Steaming In...
I was interested in the Chairman's Report from the April
issue of Call Sign, where Brian Rice wrote about one of our largest
account clients who were starting to increase the number of rides they
are giving to a private hire company using 'A' class Mercs - the same
PH company that David Adelman went to after leaving Dial-a-Cab.
David went because he was offered an excellent deal and
like Brian, I don't see how anyone could blame him for wanting to
better himself.
However, it brought back to mind a chat I had with David
as he left Brunswick House for the last time. I said to him that no
doubt he would be steaming into our account clients and dishing out
info that they would never otherwise have been able to get.
"No," he told me, "that's not how I do
things. There are lots of companies out there looking for good
suppliers. Anyone who knows me well will know that isn't how I
operate."
Well, David, I knew you quite well and now I think we all
KNOW how you operate...
Mayor Ken and Ethnic Minority Drivers
According to Mayor of London Ken Livingstone in his recent
letter to licensed taxi drivers, ethnic minorities are
under-represented so far as licensed taxi drivers are concerned and he
refers to this trade as an "...almost universal white male
club." His main fear is that ethnic minority groups may be failing
the preliminary interviews that can usually tell whether a candidate is
suitable material for the Knowledge.
Well, I don't wish to sound racist, but I'm against any
special privileges being granted to any group on the back of them being
of a different race or culture. If an African cannot speak English well
enough to communicate with a passenger, then I don't want him in my
trade any more than I would want someone from the Valleys who could
only speak Welsh.
The situation takes me back almost 25 years to a
Johannesburg filled with prejudice against anyone who wasn't
white. It was bad enough when booking to see the wonderful black
tribal musical Ipi Tombi at the Brook
Theatre in Jo'burg that you had to look at the Rand Daily Mail entertainment page - not to see what time the show started, but to see which day your colour would allow you to go! Whites had 3 days while Asians and Orientals had just one chance per week to get in. Japanese had fewer problems as they classified as 'honorary whites' and could do anything a white person could do except marry one. Some honour, huh?
What was even worse - and Mr Livingstone's letter has reminded me of it - was when an Argentinean football team were touring the country and the South African government saw that as an ideal opportunity to push for re-admittance to the sporting world. They had been kicked out of the Olympics, the World Cup and most international sporting events. For a country that loved all sports so much, it was almost unbearable, but they always trotted out the excuse that South Africans of all races were happy as if that excused treating someone like a slave because they were of a different colour.
The idea of the SA government was that for the first time in living memory, they would put out a South African team of all races and colours and use that as a reason why the world should then accept them. The Rand Daily Mail in a front page Editorial that I can still see as though it were yesterday, splashed across its front page in bold capitals: "NOW THE WORLD CUP MUST INCLUDE SOUTH AFRICA." It went on to say that a mixed race SA team playing against the Argentineans had to mean world acceptance for them. History says that Apartheid continued for many years after and their sporting return only happened when Apartheid was blown up into tiny pieces.So what did the South African Government do wrong on that fateful day? Firstly, let me tell you that the Argentineans won by
something like 11 - 0. Why? Well the SAG didn't pick the best team
they had, their version of a mixed race team was three whites, three Asians,
three half-caste and two blacks. Only the three whites had ever played
together before the day! Yet South Africa believed that the world would
accept them because they put out a one-off mixed race team. And to complete
a situation so farcical that I still laugh when recalling it, only whites
were allowed into the 80,000-seater stadium!
So excuse me Ken, not for one second am I comparing you to that awful
Apartheid regime, in fact you are probably the opposite, yet what you are
asking has many similarities. You are taking the most respected taxi service
in the world, the only one where candidates have to study almost as long as
Doctors do to get a degree, and you want to give preferential treatment to
people because of their colour? Well sorry, Ken, you're just not on.
You have the ability to do for London what Rudy has done for New
York. But this isn't the way to go about it.
GENERAL ELECTION
Call Sign's political pundit, Chas Kissin (P99J) has
declined to write for the mag this month because as he explained to me:
"I have to give equal time to all the parties and I can't think of
anything good to say about any of them, so I'll pass by this month..."
However, I hope that you will all go out and vote for whomever
you choose. Why? Because you can and many around the world still can't...
YEAR FIVE
And so begins my fifth year as Editor... To be
honest, it sometimes feels like fifty rather than five, with the constant
pressure of worrying whether you have enough news for the next issue and
when you do, the worry about the following issue - and so on!
So I'm delighted to tell you that as Call Sign publishes eleven
issues per year, the next one (July) will be the one that's missing - mainly
'cos I'm feeling tired! As most of you will be away in July anyway, you
probably won't even notice! See you in August...
