FUEL PRICES
The other day I passed my local supermarket fuel station thinking I should fill up, and it was around the £1.87 mark. But as I had about a quarter of a tank remaining there was no immediate need to do so. However, when I got near again, about an hour later, it had shot up to £1.90!
I very much doubt that a tanker had just pulled in during that hour with freshly made diesel, so the question is this:
How is it that fuel which has already been made, transported and waiting to be pumped from the underground tank, can suddenly be more expensive?
I have a theory that during the pandemic, at a time when fuel companies had tanks of fuel laying around going off with a massive drop in sales, that they got together to plan a time as and when they could take the opportunity to make up for their losses and that this is now the time.
Well that’s my theory and I’m sticking to it. But with my cab’s tank full of such expensive liquid, I now have this sign in my back window.
paint brush in the other as I had decided to take the week off, so I passed him onto a colleague.
I do know that there were quite a few extra out-of- town jobs on the day so that is good for those drivers. But I hope that the extra cost of fuel was factored into these to make the jobs worth it for that dead return mileage.
However, it did make me think about the advantage of being employed and being able to strike for better pay and working conditions, which we in the trade have never been able to do. Imagine the power we could have if the trade throughout the land would withdraw our services for councils to heed to our demands.!
Although I am not quite sure what I would demand, other than make every licensing officer/councillor do our job for a day, and even for one Saturday night, to see what we have to put up with!
I understand that the ADCU has tried to implement a 24-hour strike against Uber. Good luck with that chaps but I very much doubt that your effort will be effective enough for Uber to listen to your demands as I reckon for every driver that stops working there will be another 500 who will carry on. Certainly there was no Uber protest here but I believe there is a clear reason why:
I have read that the ADCU it is demanding £2.50 per mile, which is not unreasonable at all. But what I don’t understand is that Uber here in Brighton & Hove has always charged pretty much the same fare as the local rate here which is currently £2.60 a mile.
RAIL STRIKES
At the time of writing this the rail strike is on and I got a call from ITV asking me how this has affected the trade in Brighton. I had to be honest and tell the chap that whilst I had the mobile in one hand, I also had a
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In the city here, the three main local companies run a mix of PHVs and hackneys, and have done so for years. So based on this, all the PHVs of these companies run at the same metered rate as the hackneys. So whether you get a hackney off the rank/streets or call one of the local companies and either get a hackney or a PHV you know exactly what the fare is supposed to be.... and no local rip-off surge pricing either.
No doubt because of this, Uber here is forced to charge a very similar fare to the local rate. This is because it could not get away with charging the ridiculously low fares that a considerable amount of Uber drivers contin- uously complain about on the various Uber facebook
JULY 2022
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