M25 Again
I've written many times over the past years that if a passenger requests you to use the M25 whilst travelling from one side of London the other, you must get approval from the duty dispatcher. The reason for this is that the passenger may not be the one paying the fare or authorised to add unnecessary expenditure onto a company bill. The dispatcher has access to check if the passenger has authorisation and if he / she neglects to do that, they will be bought to task.

Global Positioning System
We still have some drivers who are trying to gain advantage over their fellow colleagues by booking into zones incorrectly and stealing jobs that should have gone to a correctly booked in honest driver. As you would have seen over the past two complaints meetings, the committees treat it seriously and the sentences reflect that. When a driver commits this offence, he is in fact electronically mugging every other driver; it's as good as stealing money out of your pocket.
   The dispatcher has access to GPS, so if you get a message stating you are booked into a zone incorrectly and giving you your true location, that is then printed onto your daily log sheet and later presented as evidence to the complaints committee.  

When booking into a postal zone, you must be able to get to the furthest point of that zone within the given run in time (if you are unsure of the time parameter, ask the voice channel). All zones ending in 50, 51 or 99 are physical zones, which means you have to be physically within that zone to book in.
The WW00 (Heathrow) zone is also a physical zone; you have to be inside the Perimeter Road of the airport or the taxi park. If you are in the taxi park, you only have to book in once and do not have to book into a group number. Other physical ranks are EC7, EC9, EC10,EC11, WC3, E14C, ES1, WS1, EC5 and SE75. Some of these have time parameters. Again, if you are unsure, check with the voice channel.

Reimbursement of Subs
If you are hospitalised for a period of time and think you should get exemption from Society subscriptions, what should you do? Firstly, make sure you get a medical certificate stating the start date of your illness and send it to Drivers Operations at DaC. Your subscriptions will still be levied against your account. When you are given the all clear, get a doctors 'return to work' certificate and send it in to us again, we will then work out the reimbursement and deduct it from your debt. This should then reduce your account to zero.
You do not get a reimbursement for coughs, colds, holidays or outside training courses for other employment including the TA...!

Subscriptions
There are some drivers on DaC who do not look at their pay sheets when they arrive through the letterbox. By this, I mean to check if they are in debt to the Society. If you fail to do enough credit work to cover your subscriptions, then you should contact Drivers Services and make arrangements to cover the debt before the end of that current month. The rulebook states that if you fail to pay your full subscription within 28 days of it being posted on your account, you are deemed to have let your membership to the Society lapse.  If you have an arrangement to have Credit Union payments made via your credit work and fail to have enough money in your account

 to cover the debt, we will recall payments and inform the Credit Union that as you are a debtor to the Society, they will have to collect from you by direct debit or cash.
   Some drivers do have sudden problems cropping up and if you fall into this category, contact us immediately and explain the problem. If you have Credit Union payments, contact them as soon as possible; if you have a problem contacting their office, arrange to contact or meet Terry Dodd (W15). Terry may be big and frightening, but he is also sympathetic! If you need to, then get in touch with them immediately your problems begin.

Aerial Sites
In the past 2 months, we have moved some of our aerial sites due to the closure of the sites' maintenance company, while other sites are moving due to pirates or bad signals. The Millbank Tower aerial has been moved to the London Hilton Hotel and is proving to be very powerful. Today we are moving the aerials at Townsend Yard, Highgate to Wavel House on North Hill, Highgate. Others, which are scheduled to be moved are Drapers Gardens and Shooters Hill. We are trying hard to give our drivers the best possible coverage from the radio frequencies that we have been allocated.

Terminals
Some drivers are still trying to treat the new computer terminals like they did the old 'dumb' terminals. As anyone who uses a PC will tell you, if you ask the computer to perform a function, it needs to finish that function before being allocated another. If you try to press buttons in quick succession, it will just lock up. It's much like a driver; if you ask him to do 3 or 4 things together, he gets baffled! Remember patience is a virtue...

End of Year
Well, another year has passed and we're in the festive season of Christmas. May I take this opportunity of wishing all subscribers and their families a happy and restful holiday period, also I wish you a prosperous New Year. For any driver who is unfortunate enough to be ill at this time, may you recover quickly.
   If you were sadly unfortunate like myself and suffered a bereavement during the past year, I hope the coming year will be a much happier time. May I also thank those drivers and their families who contacted me with condolences on the loss of my mother, I appreciated it...

Tom Whitbread
Drivers Operations / Complaints Officer