Taxi!

So the lads decided to block off O'Connell street today. There seems to be some real hatred of the regulator. George Hook gave her dogs abuse as well.

Think there are only 3 or 4 regulators for the entire country. When the regulator is in town the word goes out and all the illegal taxis stay away. If you are in an illegal taxi, one without the proper licence or not registered in that area, if that taxi crashes you are not covered by their insurance.

To be fair - It would seem that there are nearly too many Taxis now. The problem with that is that it gets to a stage where they are not even making min wage so you actually reach a situation where the only people driving taxis are those that are happy to work for below minimum wage. This does impact on the quality of the driver and the vehicle. In my nearest town they now have a taxi rank. Three or four local hackney drivers switched to full taxi plates and were doing a reasonable trade. Within 6 months you had 20 or 30 taxis most of which are sitting idle in a queue - The 3 or 4 lads who started it out have gone back to hackney work as there is more money in the regular work/hotel runs etc. Of the guys on the rank most of them have very little English and not a clue about local geography. You have to give step by step directions to get home.

I suppose its difficult to find a balance. The closed shop situation we had 15 years ago was ridiculous but maybe its gone too far the other way now.