Peter Preston has a tirade against the London cab today in the Guardian. One thought:
The official mantra makes them a vital public service
Really? I always thought they were a private service. Regulated, to be sure, but privately owned, earnings depend upon the number of passengers and so on. Can’t quite see what’s public about them at all.
In
The monopoly they have on plying for hire within the Metropolitan Police district is publicly enforced.
I love the research that went into that column – witness the first comment:
Presuambly he means that they get all manner of priviledges, e.g. the congestion charge, their own lanes etc.
I wonder if this guy has ever tried to get from King’s Cross to Waterloo on the Tube with heavy suitcases. When I lived in Bradford, the Intercity portions of the trip to Portsmouth Harbour were a snap, but I dreaded the clot in the middle that was London. Twenty quid to avoid lugging forty kilos of bags up and down escalators was well worth it, even when I was an impecunious student.
And bearing in mind that becoming a London taxi driver is a fiercely competitive affair, with many more applicants than jobs, it would seem that the figure of 20,000 cabs is probably fewer than the market-clearing level (the monopoly serves to enforce this, of course).
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