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Christmas Incentives
I hope you all had a good Christmas. As we move into the early days of
2001, we shall start processing the information in order to determine who
has earned what in our incentive schemes. Also, we will need to calculate
how many credits each member has earned in the Rover 25 car raffle so that
the draw can be made as soon as possible.
You can probably imagine that due to the Christmas holidays, I am writing
this piece earlier than normal, so I'm a little vague as to any exact
dates, however, I expect the draw for the cars to be made towards the end
of January. Similarly, we will know the amount of bonus to be paid at the
same time and I anticipate that any monies due will be paid at the
beginning of February along with your credits, but please remember that
the above dates are an educated guess; so please don't hold me to them!
AGM
Please remember that the AGM is on Sunday, 4th February and will be held
at the Metropole Hotel, Edgware Road at 11am. If you cannot attend, you
can vote by post even though it is an electable AGM. However, if you do
neither, then you will be fined £50 in accordance with rule 9(g), so now
there is no excuse for anyone to be fined.
When you receive your literature from the Electoral Reform Ballot Society
(ERBS), you will have three Rule changes and two propositions that have
been put forward by members. You will probably be pleased to know that the
BoM are not putting forward any Rule changes or propositions! The Ballot
paper itself will have the Rule changes and propositions on one side, with
the list of prospective Board Members on the other, so please remember
that you will have to vote on both sides of the Ballot form before you
return it to ERBS. You now have the choice to vote by post or in person at
the Metropole, so please, no fines...
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Client Lunch
You will see elsewhere in the magazine that we had a client lunch on
Wednesday, 29th November. I must say that it went extremely well and it
was nice to see so many of our clients together, it gives us the
opportunity to explain some of the service problems that we experience
before Christmas and hopefully forge closer links, while at the same time
to thank them for patronising us throughout the year.
Aerial Sites
I know that many of you have been having problems with the radio signals
in recent times; most of the problems are due to the amount of traffic
that we transmit between our aerial sites and cabs. The busier we are, the
more we have requests for advise arrival, address queries and of course,
rejects. All this throughput slows the system down. Consequently, we are
having a thorough overhaul of all our aerial sites and will probably
install multi-channel working to all locations. Instead of one aerial site
operating just one channel, it will then be capable of transmitting
several. This will give us the capability to increase our capacity and
also make the system work faster.
We will retain all our eight sites with multi-channel working and if
necessary re-locate some of our sites. In recent years, radio technology
like most things has advanced beyond all recognition. For instance, every
channel is controlled by a piece of equipment called a Communications
Controller (Comms Controller) and one is needed for each channel.
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Nowadays
those eight very large pieces of equipment can be replaced by one PC,
which as you can imagine, is very much more efficient. So rest assured
that the next project will be to overhaul the entire communications
infrastructure and that will hopefully make us even more efficient.
Private Hire
By the time you read this, you may well have heard that the PCO will be
beginning to process applications from Mini-Cab operators on the 22nd
January 2001, with all offices set to be licensed by 21st October 2001.
That will be followed by the actual licensing of the vehicles and then
finally, the drivers. So the day is getting nearer when the unlicensed
trade will become licensed Private Hire.
Their only legitimate source of income will be your radio work and they
are already making claims that Licensed taxis should not be equipped with
radio, as they are for public hire and only the Private hire should be
equipped with radio. What makes the situation worse is that the GLA have
installed Bob Kylie as the transport supremo for London; he was the man in
charge of transport in New York when it was decided to remove radios from
the Yellow Cabs. I do not wish to appear as a pessimist, because I'm not,
but you should all be aware of the situation.
I believe the four London radio circuits will have to make themselves
extremely busy in the future convincing anyone who cares to listen that
radios must remain in taxis, after all, those four radio taxi companies in
London have a combined turnover in excess of £150m and needless to say,
that is something the new legitimate Private Hire would love to get their
hands on...
Finally, may I thank you all for your kind seasonal wishes and in return
wish you all a very happy and healthy New Year.
Brian Rice |
