Flagging Erection

My friend and fellow lunatic, the right honourable member for Morton, Ian Wildey, was recently admonished by Carlisle City

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without council permission on St Georges Day. They apparently cited County Council guidance and stated that an application

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received. They duly turned up with a cherry- picker (not the Liverpool type) to remove

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to you, my followers, and a few words of wisdom. Primarily, the council need to receive an application if you wish to erect a

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erecting department of your local authority,

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received permission for the erection in writing. Presumably the council will then notify the public of the erection application in the local press, the public will have 21 days, I assume, to object to the erection. Without wishing to cast any aspersions here, it would appear a neighbour complained about Mr Wildey’s erection, I wish the objections I receive on a monthly basis were of a similar type. It’s a hard life aint it?

Backing the wrong horse

It would appear our colleagues in Basildon came out and backed the Labour Party during the election. In my view politics and taxis shouldn’t be in the same arena. Nevertheless, the taxi trade put their support behind Angela Smith, who is now the former MP for Basildon. A simple fact of the matter is that the labour government accepted the discredited OFT report and have vigorously pursued nationwide taxi deregulation......... the labour party have watched far more taxi deregulation than any Tory government. This isn’t actually something told by those labour party loving unions of UNITE or the GMB.......so remember that next time you give them £120 odd quid per year membership. Personally, still to be faced

with taxi deregulation, after paying a union who supported a political party that encouraged it to the tune of about £1500 per member, I’d be rather miffed.

Joined Up Thinking

As I’ve previously reported, NTA members in Bristol have had all manner of issues with Bristol City Council’s policy of taxi deregulation and the trouble the policy brought.......i.e. too many taxis too few rank spaces. In fact, they have been threatened with suspension if they over-rank. The trade in Bristol (ooh arrr!) will be delighted to hear that the local airport has signed a

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that operates out of Gatwick and Stansted Airports. A completely mental report in the press stated;

“As a result of the new contract, Checker

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including new minibuses and executive

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lower emissions.

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e-ticket machine being installed on the arrivals concourse at Bristol airport, which is

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at busy times.

Bristol airport’s ground transportation manager Ian Hiles said: ‘This new agreement will deliver improvements to passengers and to local communities around the airport. It increases customer choice and will improve the process by which arriving passengers can book a taxi for their onward journey from Bristol airport.”

I understand Checker Cars are a private

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see a new company moving into the area.....

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cannot even get adequate rank space!

I have an idea

I was recently asked how the government could increase the number of Wheelchair Accessible Vehicles on the road; I told the

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1. Make the VAT on WAVs zero rated 2. Exempt the WAV from road tax 3. Allow WAV proprietors to run their vehicles on Red Diesel

Doing the above will make the WAV more desirable and over a period a similar price to a saloon car, doing the above will not necessarily cost the government an awful lot of cash, especially if they raise duties to all other vehicles to compensate any loss. I really think I’m a genius and should charge for advice.

Turning Japanese... yes I’m turning Japanese up!

The Bloomberg reported that more than a

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roads as the government seeks to address an oversupply among company-operated

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20 percent and 30 percent of 32,000 cabs in the Tokyo area should be taken out of service, the newspaper said, citing plans from the transport ministry. Nationwide about 40,000 taxis are expected to be decommissioned, the Nikkei said. About 214,000 of Japan’s 260,000 taxis are operated by companies, the report said.

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Wayne!) should perhaps take note, times are particularly tough in the UK’s cab trade at the moment, with drivers reduced to eating their own hair, little wonder this columnist is starving at the moment, I wish I was rich enough to blame bulimia.

Till next month Wayne Casey

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