Dying for the AGM!
Well, another AGM is about to hit us and this one sees another election. As usual, the vast majority of drivers won’t attend, using the rather stale excuse that "it makes no difference." And of course they are right, because if no one goes then discussion becomes pointless. But as I point out every year, you cannot have a democracy that suits according to circumstances. Postal ballots are a legitimate and often used method by many organisations for voting and like it or not, the vast majority of drivers do not want to attend the AGM. But at least the option of postal balloting will save some of them the embarrassment of gradually killing off their family one by one! What do I mean? Read on…
   During Trevor Clarke’s time as Company Secretary and at a time before postal ballots when AGM attendance was compulsory, he once showed me a pile of letters that were stored in a file marked ‘AGM non-attendance letters’. He hid the names of the letter writers from me, but the contents made distressing reading. Letter after letter explaining how someone in the driver’s family was either very ill or had died suddenly causing them to attend the funeral of a loved one on AGM day. I couldn’t see what Trevor found so funny at what must have been a very pained look on my face.
   It was when he showed me a letter from one driver explaining how his grandmother (named) had sadly passed on that I understood what was so funny, because he then showed me another letter from the same driver dated two years earlier where the same named granny had also died! It wasn’t just that driver either! I saw letters where the same unfortunate drivers had always "lost" a close relative in November (when the AGMs used to take place) – and often the same one!
   However funny it sounded, I remember thinking how sad these people were to make up a family death to avoid going to a once-a-year meeting of an organisation that many keep laughingly referring to as "ours" and how awful it must have been when the occasional genuine excuse came in and was probably not believed.
   Yes, in theory it’s our Society, but in practice we don’t give a toss and use it for purely what it is – a means to earn a living and those who disagree are not living in the real world. So perhaps we are nearing the time when we should consider changing our status, buy up the opposition and take our real place as the best radio taxi organisation in the world?
  See you at the meeting – well at

least 10 percent of you…

A Taxing Question?
I don’t know how many of you read the article by one of this trade’s most respected pipe-smoking columnist about the cost of every January to Taxi drivers, because it comes in a trade newspaper that can’t be bothered to deliver to Brunswick House, preferring instead to "dump" piles of them down the slope at Euston.
   The article itemised the writer’s expenses for January. I am not publishing his name or brand of pipe, because I think he must have been mad when he wrote it. Some of the expenses sound very familiar and if you buy your cab sometime after Christmas, then your overhaul and added expenses are always going to come in January.
   The writer mentions that his overhaul could cost around £1000. Yep, that outrageous figure not too long ago now seems quite ordinary; he then writes about the PCO’s "fee" of £146 for passing the cab, his £270 for three months insurance and £65 for 6-months road tax. It all sounds familiar and very probable...
   Then he goes on about the meter rental of £140 + VAT and - because he isn’t on Dial-a-Cab any more – the £75 + VAT each year at this time for a receipt printer. He perhaps leaves January behind when writing about the outrageous increase in our lifetime from 15p to £249 for renewing your Bill and of course the £33 CRA charge introduced recently at £12.
   Looking at the above, no one could disagree with him until he complains about one final January outlay of £700 for six months income tax. Yes, there is no typo, I said £700 and yes, I did say that he is complaining.
   I looked up my files (I keep everything) and the last time I paid anywhere as little as £700 for
a half-year was in 1991 and even then it was closer to £800.   Perhaps it’s me, but if I was only paying £700 tax for 6-months, I’d keep my mouth shut about it and celebrate - not complain…

Thanks Rodney
The end of last year saw one name missing from Taxi Globe. The long-time owner / publisher and former Editor, Rodney Lewis has now passed the paper on to

new owners – although Sandie
Goodwin is still deservedly its Editor.
   I owe Rodney much in terms of my writing experience. I had worked for the Daily Mirror yonks ago, but left that part of me behind when I did the Knowledge. It was Rodney who got me out of the comfort zone of doing Big Al in Call Sign and into the slightly broader world of writing for taxi mags in general and giving me the freedom to do and write about anything I wanted – and I did! Lana Sherif, Mr X, Ricky Peters, J.P.Duval and other names now long-faded into the memory both in this country and even Joe Smith, London cabbie extraordinaire in the Las Vegas Trip Sheet..
   Good luck for the future Rodney and a personal thank you from me…

Search and Find
Many of you will remember Call Sign’s successful search on behalf on an American Call Sign on-line reader from Vermont for any details of his late uncle and London taxi driver, James Hare. Now we have doubled up and reversed the process. Someone wrote to Call Sign from London in the December issue to ask if we could help find out any information about his late father,  Thomas Hollister who drove a cab in the 60’s. One of our drivers showed him Call Sign and he wrote in. This time it was an on-line reader from Alicante in Spain who wrote back to say that he had known Tom and would be pleased to answer any of his son’s questions.
   This type of search and find process can be time-consuming, but what a lovely feeling it brings to those concerned when you find success.

Haggle – No Thank You!
Nice to be able to help out the media at a slow time, but wasn’t the "passengers can haggle" story taken a bit far? In my 34 years as a Taxi driver, I have only ever heard that PCO regulations forbade us from charging more than the metered fare. I’ve never heard that it was prohibited to charge less. I have often "knocked off a few bob" for special circumstances – but hagglers beware; try it in my cab and you’re out…

Takeover?
A strong rumour suggests a radio circuit that recently became privatised is on the verge of taking over another London circuit. Will this just be the first, I ask myself…?
Alan Fisher
callsignmag@aol.com