What a pity it is that, in introducing the Double Barrelled Shotgun, the Home Office did not update their suggestions as to who should be eligi- ble for a taxi or private hire licence. According to the last info that the Home Office and the Department for Transport set out, there are any num- ber of rapists who got out of jail within the last three or five years who will be queuing to get a licence quite soon. According to the old advice notes, that would appear to be acceptable.
Of course, everybody had sat eagerly perched, twitching and awaiting the Law Commission’s draft results. They put out their interim statement in April, just before our annual Taxi and Private Hire Exhibition where they once again very kindly turned up to answer questions. And of course, as you know or may have spotted, next year’s Exhibition is back at Doning- ton. We have had a lot of cheers about this already... that will be on Tuesday and Wednesday, 13 and 14 May 2014. Be there or be square! – as they used to say in our day.
But of course remember that the Law Commission has now said that they are going to do their final report, together with the draft legislation, by next April. If this is the case, then there might well indeed be a couple of points you might like to discuss with them at the Exhibition. I don’t know whether the Law Commission will be there yet, but if the report comes out, I for one will be bending over backwards to try to persuade them to attend. The Law Commission’s interim statement was printed in our May edition; we advised you of their change of direction in November.
In October I ranted on again about new council conditions of licence which seem totally to ignore the financial footprint of the trade in their area. Of course you can afford brand new vehicles. Of course you can afford to take tinted glass windows out and replace them. Well, no you can’t - and that is why the number of vehicles, both hackney carriage and private hire, in this country are falling quite dramatically.
That is of course apart from in Rossendale and Gedling and quite a few other councils, where their hackney carriages are now working on private hire circuits all over the place. In Manchester alone, 13 different foreign (out-of-area) plates have been spotted working in the city.
Along came November, and we got a new Minister. We haven’t heard a lot from the Baroness yet, but her plug is now in its socket and we await to
see what is going to happen. We’ve already mentioned December and Mr Fuller and his CCTV Bill, and so I am approaching the end of my trade review of the year.
But I’ve saved the best for last, and that was the Brentwood knicker fare reduction farce. You remember: it was headline news in our September issue. The suggestion was that by flashing a bit of flesh somewhere, wearing inappropriate underwear or increasing your boob scoops (with visible display of course), you would get a cheaper ride home – this of course for Health and Safety reasons, to get these scantily clad ladies home safely.
I had thought at the time that I would get a strong reaction to the article I wrote; I had thought that numerous councils, especially with multitudinous numbers of clubs and pubs and other outlets where scantily clad ladies exercise their joy and happiness, would have leapt at the idea and changed their fares accordingly. As I’ve already said, unfortunately we’ve only had 76 changes during the past year, and I am gutted to say that one of those was not Brentwood.
Still, I do have to say that in all the 21 years we’ve been writing this paper, that was perhaps the most ludicrous scheme that has ever landed on my desk... fortunately this plug was never actually inserted in the socket, let alone switched on.
And so we move to 2014. I have a feeling that this will be a more signifi- cant year for all concerned than was 2013. It would be nice to think that in twelve months’ time my review of the year will be full of whoops and cheers and praises and gratification at the improvements, in income, reg- ulation and everything else to do with earning a living in this industry - whether as a licence holder or indeed a licence granter.
But unlike many, I will not be going to the bookmakers’ to put a bet on this. Just think on for this next year: if you have got a plug in a socket and you want things to happen, remember that there’s always a cost to turning on the power, which you will have to pay for. So look after yourselves, brace yourselves for anything that may happen... and with best wishes for the New Year, I hope you are all still around to read my next review in twelve months’ time.
Until then, sayonara.
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