01/09/10

Wednesday night around 11 pm while checking my tweets on Twitter I saw a couple of messages telling us that there’s work coming out of the Hurlingham club.

So I asked those drivers what was going on and the reply came back as there are dozens of minicabs picking up at the club and not a black cab insight.

Lee aka @leewd19 also saw the message and got straight on the blower to the club, in the meantime I was dropping out that way so I made my my straight there but not before informing all the other cabbies on twitter who follow tag_squad (Twitter action group) that there’s an urgent need for cabs at the club and to pass the message on and some drivers did just that, then DAC passed the message on via it’s terminal to all the other drivers.

When I arrived I saw Lee and a security man having a chat, he’s  the same guy that informs Lee when cab’s are needed at the club, I asked what went wrong, the security guy said that the hurlingham club’s management were informed about this advent 10 days ago and they didn’t tell him.

I find it highly surprising that the clubs own security were not informed, personally I think theres more to it then that.

Apparently there was a children’s charity hosted by the Mayor of London Boris Johnson. Boujis supports Boris Johnson’s Masked Ball

I have a sneaky feeling that we were left out deliberately,especially when Boris was leaving, so all he could see was minicabs outside.

We have given this club top priority when when they’ve needed cabs and this is how we get treated, Lee and Dizzy have even negotiated a deal with the club to lay on two taxi marshal’s  when these advents take place.

It all turned out well in the end, we saturated them with cabs, they arrived from all parts of London, and the minicabs were seen leaving empty.

Once again our thanks to DAC dispatchers and drivers and all drivers that turned up via Twitter.

Be lucky, Steve.

Sunday the 29th August

It wasn’t long ago when new Burlington Street was changed from two way to one way traffic, now Westminster have changed it back again.

Check out the white lines in the picture below.

The picture above is facing Regent Street from New Burlington Street.

One thing Westminster have left is the no right turn sign into New Burlington Street, from Regent Street.

Further down the Road or should I say Street at Oxford Circus they have made some improvements to public safety.

Have you noticed when crossing the road they now  have a  count down clock

You will notice it starts counting down from 19 seconds.

The count down clock starts after the normal time given to cross this intersection.

19 seconds I would think is enough time, even for the slowest of walkers.

There you have it, no more excuses for not knowing when the lights change.

Be lucky, Steve.

One of the key objectives for London Taxi and Private Hire is to ensure that we apply a consistent, common sense and reasonable approach to all our licensing activities and ensure drivers and operators comply with the relevant rules and regulations that govern the licensing of vehicles as London taxis. To this end and following extensive discussions with various members of the taxi trade, TfL is pleased to announce the implementation of an advisory notice system for taxi vehicle licensing inspections.

This new vehicle advisory system will commence on 24 August, providing a formal and consistent approach for LTPH when making decisions on the roadworthiness and condition of taxis.

Vehicle inspectors, working for our vehicle licensing service provider (SGS), will now be able to use the electronic inspection system to identify whether certain failure items should be classified as a “pass advisory” or a “failure”. The selection of the “advisory” option for certain (non-safety related) failure items during a licensing inspection will result in the issuing of licence plates accompanied by an advisory notice. The notice will inform the vehicle owner/driver of the defect which may require attention and rectification within a reasonable amount of time.

Every effort has been made to ensure we provide this additional flexibility through the annual licensing inspection without reducing and/or compromising the standards, quality and safety of the vehicles used by the travelling public.

A similar system for on-street compliance inspections is being developed and will be implemented in September.

As part of the ongoing development of the annual licensing inspection process we have also aligned a number of the existing LTPH inspection standards with the more accepted current VOSA MOT standards.

An updated and amended version of the taxi inspection manual which incorporates the new system can be found on www.tfl.gov.uk/tph

The components and system areas that have been amended to allow the use of the advisory notice option are:

Auxiliary front lamp Ashtray
Engine oil leak Interior fixtures/fittings
Coolant system Cushion / upholstery
Boot lid Chassis under body
Coach lines Reservoir levels
Boot floor Exhaust assembly
Window markings Gearbox oil leaks
Driver mirror Spare wheel
Badges / motifs

We will keep this new system under review and will amend or adjust if necessary. We hope that drivers and operators will welcome this new approach to annual inspections and are happy to receive and comments or suggestions regarding it via tph.enquiries@tfl.gov.uk

24 August 2010 John Mason
For previous Notices visit tfl.gov.uk/tph Director, Taxi and Private Hire

Hi Everyone If your a regular user to this site you would have noticed a few changes.

Firstly the way it looks, with the lighter back ground and also the extra side bar, Lester chose this particular theme to make it easy for me to keep changing the widgets in the right hand side bar, I’ve kept most of the pages and category’s and only changed  a few. We think it looks great, what about you ?
The one I like most at the moment is the gallery, I’ve been trying to gather together as many pictures of TLC aka TweetaLondoncab drivers pictures as possible, I think it adds a nice touch to the site and hopefully draws more attention towards us.

In my post category along the bottom I’ve added twitter for cabbies and RMT newsletters, when I or anyone else publishes pieces about TweetaLondoncab, I’ll add it to this category, when you go to Twitter for cabbies look a my second post coincidently named “Twitter for cabbies”, you will notice we have regular demonstrations at Camley street showing new drivers how to get connected to other drivers using Twitter, keep a eye on the time and date as this will sometimes change.

My second category change is the RMT newsletters. I’ve added this because I want all you cabbies that don’t normally go to the RMT website a chance to catch up on the latest gossip when browsing my site.

Latest Apps

Lester has also be working hard on writing me an App for legalledoff, to be shown in the Apple App store, this is what it will look like if Apple allow it to be used.

The picture on the left is what the app would look like and the picture on the right is what you will find when you open it.

The app will have five category’s, left to right will be my blogs, my news feed,Flickr gallery, global taxi news and lastly You Tube taxi videos from Storm cab’s collection.

If and when Apple decide to use it, I’ll let you all know, in the meantime I still need to keep adding pictures to my gallery. Now you can understand why I keep on asking you for your pictures via Twitter.

So all you TLC drivers please send me your picture, so I can add it to my gallery, the more content I’ve got the better chance I’ve got in getting this App.

Send your pictures to pictures@legalledoff.com

Stories category.

I’m also continuing to use my Stories category because even though it’s hard for cabbies to send in their stories I do believe they still want to.

If you have any good or quirky stories please send them to stories@legalledoff and if we like them we will publish it.

Taxi news.

in the last edition of Taxicab News issue 144 and Taxi Globe issue 639 Legalledoff got a mention under the title “Taxi community website”.

The papers explain that there are a number of taxi websites on the internet, some belong to taxi businesses but Legalledoff is one of the newer sites and it carries all sorts of interesting information, it mentions that we report on a wide range of cab related news as well as listing a number of enteraining blog sites.

If ever your looking for an excellent independent taxi newspaper to read try reading Taxi globe and Taxi Cab News you won’t be disappointed.

I would like to thank Sandie goodwin and Bob Fisher for publishing my website.

New blogger on Legalledoff.

I would like to introduce you to John kennedy, he’s been writing on a number of websites, including,

RMT London taxi branch

london taxi cab PR

RMT No to 19

Johnthecabby

bolitics

Bollards of london

John is also the Chairman of the London taxi branch of the RMT.

I love the way john writes and his outlook on life.

It will be a pleasure to have him writing on legalledoff and I hope you enjoy his stories as much as I do.

While I was sitting on our new rank in Charing Cross Road last friday night a cab driver  dropped his punter of at the rear end of the rank.

Cabbie Paul Kelly had only just pulled over at the rear of our rank in Charing Cross Road to drop of his punter, when a Rickshaw trying to maneuver round his cab crashes into the rear end, braking Paul’s tail light cover.

this is Paul not looking to pleased

Being that all these Rickshaw don’t have any form of Licence or Insurance, Paul now has to negotiate with him to how he’s going to pay for the damage.

First of all Paul asks for sixty pound for a new lens, the guy nearly had kittens, he then said to Paul I don’t have a mother or father, Paul said what’s that got to do with anything, then the guy says can you make it cheaper, Paul says that’s what a new lens cost and if it was on the insurance it would cost a lot more.

The guy says can you give me five minutes so I can call my friend and he will pay, Paul says of course, in the meantime he managed to knock Paul down another tenner.

When the other guy arrives with the money they start to count it out and guess what he doesn’t have enough, he can only manage £38, Paul says that’s not enough but what can I do. I’ll have to take it.

This is the guy on the right counting out his money, while minicab drivers look on.

After all this commotion which happened around midnight on  Friday I was  still waiting  on the taxi rank for a fare, every so often a Rickshaw would came ploughing down Charing Cross Road, they all seemed to be racing, with their passengers edging them on.

20/08/10

Be lucky, Steve.

Hello everybody, hope you are well and earning enough.

Well I’m back at work after a couple of weeks off doing D.I.Y and I must say it hasn’t been brilliant.

I started back on Sunday evening and things started well enough with a constant flow of small jobs that flowed together nicely and hit my target early enough to stop and have a cuppa with Steve before we went home which is quite a rare thing, even rarer was the fact that “white fiver Steve” actually paid.

As some of you will know, Steve recently took over renting my old TX1 and it is looking really good under his care which is nice as I would hate to see it driving around looking tatty by someone who didn’t care.

So as Steve has got my old cab I have decided to go up a rung and have rented a TX2 with air con in the back as it would seem that everybody seems to want it when it is hot and as the scabs are nearly all offering it I feel that I should try to, at least, be on the same playing field vehicle wise, after all they can’t compete on the knowledge front can they.

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Hi everyone, Wednesday night Thursday morning , I decided to rank up outside Abacus in Cornhill, I took a chance being it’s August and slow on the streets, when I arrived I was surprised to see how busy it really was, busy yes, with people laying on the pavement or just trying to stand up straight but you’ve got to use your discretion.

I  won’t let anyone in the cab if they can’t find my door handle or they’re rude but generally I find out to late and in this particular case it was.

I was there for about 10 minutes before someone came up to me, I should have used that discretion I was talking about because he says are you available; ” You don’t like to sound sarcastic, but when your sitting there with your for hire light on isn’t it a bit obvious”  I says yes, he shouts over to his mates this ones available; There you go another clue I was the only official licensed taxi there, the rest were minicab’s.

So in they get three blokes and two girls, Covent Garden please, so off we go,the blokes are quite loud but theres nothing unusual about that, especially when tanked up like they were, at one point I could hear one of the blokes say to the girls in a very abrupt manner where do you want to go, the answer came back in a very shaky voice, you decide.

At this point I decided to turn the radio down just so I could hear what was being said, next I heard one of the blokes say to the girls do you want to get out, I  heard one of them say to him in a very low and shaky voice yes, thats when I butted in, I said to them if you want to get out you can, the reply came back as yes.

I was already in High Holborn just past the junction of Southampton Place when I pulled over and there happened to be two coppers walking past, thats where the girls got out and I said to one of them if you have a problem have a word with the police, Lucky the blokes didn’t bother them anymore and they walked off.

They did bother me,one of them said what  9 pound on the meter they should have paid that, I said you invited them in the cab in the first place so it’s only fair you pay the fare, one of them said we are not paying you, I said did I hear you right you’ll not paying the fare, thats right he said.

I called over the coppers and told them they didn’t want to pay me, so they asked them to get out of the cab and pay me, at first they still refused, then one of them said to the copper your white and so is he, meaning me, obviously the copper didn’t like what he said and said to him if you don’t pay the driver then I’m going to nick you, well it did the trick he said we want you to give us a receipt each for 3 pound I said your getting one receipt for nine pound and that’s it.

He said to me in my country taxi drivers always give separate receipts, I said where’s your country he said India I said your still only getting one receipt though, that started them of again refusing to pay me, this time the copper said the driver has offered to give you a receipt you should take it and pay him the money.

that same guy turned round to me behind the coppers back and said arse  hole I didn’t say anything back all I wanted was to get paid, one gave me a fiver and asked for two pound change, I said no way you still owe me 4 pound and I don’t care who pays me, I eventually got the rest of the money and drove off.

To be honest I thought the three guys were on drugs because of the way they were acting and if they were decent blokes I would have given them separate receipts thats enough hassle for one day, be lucky, Steve.

Manganese Bronze, the leading manufacturer of the distinctive London black taxi, announces it has been informed that the Board of Geely Automobile Holdings Limited (“Geely”) has decided not to proceed with the Proposed Placing.

Geely has confirmed its commitment to the joint venture with Manganese Bronze, Shanghai LTI Automobile Components Company Ltd (“SLTI”), and it has confirmed that future operational plans remain unaffected. SLTI will continue to supply Manganese Bronze with components for its UK manufacturing operation as well as producing lower cost London taxis for international sale.

Notwithstanding Geely’s withdrawal from the Proposed Placing, and as announced at the time of Admission to AIM, the Board of Manganese Bronze reiterates that: “The board of directors of the Company have no reason to believe that the working capital available to it or its group will be insufficient for at least twelve months from the date of its admission to trading on AIM”.

The Company remains well positioned to continue with its international expansion plans for the iconic London black taxi.

John Russell, Manganese Bronze Chief Executive, said:

“We look forward to our continuing cooperation with Geely. The decision not to proceed with the placing should not affect the future of our joint venture or international expansion plans.”

Wednesday 11/08/10 by Steve Emment

Late last night a handful of London cab drivers met Oona King.

It’s been in the pipeline for several weeks but last night it turned into reality, it was arranged for Oona King to be picked up outside LBC radio in Leicester Square and then driven around central London.

For those of you who don’t know who she is, she is one of the candidates for the forthcoming Mayoral elections.

The former Labour MP Oona King will be challenging  Ken Livingstone to become Labour’s candidate for mayor of London in 2012.

After last nights debate with Oona King and Ken Livingstone on LBC’s  Lian dale show, she was picked up and driven around  central London and was shown all the troubled hot spots and bottle necks that cause London to be chocked up night after night, then afterwards was shown a few taxi ranks outside London’s night clubs that were being abused by minicab divers, then it was back to the City to meet a handful of cab drivers who were patiently waiting outside Sweetings cafe in Queen Victoria Street.

There’s  me with Johnny and Len looking on.

I managed to muster up a few cabbies last night who were only to pleased to meet her, they were Jim Thomas, Johnny Tsang, and Len Martin.

When Oona arrived along with Nigel Howard of the  of the Evening Standard, she came straight over and shook our hands.

After about 10 mins I brought them a cup of tea and a plate of Banana cake of which the owner Jamie’s wife made, it went down well.

Me Oona and Jim

We talked about Satellite offices to Law enforcement and cab drivers trying to negotiate Londons traffic.

After about an hour of chatting and posing for the camera, it was time to part.

I took one of  Oona’s PR men home to Clapham, while oona was driven home by one of the other drivers.

RMT London taxi branch

August 2010

Transport for London/Taxi Private Hire.

The parliamentary agents for Transport for London and Westminster City Council have made contact with the RMT London taxi branch regarding our opposition to “clause 19” of the London Local Authorities and Transport for London (No.2) bill. The RMT and its London taxi branch is opposed to the “voluntary registration” of pedicabs and concerned authorities wish to give these dangerous objects ranks/bays.

www.rmtnoto19.blogspot.com

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