THAWED OUT FROM THE ‘BIG FREEZE’ YET…?!
So how was it for you? The recent rather unusual polar weather, that is.
Obviously
we’ve seen varying reports from all over the place… and of course everyone was caught off guard some- what, especially as the Met Office pronounced some time before the festive season had begun, “You can expect a milder than usual winter this year…” Folk have said, “Oh, this has been worse than 1963… almost as bad as 1947… you call this global warming?” and so on. Methinks one factor has set the 09/10 winter apart from the previous record- breakers, and that is the lack of support on the ground (do pardon the pun) from so many local authorities as regards gritters, snow- ploughs and pavement clearing.
We’ve heard a plethora of excuses as to why the roads weren’t cleared sufficiently for folk to get about safely: wrong kind of snow, ran out of grit, ran out of salt, all of that. We heard tell that our own local authority, Bury Metro, never cleared the roads properly because they only had one gritter. Why? Evi- dently they had sold off all the rest of them to help clear their mas- sive council debt. The point is, the state of the roads disadvan- taged thousands of people, and had vary- ing effects on the taxi/PHV trade.
others (see story inside) the weeks of ice and snow has made a mons of the road sur- faces, and have left massive potholes in their wake.
In
some areas licensed drivers had a field day, as people left their cars at home (or in a drift somewhere) and played it safe. In oth- ers, our guys struggled beyond belief to get down all those untreat- ed side roads. In still
The stories we like to hear - and have fea- tured several inside - are about the taxi or private hire drivers who put themselves out beyond the call of duty to assist folk in dis- tress. Contrast those with tales of unscrupu- lous drivers (boo hiss) who took advantage of their superiority on the roads in colder climes to rip off their passen- gers. Or the clampers who had the audacity to throw a clamp on the wheel of vehicles that were obviously aban- doned as they couldn’t be moved at the time. Oh yes, the Job- sworths come out in their droves in circum- stances such as these. Never mind, back to
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reality. And back to yet another eye-opener of a tabled amendment to the Equality Bill, as fea- tured on Page One and Opinion. Here we go again…! See how this may affect you inside. Our profiles this time come from diverse parts of the country: the company is City Cabs of Edinburgh; the driver is Karl Stamper from Cambridge. It’s always fun to read about what other folk are doing; check these out for a moment of light but interesting
reading. We do believe we’ve hit a first: according to Chief Anorak, this month is the first time ever in the history of our compiling of the taxi fares League Tables where there has been absolutely no change anywhere. How very indicative of a ‘sign of the times’. As some stories in our Fares and Fees section highlight, the licensed trade for the most part realises that a reces- sion is no time to hike fares. Fortunately (it
sez ‘ere) we are sup- posed to be coming out of the current recession; hopefully that will be reflected in a few more tariff increases coming through this next twelve months.
That leaves us with nowt more to say than, have a good read… and as always, if some- thing really spectacular – or not so spectacular, but of interest to our readers nonetheless - goes off down your way, you know where to get in touch.
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