Driving for Justice is the first in a series of short films that plan to highlight the injustices committed against the licensed taxi trade, and the knock-on effect that this will have on related businesses.
How long have we been shouting about this injustice? Stringent regulations force us down a particular path in the road only to be confronted with a dead-end.
How long have we been banging on about the immorality of decisions being made against us? It is self evidential that the powers that be regard the elderly, frail, sight impaired, wheelchair dependent, and anyone else who can’t cycle or use mass-transport options as collateral damage.
We are being crippled and disempowered. And COVID has provided the power-grabbers with a respectable excuse to tear away democracy and dismiss reproach. It is usurpation at its very worst. If any other industry chronicled the same regulations against the never ending list of interminable restrictions, they’d have a case for constructive dismissal by stealth.
Simply, the taxi trade is being brought to its knees by policy- nothing more. The Mayor could include us in crucial elements of his transport strategy tomorrow if he wanted, and the local authorities could involve us in their local implementation plans. They don’t because they don’t see us as part of the solution, and somehow that has to change.
TFL is NOT apathetic or indifferent to what is happening to our industry, they have a totally different agenda. The trade desperately need to find a better system for governance.
Many of the irreversible risks that now threaten our trade originate from a rapid pace of industrial development coupled with the monopolisation of emerging technology and an adamance by TfL to no longer deem us as part of public transport.
Conveniently for TfL, the system currently in place to represent the trade - and effectively manage many of issues we are facing is done by using yesterday’s tools and by the same people. Most of the time we are not even arguing the right arguments. As a consequence, the necessary action is either not taken or is taken too late, while the problems and risks the industry faces continue to grow and mutate.
The difference this time is, we are not alone. Drivers, related traders, and stakeholders have all been handed their livelihoods on a plate. That’s a billion dollar industry engineered to be fit only for the knackers yard.
Merely accepting that the downturn in work is applicable to every one is the death-knoll.
It is a matter of survival, if we don’t all pull together now for the benefit of all, then we never will.
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