Call Sign November 2007 - Page 30 - DAC to offset 4500 tonnes of CO2 - ALIENS LOVE UNDERPANTS! - The good Ken giveth and the good Ken taketh away?

DAC to offset 4500 tonnes of CO2

Brian with representatives of Carbon Footprint after the agreement to offset 4500 tonnes of CO2

At their recent launch of Dial-a-Cab House, the Board of Management announced the Society’s decision to work with Carbon Footprint in offsetting 4500 tonnes of carbon dioxide in supporting projects around the world. This will assist in reducing carbon emissions via the displacement of fossil fuels through clean and renewable energy generation and reforestation programmes.
Chairman Brian Rice told Call Sign: "It has now reached the point where some clients will only travel in an electric vehicle! Dial-a-Cab are now determined to do everything we can to help lower the carbon emissions that come through doing the job of transporting passengers."

ALIENS LOVE UNDERPANTS!

One of my wife's friends is a children's author who has recently written a really funny book for young kids called Aliens Love Underpants. We own a copy of the book and my son and I read it together often, always ending up in fits of laughter!
On Thursday 25th October, this book came in number one in the early reader category on the Richard and Judy’s Best Kids' Books programme on Channel 4.
Aliens Love Underpants is by Claire Freedman and it can be bought in most bookstores (Waterstones have it on the featured stand in the kids section). My family and I cannot recommend it enough! If you have young kids and you want to have a good laugh with them, then buy them this book!

Jon Winterburn
DaC Network Administrator

Or stuff the disabled – they’re not messing up our system!
The September Call Sign ran the sad story about pensioner Geoff Bone, who lost part of both legs following a train accident 35 years ago. He had left his car parked (legally) in Park Lane having driven down from Hemel Hempstead to make a speech about a charity whose aim is to supply wheelchairs to disabled people around the world. The police towed his car away claiming that it was reported as containing "suspicious looking carrier bags on the back seat."
   Then they made him get home on the train…
   Another example of today’s couldn’t-care-less attitude towards the disabled came last month when Call Sign Editor, Alan Fisher, received a TfL PCN for waiting outside of the Chapel Street exit to M&S for a disabled passenger using their Westminster TaxiCard.
   Unfortunately, the passenger needed substantial assistance to get out of the store and Alan had to wait some time and then several more minutes when trying to get her into the back seat.
   Unbeknown to Alan, a CCTV camera recorded his stay in a loading / unloading zone.
   Alan couldn’t understand why the
PCN applied to the period in the loading zone when causing no hold-ups, yet not to those few minutes when the passenger came out and he drove across and stopped on double red lines to pick her up?
   So he appealed in writing, asking

The good Ken giveth and the good Ken taketh away?

20 years ago he gave with one hand

that question and pointing
out that the person whose name was at the bottom of their parking tickets, Mayor of London Ken Livingstone, was the very person who as leader of the former Greater London Council introduced the TaxiCard for the benefit of the disabled.
Alan denied none of the facts supplied on the PCN and gave exact details of the TaxiCard trip as evidence that he wasn’t just doing some shopping. He added that the passenger was disabled and slow and queried why no ticket was issued when he was on the double red lines. His letter to TfL included:
"No doubt it would have been rather embarrassing to know how little TfL think of the disabled to have issued a ticket (and video footage) while I was lifting the woman into the taxi, especially as the person whose name ends the PCN (the Mayor of London) was the person who initiated the TaxiCard scheme many years ago. Although the scheme has helped many with disabilities to go out where they

and 20 years on he now takes it back!

probably would have been
unable to do so before, it has also cost London's taxi drivers a fortune in parking fines for the privilege, as no leeway seems to be given and cases such as mine where selective images are chosen, seem to be in the majority."
   In rejecting his appeal, TfL claimed that the taxi had been left on a loading / unloading bay for the 3 minutes that the camera was trained on it and during that period, no loading or unloading was seen. And as their camera failed to spot the woman being helped into the taxi, they were rejecting the appeal.
   Alan also sent a copy of his appeal to the Mayor’s office. As of publication date, no response has been received.
   It does seem strange that the very scheme Mr Livingstone introduced to aid the disabled is thought so little of by his baby, Transport for London, that Dial-a-Cab have to spend a fortune repaying drivers who have been caught.

Frank Dawson

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