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Hello and welcome to the December 2008
Call Sign – a sort of Christmassy issue as the January 2009 mag
should be on your doorsteps sometime between Boxing Day and New Year’s Eve.
So enjoy the holiday period… Vito Taxi –
Manchester make a sensible decision
The Manchester council of Trafford has made a sensible decision regarding
the Mercedes Vito taxi. Up until now, Manchester had only used the LTI
version, but they have now approved the new cab to run alongside it. So why
is it sensible, because it’s no secret that I don’t approve of the Vito due
to its likeness to a private hire vehicle? Well, unlike London, the council
will only licence the vehicle in black and in that colour, it looks far more
like a taxi. As one Trafford councillor put it: "The Mercedes Vito, like the
traditional style black cabs, will be easily recognisable to people as a
hackney carriage due to its colour and illuminated sign."
AGM error!
To prove – or should that be proof – that this magazine is the paper
equivalent of human, we made a mistake in the November issue on – of all
pages – the Chairman’s one! As the kindly benefactor that he is, Mr Rice has
refrained from firing - or even expelling me – so I would like to correct
that mistake here. It was nothing that important… only the wrong year for
the 2008 AGM!
Fortunately for me, Company Secretary Howard Pears had the correct
information in his reminder, but somehow the proofing pencil must have been
asleep checking Brian’s page.
So here it is with the correct year. The 2008 AGM
will be held at The Brewery, Chiswell Street, London EC1 on Sunday 8,
February 2009 at 11:00hrs.
I feel purged of all wrongdoings now!
Silly Knowledge?
The PCO say – quite rightly in my view – that they need to attract
younger drivers into the trade. But surely the situation where 19 year old
Kevin MacLaren has become the youngest ever candidate to pass The Knowledge,
is a bit silly?
It took him around two years as against the current average of over
three, but what is the point when he cannot drive a taxi until he is 21? In
April of this year, Call Sign wrote about DaC’s Natalia Shalom
(A34), who at the time became the youngest taxi driver in London. She passed
out at around her 21st birthday having begun the KoL just over two years
earlier. But Kevin was so young when he started that he
now has two years before he can get his licence. Will the PCO then ask him
to do the Knowledge again because he won’t have driven for two years?
Hopefully not, because all he deserves is congratulations in passing one of
life’s most difficult exams. But it does sound a bit silly. My oldest
grandson is 14, I wonder if they’d accept him? What the notorious Mr Finlay
would have made of it all is anyone’s guess! |
Stevie Mac and advertising…!
I’ve known the LTDA’s Steve McNamara for many
years and yes, we’ve had the occasional disagreement, but we
often think alike. However, I have to pull him up in his general
condemnation of the trade press – his obvious exclusion being the
publication he writes for – inferring that we hold back from criticising LTI
because of their advertising. That, Steve, is rubbish so far as Call
Sign is concerned.
In last month’s mag was this comment: "So what have LTI done?
More to the point, what haven’t they done? Well, LTI claim they are doing
the recall in VIN order, but according to every single one of the calls I
referred to earlier, these drivers cannot get a clue from LTI regarding
their position in that queue so they can at least have an idea as to how
much longer they will have to wait. That isn’t good enough."
That’s just a small example. I have no problem whatsoever
in publishing anything that I consider worthy of
publication – that applies to criticism and when deserved, praise too. Yet
not once have LTI ever hinted to me that they did not like something I had
written about them – and if your assumption were correct, I’d have lost
their advertising by now.
But perhaps they accept my criticism because they know that I speak
as I find? Their press releases on the TX4 fires were occasionally on the
snotty side, but that won’t stop me telling anyone that is interested that
my TX4 is far and away the best cab I have ever driven – I can’t really
blame them for my Saturday night puncture! What I won’t do is to criticise
for the sake of it, but I’m certainly not afraid to if that is what’s
needed.
Stevie Mac works constantly for the betterment of the trade, but he
isn’t always right … and you couldn’t make that up, you really couldn’t!
Fares unfair?
I must admit to being a bit shell-shocked after
last month’s Editorial where I suggested we think carefully about whether we
should still go for a fare increase in April 2009. The large number of DaC
drivers who phoned me to say I was right stunned me – although in all
fairness, I had a handful that said I was talking rubbish!
But I really am concerned that by April, we could be not only in
the depths of recession – being into the third quarter of negative growth -
but even possibly a depression. The problem is that I’m not actually sure
what a depression is! Someone once told me that a recession is when your
neighbour loses his job and a depression is when you lose yours. Well we
can’t actually lose our jobs as such, but if we don’t pick up passengers,
the effect is |
the same.
By next April, unemployment will be at the highest levels we have
seen for many years. Many of those losing their jobs will be former regular
cab users, so we have to try everything to keep our noses ahead of private
hire. We can’t compete on all their prices, but neither should we kid
ourselves that they can just cut theirs. Most of their drivers are working
for very low rates already and can’t go much lower, while their bosses have
huge bills to keep up with. Many private hire companies will go out of
business, although even with that we are going to be quieter than we have
been since the last recession in 1989/90. But we can keep going if
passengers believe that it’s worthwhile for them to use cabs rather than
public transport – especially after Mayor Johnson’s recent transport
business plan in which he announced an annual, above-inflation hike in bus
and tube fares for the next eight years!
A press release saying that the licensed taxi industry is forgoing
its usual increase for next year because it realises the current
difficulties the economy is going through, could bring us tremendous
goodwill and perhaps win us extra work. If we do go ahead with an increase –
however small – it will lose us more work than we gain in extra cash. It
will also lose us customers that may never come back. That is my view, but
the decision isn’t mine…Fed up with traffic
lights!
I’m sure I’m not the only driver who wonders why,
in an age when almost nothing of a technological nature is impossible and
kids play with computers more powerful than the one that set us on our data
dispatch travels twenty years ago, someone can’t invent portable traffic
lights at road works that actually work correctly? Either they control so
many different directions, one street at a time, and keep traffic waiting
for several minutes or all ways get stuck on red and cause chaos. Who can
forget Brompton Cross by Sloane Avenue, when all routes came to a halt for
several weeks because of the portable lights?
Surely portable lights that allow two roads at a time to operate if
they do not involve the road works, can’t be that difficult? Or could it
just possibly be that they do not want to spend the money? Either way, I’m
fed up with them and if anyone from TfL is reading this, you wouldn’t like
me if I progressed onto being REALLY fed up!
Richard’s rest!
In his third year of writing for Call Sign with his DaC
driver’s views on life and everything, Richard Potter (T51) is
taking a rest from his always-interesting monthly column. I would like to
thank him for taking the time and effort over these past years, because
writing the occasional letter isn’t too difficult, but having to fill a page
every four weeks is somewhat more so. So thanks again Richard...
Alan Fisher
callsignmag@aol.com |
