Helping non-members?
This column has always maintained that every licensed taxi driver should belong to a trade organisation. I’ve been with the LTDA for more years than I care to remember and having used their legal assistance on two occasions, I am more than delighted. So obviously, I am biased towards that organisation, but I would be delighted if everyone joined a trade organisation regardless of whichever one that was. But what if you don’t and then need help?
   A DaC driver was in that situation recently when he was arrested outside the OXO Tower. We tried to get him to tell Call Sign about it, but after phoning him the first time, he never answered our calls again. No one is compelled to tell Call Sign anything. We can but ask.
   The next thing we saw was several weeks later when the driver’s story appeared on the front page of The Badge. The paper told its readers that the LTDA had refused to help the driver, recommending that he contacted the Law Society, whilst without actually saying it, inferring that he was an LTDA member member. When we checked with the LTDA, we were told it was due to him not being a member. However, the LCDC offered assistance and from that we assume that anyone in trouble who doesn’t belong to a trade organisation should go to them and they will help for nothing. That just leaves the question, why would anyone want to join an organisation that helps you anyway. Surely not just for publicity? Hush my mouth…!

Wasted website?
Call Sign recently received a letter from a driver asking us to publicise a website. The driver wrote: "There's a forum up and running where lots of taxi business is discussed. It's the LTDF and whilst it contains the usual dissenters, they are a minority compared with the rest of the 500 drivers on there who are only interested in winning back the work. Can you give it a plug in Call Sign?"
   I agreed and the letter was laid out in Mailshot. But he wrote again several weeks later:
   "I recently wrote you a letter regarding the London Taxi Drivers Forum and asked if you could publicise it. Can I withdraw that request please? The whole forum has been taken over by the likes of your old buddies *** and *** etc (I have withheld the names…Ed). It has turned into nothing short of an anti-LTDA machine and anti-DaC / ComCab diatribe. I refuse to post there as it's like a witch hunt with the above trying to disclose posters, personal details and because of that I don't wish to publicise it any further."
   How sad is that for designer Alan Roudge who must have put a email was in its infancy, we had around 200 members who used

Discuss to put their problems and to answer others. In addition to drivers, members included MDs from taxi companies, radio circuit leaders (yes, Brian Rice was a member) and even the-then chief executive — and later chairman — of Manganese Bronze, Jamie Borwick was on it. Many drivers used the site to ask questions or just to discuss trade issues. Eventually Vince was forced to take the site down because of the unruly attitude of a few members who had hijacked it. Amazingly one of those people is the same person mentioned by the driver who wrote to me! How sad is that. And his spelling hasn’t got any better over the years…!

Prayer? Yes it was I…
I recently went to Westminster Cathedral to say a last goodbye to Doug Sherry. It seems quite unlikely that magnificent building had seen so many non-Catholics within its hallowed walls for a service, but to a man, we were all there – Christians, Jews, Muslims and of course Catholics – to say a fond farewell to Doug. I have to admit that I am not the world’s most religious person. Each to his own. If religion helps you, then that is excellent and it puts you into an enviable situation. So I was stymied for what must have been all of two seconds when a bearded reporter holding a microphone approached me outside the Cathedral from the religion radio station, Premier Radio.
   Apparently he had asked some others to say a few words on their views of prayer, but they hadn’t wanted to participate and pointed him in my direction! You won’t be surprised to know that Premier isn’t on my list of radio stations to listen to, but surprisingly to me, it rates quite highly for some Dial-a-Cab drivers because several phoned me during that week to say that they’d heard me on Premier and wondered – quite seriously apparently - whether I had forsaken my own religion and entered the church!
   The answer is no, but the views I gave Premier were genuine. For those interested in what I said about prayer, it was that I felt it was something that many grasped at when they felt they needed it, but looked the other way when things were going well. And those views not only went out on air, but also formed a subject for discussion! So the answer to several questions I’ve had is yes, t’was I but no, I haven’t changed my religion…!

Pedicabs, police and Old Compton Street
I recently dropped a fare on a lovely summer’s late afternoon in Old Compton Street and stared in amazement at the number of tremendous amount of work into it. In 1998, Call Sign together with designer Vince Chin put up the world’s second taxi discussion list. Other than the American Taxi-l, there was nothing like it anywhere. Bearing in mind that

pedicabs parked in every available gap; on the pavement, zigzag lines and almost as a right, on double yellow lines. Then I saw two police officers walking along totally ignoring the sight of the menacing three-wheeled death traps. I pulled over, got out and asked why they were disregarding the bikes? I expected a rude answer from yet another two police officers that were blissfully ignorant of the rules. But they surprised me – not so much with their knowledge, but more for the way they translated that knowledge. They pointed to the taxi rank outside the Prince Edward Theatre and the empty taxi obviously parked on the back of it.
   "What about that cab," they asked, "has the rank suddenly become a facility for going shopping! Should we put a ticket on it?"
   They took my sting away and I rather meekly drove off after giving a watered-down version of the rights and wrongs of the situation. Regular readers will remember the photo in a recent Call Sign of a taxi parked on the Hamleys rank in Regent Street, which was saved from a ticket by a Call Sign reporter convincing a policeman that he was probably on a radio job.
   The non-DaC driver in Old Compton Street was parked and because of him, I couldn’t argue about the pedicabs. In addition, that rank could have been used by working cabs with lots of people milling around in the warm sunshine.
   I’m not sure I would defend drivers again who couldn’t care less about the rest of us and just park on any rank that suits them. In my view, it represents the height of selfishness. If you disagree, please let Call Sign know and we’ll be happy to publish your letter.

Ban don’t licence…
Speaking of pedicabs, many drivers will remember the ‘ban don’t licence’ campaign run by the LTDA in regard to these appalling menaces. So I have to offer my congratulations to that organisation following Transport for London’s decision not to licence pedicabs. I remember the Woodfield Road organisation putting out a video showing what the results of an accident between a car and a pedicab would be – and doesn’t their riders terrible driving often ask for one! That must have helped convince previous Mayor Ken Livingston that these three-wheelers should not be given the respectability of licensing. Now Boris has concurred with that and whilst still no sign of any banning, licensing has flown out of the window.
   I have never had a problem with pedicabs giving rides over set routes for fixed prices – even better if those routes are in parks – but when they park wherever they like and ride over pavements and against one-way streets, you had to ask whether TfL actually realised what was happening. Well now we know that they’ve finally seen the light!
   Soon pedicabs will have to begin behaving or else they will be subject to PCNs like the rest of us. But be assured that their bosses won’t pay the tickets as DaC does and that could be the beginning of the end of pedicabs in such huge numbers.

Alan Fisher
callsignmag@aol.com