Ive been reading a few interesting articles on the Black cabs vs Uber app debate today. At first it seems like the black cabbies are trying to argue against a free market and monopolise the situation, therefore stifling competition. But the more you read, the murkier and more complicated it becomes. For people who dont know Uber is a mobile phone app that lets customers get in touch with local minicab drivers to pick them up. You can select your own budget for the type of car– at the top, expensive, end you get a flash, comfortable car. Bottom end you get strapped to a roof rack and the driver sings cos he hasn’t got a radio. I certainly dont think their protest did them any favours. To protest the Uber App, Cabbies staged a ‘drive slow’ through the city. Drive Slow? That’s just driving in London lads. What you gonna do next time, avoid a strangers eye contact? One of the taxi drivers’ main complaint is that the Uber app essentially works as a taxi meter, which legally, you are not allowed to have in a private vehicle. Taxis, of course, have meters to prevent the public being ripped off (Or at least, to ensure that they are all ripped off fairly, equally and safely. And by highly-trained drivers with an intimate knowledge of which route is the best one to rip you off on). *insert winky smiley face here so people know Im joking!* The main problem for cabbies is in this modern world, do we care who runs things if they work and they’re cheap? It generally pays not to look too closely at these things… as Aristotle once said, “there’s a reason that a chicken nugget is coated in breadcrumbs – because we do not like to look a horse’s testicle in the eye”. Uber argue that they are not a taxi service, but is instead a “ride sharing company”. It is not a taxi firm, it is merely linking up people who want a lift in a car, with other people who have a car and are willing to give people a lift in it. As passengers. Who pay money. To be transported from one place to a specific other place. Like a taxi might. But without being a taxi. Okaaaaay then. My sympathies and support do lie with the cabbies though. Okay they can be grumpy, and a bit right wing when it comes to immigration and often picky about who they pick up, especially at night (I mean what other cabbie in the world will only take you somewhere if he fancies going in that direction? Sorry mate, its the end of my shift and I live out East So, are you only giving lifts to your neighbours today!) One of the reasons Uber offers a much cheaper service to their customers is because unlike black cabs they are funded in part by tax dodging search engine, Google, who last year alone ploughed $258m into the taxi. Shock news; if you don’t have to pay tax folks, things are cheaper! And Google now owns an unbelievable number of other things, including YouTube, mobile phone maker Motorola, automated home thermostat dudes ‘Nest’, Prince Philip, the Bay of Biscay, the concept of hope, the colour green and the DNA of the domestic gerbil. If it continues expanding at its current rate, Google will own the entire planet by 2045, at which point all children will have to be born with a compulsory google tattoo, inked on in the womb by a special google uterbot and delivered by UberMidwives. They’re not as well trained as proper midwives, and anyone with some gloves a plunger and a mobile phone can be one, but it’ll be loads cheaper (and if you don’t like it, well, you’re perfectly free not to have children, that’s how the free market works).
Posted on: Tue, 17 Jun 2014 21:56:35 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015