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From the Editor |
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Taxi chat sites… At the beginning of 1998, Call Sign went online – one of just a small number of UK magazines of any industry to venture along what was still excitingly referred to as the World Wide Web. Soon after, thanks to our internet wizard Vince Chin, Call Sign began advertising the UK’s first taxi chatroom where anyone connected to the taxi business and who actually had internet connections, could discuss anything they wanted to that might improve the industry. In addition to drivers, members included garage proprietors, radio circuit leaders and even Jamie Borwick, who was soon to become the Chairman of Manganese Bronze and is now Sir Geoffrey Robert James Borwick, 5th Baron Borwick – or Lord Borwick for short! The chatroom was called Discuss and it soon became a huge success. No one hid behind email addresses because if you wanted to join, you gave your name. However, within a few years, Discuss had become so popular that it became the norm to just sign in with your email address and soon a new breed of user came along – one who realised that the internet provided ways of making up false identities behind false addresses as you went along. The emails began degenerating into slanging matches and discussion soon became impossible. Original members began leaving and soon after, Vince Chin announced that he was closing down the site as "the inmates were beginning to run the asylum." Another site sprung up soon afterwards, later to close and become reborn several times - including one by the late Cecil Selwyn from which I was banned. We have now arrived at the latest one – The London Taxi Drivers Forum or LTDF. Ever since being banned from Cecil’s list – with no reason ever given – I have not bothered joining any of its’ successors, although I have been a member of the American Taxi-l list since 1989. Strangely enough – or perhaps not - having recently been sent a whole bunch of emails from the LTDF list, I have been told that there is even an Alan Fisher on there, although it isn’t me! Neither am I someone called Wicksey, who rumour also suggests is me! So what is the point of this editorial? Well it’s just to ask all those well-meaning drivers who send me emails from the list when they mention either Brian Rice, Dial-a-Cab, Call Sign or myself, not to bother. Thank you anyway, but had I thought for one second that this list served any purpose, I’d have joined and taken part – but as Alan Fisher. But having read some of the stuff emanating from the LTDF, I can’t see the point. It is filled with emails from people who hide behind silly names and who obviously enjoy slagging off others thanks to that anonymity. My days of writing fun articles as Lana Sherif and Mr X have been left well behind by this mob! Call Sign may not be The Times, but I’ve been doing this job for 14 years and I recognise writing styles and even from the bunch of around 20 emails sent to me in February, I could tell that several were written by the same person but with different "names" at the bottom. They can’t do that in Call Sign because since day one I have insisted that writers give their names to stop any possibility of made-up letters. And God |
 help anyone on the LTDF list that dares to defend DaC against some of its detractors - many of whom claim to be ex-members - because they then too come under the cosh! Several years ago, I published some emails from a previous list because they were about myself and DaC. The uproar from its members was deafening. They were going to consult solicitors with a view to stopping me doing it again and tried everything to get me to reveal who had sent them to me. I even received a solicitor’s letter. I took no notice then and neither do I now. If it is a closed list and it acts like a sensible one discussing trade politics, then drivers won’t feel they have to send emails to me. Some of the posts are quite amusing in their ignorance. One writes of "the increasing panic from Rice and his propagandist, the Crawl Sign editor…" Yet someone who responded by saying that "…if the members want to get rid of this Mr Rice chap, then they can all vote him out as democracy allows, but the drivers don't so they must be content and that’s their business, the same as it's their circuit," was castigated for his views. Another response refers to me as a scab – I assume that’s why he is picking on me! All the LTDF posts do is to make me smile and be glad I don’t have to see that rubbish on a daily basis. Yet another masterpiece was written by someone whose style I recognised immediately – a former driver who made two visits to an industrial tribunal to try to regain a place on DaC, the organisation he "dislikes" so much! It came in response to a Call Sign writer who actually uses a familiar name and who obviously – and strangely for that site – doesn’t mind being identified. The subject referred to the expulsion from DaC of someone who is now the Chairman of a trade organisation. This charming fellow’s response said, referring to the Complaints Committee that expelled that chairman: "People being thrown of by peers! What, peers such as Fisher and you? Peers, my arse, they are Rice’s kangaroo court lackeys." Just to clarify, neither of the two mentioned were even on the committee, but I’m sure that drivers on our complaints committee will be impressed to know how they are thought of by someone on an internet list who is afraid to give his name! That member even wrote to The Badge with a letter headed: The farce that is Dial-a-Cab. He couldn’t even give his real name there – never mind the fact that he seems to have made everything up anyway! But there is one former expelled driver on the list whose name is known. Mark White sits on the list as the king of all he surveys – a ‘white knight’ giving out "facts" that seem to bear little semblance to reality. Writing of his Appeal, he claims he was pressurised to attend it just "weeks" after burying his mother? He boasts of how he refused to speak at his Appeal and handed in a 7-page statement instead, going on about how DaC "refused" to give him relevant information about cabs and jobs so he could make a proper defence against being expelled after not doing 40 jobs a |
month at a time when it was still busy. He then claims that I abused my position
as an Arbiter by publishing an article before the Arbitration deadline,
which I apparently knew was wrong and how I refused to retract it or publish
a correction on the rule about it being an average of 40 jobs and not
a straight 40 per month. He goes on to talk about how I give "preferential
treatment" to BMs and how "Call Sign is censored by Rice." According to Mark White’s rant, Brian Rice regularly called him to say he couldn't publish his articles without verification of facts and figures as he was ultimately responsible as the publisher. Well if he did, that’s news to me. Why didn’t Mark White just write to me direct – unless he was hoping to make a point? In another email he boasts that he still has a DaC terminal in his taxi after four years. Well bully for him – even though it will soon be the only one of its kind! They used to call that stealing, now it’s obviously just something to boast of. No doubt DaC could have wasted money chasing him and played his childish games, but they obviously decided he wasn’t worth spending the money on. I could go on, but sadly Mark’s words get more and more cockeyed and bitter. They are either twisted or incorrect from what I can see. Call Sign is completely uncensored except in the mind of Mark White. I always published his letters in their entirety each time he sent them in – and believe me, most were extremely long. The only comments I got were from drivers who begged me to stop as they found them to be so boring. But I published them because they were a driver’s point of view and as such deserved the space. I notice from the 20 or so LTDF emails I have been sent, that again his are by far the longest-winded ones. I never asked anyone if it was ok to publish his Call Sign letters because I don’t need to. If a letter isn’t published – and there have been a handful in 14 years – it’s because I have decided that they are unfit for publication. Mark White undoubtedly had personal problems. In fact I spoke with him many times, not with answers but just as someone who listened to a fellow driver’s problems. I haven’t a clue why he dislikes me so much, but neither do I worry about it. All I know is that if I wanted to read all the rubbish that comes from the LTDF site, I would join. However, it would be pointless because there seems to be little in the way of discussion, just a general slagging off of anyone not liked – with Brian Rice and myself seemingly coming in for much of it. Why? I haven’t a clue about that either and again, neither do I particularly care! But my thanks anyway to the drivers who try to defend me, but please don’t waste your time. They obviously won’t allow you to put forward a case for discussion. The days of Vince Chin’s Discuss list are well and truly gone… Last word… With all our troubles, nothing comes within a million miles to what has happened in Japan. In addition to the many tens of thousands that have perished, there must also have been many taxi drivers. Our hearts go out to the Japanese with the hope of a return to normality soon… Alan Fisher |
