long period of time which allows licensing authorities time to study suitability and measure character and fortitude and all on a time linked CRB system and creates a license of value for those knowledge students who have taken years to obtain and will truly value and would never wish to jeopardise.

Compare that to the overwhelming numbers of out of the blue private hire applicants who will try to make some kind of a living from being lost in a world capital city and dangerously gaze at a windscreen sat nav device and hold a no value license to work which is given to them for the payment of a fee.

There have always been serious implications as to how private hire drivers can honestly be vetted over a staggeringly short period of time-lapsed investigative study, but to now allow driver an non-investigated working period before potentially uncovering serious character faults and latterly barring them is a scandal and must stop before any further crimes are committed.

TFL have a duty of public care and must do their job properly as this scandal is truly astonishing and unchecked drivers with no history must not be allowed to hold any form of private hire license until satisfactory checking is completed.... no compromises.

Be Lucky

greenbadgejohn (on twitter)

It appears that if you are a private hire driver, and in particular, if you are registered with Uber, then the application standards appear to have been relaxed, even though TfLTPH general manager Helen Chapman gives assurances when talking to the media, that all private hire drivers go through the same enhanced criminal record checks process as licensed Taxi drivers do. 

But Helen statement doesn't appear to be factual, as we've since found out (by FOI request).

Only 2,642 private hire drivers, out of the 13,000 Uber drivers found to have fake DBS certificates back in January this year, have subsequently resubmitted genuine applications.

The question needs an answer:

Why have TfKTPH treated these Uber drivers -who failed to comply with regulation- different?

Why haven't the licenses of the 10,300 odd who never resubmitted not been suspended? 

Is it really one rule for Taxi and Private hire Drivers, and a different rule for a Uber drivers?

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FOI reveals Transport for London repeatedly renewed £2m consultancy contract over 7 years without getting rival bids

Transport for London has defended the repeated extension of a consultancy contract worth almost £2m over a seven year period without asking rivals to tender for the work.

In October 2010 the capital’s transport agency hired the contractor to provide a staff member who would “assist the TfL senior leadership team” during their work on the Horizon programme which was tasked to slash costs in TfL’s support functions. 

The initial contract was worth £122,980 and covered “targeted senior executive leadership facilitation, support and coaching for the TfL leadership team, including the Commissioner and the Chief Officers.”

TfL says the work was awarded following “a search of the market,” however the relationship has been extended several times over the following seven years, each time without alternative suppliers being asked to tender. 

Each of the renewals was approved following the production of a ‘single source request’ document which self-exempts public bodies from tendering contracts.

The first extension came in February 2011, just 4 months after the initial agreement was signed, with further extensions in August and October of the same year.

The document approving the second extension justifies the failure to openly tender the work on the grounds that other suppliers “would not have the existing knowledge of TfL, the Horizon programme, the expertise and familiarity or trusting relationship with the individual Directors in the Leadership team.”

In August 2012 an uncontested extension worth £250,000 was approved on the grounds that “a decision to put this activity out for tender would inevitably have postponed the delivery of Project Horizon”.

The document added that proceeding without the support of an external contractor “would have meant progressing Project Horizon without effectively organising or coordinating Chief Officer input, leading to a sub-optimal conclusion and/or delay to the project.”

Eleven months later TfL justified a decision not to put a further extension, worth £162,000, out to tender “as it may result in a loss of continuity in the development of individuals”.

The relevant approval document also states that the additional work being approved was “needed to provide the continuous support that is required by the Commissioner.”

An extension worth £175,500 was signed off in October 2014 to allow the contractor “to assist the Commissioner direct and develop an effective TfL leadership team and to support the team so that he can lead TfL effectively.”

It also justified the decision not to tender the work on the grounds that “it may result in a loss of continuity in the development of individuals”.

Further extensions followed July 2015, March 2016, October 2016, March 2017 and, most recently, in October 2017.

A freedom of information request shows that over the seven year period to October 2017 the contractor was paid £1.74m. The latest extension is worth a further £210,000.

The services provided span the terms of former TfL Commissioner Sir Peter Hendy and successor Mike Brown. TfL’s top post comes with a salary in excess of £300,000 and a host of in-house support staff. 

Defending the consultancy contract, a TfL spokesperson said the contractor in question “has provided advice and support to the TfL leadership team for a number of major organisational change programmes to deliver a range of improvements and significant financial savings.  

“The current programme is delivering £4bn of savings to 2021/22, reducing our operating costs for the first time in our history.”   

However Liberal Democrat London Assembly member Caroline Pidgeon said the agency’s decision to repeatedly roll over the contract uncontested “for so many years raises some fundamental questions about TfL’s transparency, let alone its commitment to value for money.” 

She added: “Contracts such as this should be open for examination and regularly put out to tender.”

The most recent renewals appear to undermine efforts by Mayor Sadiq Khan to slash costs within TfL in order to help fund his freeze fares and meet the challenges posed by the axing of TfL’s Government grants.

Last year Mr Khan ordered the agency to carry out “a fundamental review” of management layers, renegotiate all contracts, freeze recruitment “for all but the most essential roles” while “significantly cutting the most expensive of the existing circa 3,000 agency contractors.”

Commenting on the FOI’s revelations, Labour AM Tom Copley said: “We’ve had a commitment from the Mayor to reducing consultancy costs, TfL must now follow through. 

“At a time when TfL are having to tighten their purse strings because the government are removing their operational grant, it begs the question whether this is value for money.”

Source : MayorWatch.co.uk

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