Spineless Hacks: or so it’s been said.

There are Hack drivers I work with who are whispering to each other that this site does nothing, that it’s just a money making machine for the Administrators’ of this site, that  the site is nothing but tit for tat & bickering.

The site has made $64.54 since August last year. It has cost £127 since that time. So you won’t find anyone from TooManyTaxis.com in the Rich lists just yet.

Other drivers have been moaning about the lack of information coming through to them, they don’t come on the site and make these points; some even mention the fact that there are not enough meetings, yet turnout for meetings was never great.

Membership of the Association of North Tyneside Hackney Carriages is now free.

We have done site visits with the Council and negotiated new Ranks and extra Rank spaces. These have not been implemented as yet as the Council moves very slowly with these things.

We have been informed of many prosecutions of Flimpers etc but have been asked not to publicise these on this website unless they are in the local press. Lots of things are going on in the background. Lots of things the Council are doing which we have also been asked not to talk about.Whether this is true or just Bullshit is another thing but we won’t stop,we will keep asking for something to be done. The more e-mails,letters & phone calls we make,which go unanswered is all the more ammunition for when we go to a Councillor or local MP.  Nowhere else in this Country can a workforce be ignored,the way we are and eventually somebody will have to listen.

If you want a better trade, a better working environment your support is required. That doesn’t mean just raising your hand  and saying “I’ll be a member” it means doing stuff, it means becoming involved. The people who run the association don’t do it for a wage they just do it and to have people  who they work with calling them is not going to get us far is it? As for Hack drivers who have a bee in their bonnet and continue to come here and up cast about the “so called Spineless ones” who wouldn’t go on strike a couple of years ago. If Hack trade meetings are anything to go by the turnout for a strike would be minimal and any participants would be left looking foolish as other Hacks drove past, turning away their faces and Private Hire would drive past giving thumbs up and shouts of ” cheers lads”  As for those who wine on about this. Come up with something other than slagging off your fellow Hack drivers. Try writing a letter to your ward councillor about the lack of enforcement, I know some of you can write and MS Word has a spell checker built in. e-mail me for instructions if you don’t know how to use it.

Hacks, in my experience are very good at shouting about stuff but not actually doing anything. I give Alan Newton grief over the phone at least three times a week. I make a point of it. He probably thinks I’m a lone voice and he might be right, he probably thinks “here’s that tosser, that whinging Hack again, oh! well I’ll listen to him for 10 minutes, give him some assurances and then get back to me sandwich”  well why don’t some of you ring him up, ask him a few questions, once a week let him know you are not happy. That’s easy enough isn’t it?  The one time Alan Newton sat up and took any notice was when he was handed 68 letters from Hack drivers, he earned his keep for all of a month or so then settled back down to a cushy, quiet little life where had to do little other than shuffle papers and look busy for the paymaster. Make him work!  Make them all work for their keep! Do you think it should just be down to one or two individuals to try and get some enforcement  whilst you sit back and wait and wait and when nothing happens, when no miracle occurs you can then start slagging these individuals.

Or, are you happy with the situation, are you happy that you bought into a business, either recently or some years ago, and that business is not making what it used to make because of an ever increasing pool of Taxis & Private Hire and an ever decreasing  pool of work. Have you had to sign up with an office, as I have, to make what you used to make off  the streets alone? What happens when the offices are flooded with cars, in say a years’ time what then?  This thing that has been happening to the Taxi trade over the last ten years or so hasn’t stopped happening, it’s still happening. It’s ongoing and unless something is done soon it will be beyond repair. Once the Hacks are finished and are all but Private Hire the ‘thing’ that is happening, which does not discriminate between  the different types of licences, this thing will give its energy to what’s left. A still increasing number of Taxis albeit now a mish mash of Hacks, Private Hire and spurious out of town plated vehicles. I’ll tell you what happens then. The public start to suffer because if a driver can’t make enough to pay his rent and make a wage then he will start building in his own tips. You think not! Wait and see, when you are faced with a shortage of cash compared to what you have been used to, the Ripping will start and we ‘All of us’ should act now before things get to this stage. This article will still be here, on this site in a year or two from now. Let’s either do nothing and take our chances…or let’s get things sorted. Let’s get some action from that job description “Enforcement” and let’s see if the other side of the trade can muster up enough power and call for a Cap on Private Hire.

Now I’ll keep watching the screen and wait for the crap to come in, the commenter’s who titillate themselves by having a crack at each other  instead of coming forward with an adult, business like point of view. Taxi drivers are often mis labelled as being at the low end of the social scale but I have met some very intelligent people in my time as a Taxi driver and that intelligence should not be wasted.

 I won’t delete the crap I’ll leave it there for all to see and we can show people what we are made of. Are we intelligent people trying to make a living or are we the other kind, the kind that just wants to play and call each other names?

Tagged as: hackney, taxi, taxis