Why Is It That TfL PCOs Don't Work Closer With Westminster Marshals ?

Anger as Ferrari driver 'moves cones out of way' to park in taxi rank, despite 'being told not to'

One witness said he laughed when confronted about it

Onlookers say they couldn’t believe their eyes after watching a Ferrari driver move traffic cones out of the way to park in a taxi rank.

The driver of the sports car was seen moving the cones out of his way to pull up at the spot designated only for taxi drivers. 

A traffic marshall was seen speaking to the man, only for the driver to allegedly laugh before putting the cones back around his vehicle.

He was far from the only person parked up there when they shouldn't have been - but perhaps unsurprisingly, the very conspicuous Ferrari was the car that most people noticed.

And those who saw it have been quick to make their feelings known about what happened.

One woman, who was with her husband at the time, but didn’t want to be named, said: “I was quite amazed to see this guy remove the cones and pull up.

“Several other people witnessed it, including the taxi driver and a parking warden official, who did make some comment to him.

“I thought it was inconsiderate and totally out of order as there was no room for any taxis to use the rank. And if a taxi had pulled up next to it, he would have had to double park, which would have caused congestion.

“It is not fair on the taxi drivers to take their spaces.”

The woman was left further enraged as she says the driver ignored advice given to him by traffic marshal.

“I am not a confrontational person,” she said. “I said something to the taxi driver about it and then the traffic warden spoke to him, but he just put the cones back round his car and walked off laughing.

“He walked off like: it's ok, I drive a Ferrari driver, cones don’t apply to me.”

Another man, who didn’t want to be named, said that others were also parking on the Taxi rank. 

A sign clearly says only taxis can be parked there!

However, he says the driver of the Ferrari as well as the others could have easily have parked elsewhere.

Rule 240 of the Highway Code states 

Motorist must NOT park on taxi rank bays as indicated by upright signs and markings.

It is a contravention of code 45 for any vehicle other than a licensed taxi to be parked on a taxi rank. No observation period will be applied. Fines can be issued immediately. 

Only Licensed Taxis are permitted to park on Taxi ranks. Private hire cars (minicabs) are not permitted to park on a Taxi rank and should be enforced against the same as any other road vehicle.

•  Loading/ unloading is not permitted. 

• Blue Badge holders are not exempt on Taxi ranks 

Exemptions to enforcement

Vehicles (other than taxis) are not permitted to park on a taxi rank with the following exemptions:

• council/ government department in pursuance of statutory duties

• Emergency services (fire, police, ambulance, customs)

• Road maintenance

• Statutory undertaking or water, gas, electric, BT, and so on. 

Anyone caught is liable to receive a fine.

All information from https://ift.tt/2KDLgqO

People need to think before parking in any taxi bay, as the are stopping working drivers earning a living.

Moving ‘no parking or loading’ cones is also breaking traffic laws and could lead to a fine to anyone who is caught moving them.

from Taxi Leaks https://ift.tt/2MXq4Zz
via IFTTT

London Taxi Maker Geely LEVC, Joins Brexit Chorus

Traditional London black cab maker, the Geely owned London EV Company, has also warned about the impact that a hard Brexit could have on business, with its chairman saying it could dismantle Britain's rejuvenated car industry.

Reuters noted Jaguar Land Rover, the UK's biggest automaker and employer, had said earlier a so-called hard Brexit would cost it GBP1.2bn (US$1.59bn) a year, curtailing its future operations in the UK.

"What we really worry about is if there are big difficulties transporting goods via the [English] Channel, whether it's increased costs, or anything else," LEVC chairman Carl-Peter Forster told Reuters in Berlin at the launch of its electric taxi in Germany.

"Even with no tariffs, lorries could still be stuck at the border for days," he said, highlighting how the industry relied on frictionless supply chains to transport components and assembled vehicles back and forth across the channel.

Chief executive Chris Gubbey told Reuters 33% of LEVC's suppliers are in the UK, another third in Europe and the rest elsewhere worldwide.

Reuters noted LEVC spent GBP300m (US$398m) on a new plant in Ansty near Coventry when it made the shift to electric vehicles, the first new automotive plant to be built in Britain in over a decade.

Forster said "if the wrong decision is made" people should have no illusions about the extent of the impact on Britain's car industry which has been undergoing a revival in terms of manufacturing in recent years.

"You won't see it overnight, it's a process that will take 10-15 years.... It would be madness to wake up in the morning in London and read in the papers that there are virtually no carmakers in Britain, it would be a real shame," he told Reuters.

Forster was speaking as LEVC launched the electric version of the traditional black London taxi cab in Germany, where the market is dominated by Daimler's Mercedes, in which Geely also owns a 10% stake.

LEVC hopes that the electric taxi, which is available in the more typical beige colour of German taxi cabs, will find takers as a debate about clean air and urban mobility rages, Reuters said.

The automaker is close to finalising a deal with also Geely-owned Volvo for sales and servicing in Germany.

Gubbey said LEVC was looking to sell hundreds, rather than thousands, of taxis in Germany and wasn't seeing Brexit having any impact on negotiations with potential customers.

Along with the Netherlands, Norway and now Germany, LEVC is also in negotiations in France and has plans to expand to customers outside of Europe from next year, particularly in the UAE, Australia, Singapore and China, Reuters added.

from Taxi Leaks https://ift.tt/2m01POL
via IFTTT

Taxi Leaks Withstands Hacking Attempts And Is Back Up And Running

After a couple of days down time... Taxi Leaks, in association with London Taxi Radio are back up and running,

As we posted last week, the Taxi Leaks Blog have been the target of malicious attacks which have made it quite difficult to keep up our standard of posting.

We know where most of these attacks and potential hacking come from, so therefore we have taken measures to secure our place on all social media platforms and in fact have also branched out into other fields....but more about that later.

One of our problems we believe -facing not only us but every driver posting on social media- is allegedly coming from the Twitter police team, currently working away for TfLTPH. Anyone can be "targeted" by Tfl for anything.... but obtaining a clear judgement by their legal teams... is very different.

 Tfl employees (directors, managers, and others) dislike criticism and take offence very easily, so its not surprising they are behind the scenes scheming and plotting.

In Britain, we still live in a society where we can voice our opinions freely and without fear of twisted retribution in the name of a legal definition "fit and proper person" argument and Tfl know only too well a suspension or revocation will attract a legal challenge and scrutiny if only once on this subject delivering judgement surrounding this clear attempt to close down dissent or critique in UK law under the auspice of the rights of freedom of speech law.

I really wouldn't worry too much about what is voiced on social media if it is presented as either a "question" or a "checked and proven fact"

If this principle is adhered to, there is never going to be any chance of Tfl's underhanded involvement as they will have neither any legal argument or right to be in any position to involve themselves as self righteous regulators of taxi driver trade press or social media commentary remembering their (us) clients pay licensing fees into their bank account and the use of our funds to follow a fanciful argument is a dead end argument. 

from Taxi Leaks https://ift.tt/2lYuPqf
via IFTTT

VOLUNTEER TAXI DRIVERS NEEDED... LTFUC Trip To Southend On Sea.

Uber relaunches a licensed service in Finland after taxi law deregulation

Flushed with success in London, where they cut through TfL and interested party the LTDA like a knife through butter, Uber has officially relaunchied in Finland, a year after suspending its primary service in the market — when it said it would wait for taxi laws to be deregulated.

Among the changes it was waiting for are the removal of taxi permit caps and fare restrictions. 

Most parts of the Act came into effect on July 1.

The Finnish government said its intention is to modernize the rules to “significantly enhance the implementation of new technology, digitalisation and new business concepts”, promoting competition and working towards the creation of what it dubbed “seamless, multimodal travel chains” — thanks also to a push in the act for data and systems interoperability and open interfaces.

“This Act will give us a genuine opportunity to make mobility a comprehensive service for customers,” said transport minister Anne Berner last year.

Uber says two services that use professional drivers — uberX and UberBLACK — will operate in the Helsinki capital region in Finland, which it notes will includes Helsinki, Espoo, Vantaa and Kauniainen.

Uber is not restarting its unlicensed peer-to-peer service (UberPOP) in the market.

That unlicensed driver option has essentially been outlawed in Europe after the region’s top court ruled in December that Uber is a transport service, not a platform, thereby locking its business into being regulated by existing taxi licensing regimes.

And locking Uber into lobbying city authorities to ‘modernize’ and deregulate taxi rules in its favor — such as by removing permit caps and making it easier for more people to become drivers, Uber intend to flood the market to drive out all competition.

“In the vast majority of the European countries we have been operating under existing transportation laws for years now and were able to scale our business with licensed private hire drivers,” an Uber spokesman told us.

Blogging about the Finland relaunch, Uber talks up the different course it says it’s seeking to chart under new CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, writing: “We’ve set a course for more responsible growth with a new approach to building long-term partnerships with cities and regulators.”

In truth Uber has had its course reset after a series of scandals rocked the company and, in Europe, after myriad legal challenges led to regulatory blowback and ramped up public and political pressure on the company to change.

Those external forces are continuing to reconfigure Uber’s business — and in Europe at least to make it better mesh with local civic values.

In London, the company has made a series of changes to how it operates — such as introducing safety caps on the hours drivers can work — changes it made following a shock decision by the transport regulator to withdraw its license to operate in September 2017.

Last week, the company won an appeal against TfL’s withdrawal of its license based on changes it had made since September 2017, though the judge only granted it a provisional 15-month license — with UK regulators set to continue to scrutinize its conduct closely.

Another example of Uber’s regional reconfiguration: An announcement in May that it would expand accident insurance cover for its drivers and delivery workers across Europe.

Last month the company also said it will bring its Jump e-bike service to Europe — with Khosrowshahi claiming the company wants to help cities tackle traffic-related problems such as air pollution and congestion by increasing access to “cleaner transportation solutions”.

In Helsinki, Uber had intended to keep its UberBlack service going for the past year but a spokeswoman told us it did not have enough drivers to provide a reliable service — so UberBlack has not been operational since the suspension. But will restart later today.

Since last August, Uber says more than 250,000 people in the Helsinki area have opened its app despite there being no service in operation — which it touts as showing “clear demand” for its service.

It also notes that Finnish Uber users have taken more than 200,000 Uber trips abroad during the local market pause.

“We’re excited to use our technology to complement existing public and private transport options and to offer an affordable, safe and reliable alternative to personal car ownership. We hope that other countries, where local people are not currently able to use apps like Uber either to get around or to make money on their terms, will soon follow suit,” Uber adds.

Source TechCrunch 

from Taxi Leaks https://ift.tt/2NsTLTw
via IFTTT

Remember Walls Have Ears...And The TfLTPH Twitter Police Are Listening In.

Taxi leaks has known for some time that everything we say on social media is closely monitored by TfLTPH. 

Going back to 2011, our editor Jim Thomas, received an email (still in his possession) from John Mason, on which he'd forgotten to redact the attached train. Further along the line was a communication from his assistant Helen Chapman,  who had been spying on Jim and attached screen shots from Twitter and the London Taxi Drivers forum of virtually everything he'd posted the previous day. 

(Reason for this was John Mason had in fact been blocked by the Forum and most of the drivers on Twitter).

At Taxi Leaks, we've always known TfLTPH take an interest in what we produce as our Stats checker can be used to show certain systems that click onto the blog (in TFL's case, we have a list of terminal ISP addresses). 

A busy day already at Racheal Grundy House

Screen shot from our commercially available Stats Checker program which monitors visitors to Taxi Leaks Blogs.

Recently Taxi Leaks have experienced problems when advertising posts on Twitter. We've appealed several times but have had no communication back from Twitter. Our blog has been flag up as unsafe....which is a blatant lie. Will will continue to post using what ever means we have at our disposal as we won't by bullied off line.

In the past we've posted proof that the LTDA wi-fi set up at Taxi House, was being used to spread discord amongst drivers from different representative orgs using the comment section of The Old Anderson Shelter Blog. When the proof was published in an issue of the 'United Cabbies News', it suddenly stopped. 

Carrying on from this surveillance, it has been bought to our attention that drivers have started to receive threatening letters from TfLTPH's Twitter Police team, over what's been alleged to have been said on social media.

And, it's no good blocking @TfLTPH as we believe their Twitter team are using a number of 'troll type' accounts to follow drivers. 

So please be very careful what you say on all social media platforms as its alleged they (TfL) have also managed to infiltrate private drivers groups on FaceBook. 

It would be a better use of TfLTPH resources to follow up on Tweets like this one below and take action, rather than what a few cabbies are saying to each other!

from Taxi Leaks https://ift.tt/2lTjqbg
via IFTTT

MP Finds George Osbourne's behaviour over BlackRock And Evening Standard Job, Worrying.

Ronnie Cowan Sir Bernard Jenkins Baroness Browning

Ronnie Cowan of the Scottish Nation Party spoke out in parliament about worrying impropriety of former Chancellor George Osborne. In a debate about the Thirteenth Report of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, he said:

"As Sir Bernard Jenkin mentioned, the situation with George Osborne has been particularly worrying. That the former Chancellor of the Exchequer has been taken on as an adviser to the BlackRock Investment Institute on a salary considerably in excess of his previous salary as Chancellor, in a sector that he was responsible for regulating, seems to show little care for even the appearance of propriety among Ministers. 

"That the body that was supposed to be regulating the revolving doors between Government and industry had to hear that he had accepted a high-profile position as editor of the Evening Standard in the news, without him having consulted them or waited for clearance, shows that the system is broken. 

"That the president of BlackRock could tell investors that there is no way of knowing whether Mr Osborne will draw on (or disclose or use for the benefit of yourself or the organisation to which this advice refers) any privileged information that he gained from his time in Government shows that this is an absolute mockery.

"As the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex said, the ACOBA chair, Baroness Browning, said to the Committee:
Every bus driver and hairdresser you know should apply for any of those jobs. I can tell you factually, not one applied.”

Sir Bernard Jenkins called on the government to;

considered the Thirteenth Report of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, HC 252, Managing Ministers’ and officials’ conflicts of interest: time for clearer values, principles and action, on the role and effectiveness of the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (ACoBA); 

notes that ACoBA regulates applications for business appointments by former Ministers and civil servants who have recently left the public sector; 

he believes that ACoBA is an ineffectual regulator which fails to inspire public confidence or respect; 

expresses concern that the Committee’s inquiry revealed numerous gaps in ACoBA’s monitoring process with insufficient attention paid to the principles that should govern business appointments; 

agrees that failures of consecutive governments to address ACoBA’s deficiencies have damaged public trust in politics and public institutions and led to repeated scandals; 

calls on the Government to bring forward major reform by introducing a principles-based system to ensure that individuals act with integrity and behave according to those principles; 

and further calls on the Government to fund independent checks by ACoBA across all Government departments and executive agencies to reinforce those principles.

https://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2018-06-28b.1130.0&s=taxi#g1134.0 

from Taxi Leaks https://ift.tt/2tWpvHm
via IFTTT