Every day I wake up to be greeted by another nail in our coffin. Our readers ask "why don't you concentrate on the good news"...well, truth is....there isn't any.
This morning on LBC news, we were told that UBER would now be adding a NHS service, using uber assist and uber wav.
The deal hasn't been done directly with Uber, but with Cera who will then outsource the work to uber.
This will dramatically reduce work, currently undertaken by Licensed Taxi drivers, the majority of whom are suburban licence holders. This will almost certainly kill off the suburban Taxi service.
More than that, this also points to the fact that its more than likely a fait-accompli and uber will be re-licensed, come what may.
So they've finally taken away the disabled account completely, question is ... Do we now need an expensive wheelchair accessible vehicle?
What was our largest representative org, with I've 10,000 subscribers doing, while this account was lost to the trade?
Will Uber Assist and Uber WAV be given access to the parts on London the licensed Taxi trade are to be banned from, i.e. The Tottenham Court Road scheme, the Bank Junction exclusion zone etc.
Will they be allowed to use bus lanes?
Will the shelved TfL plan, originally tabled by Ed Thompson, where WAV PHVs would share mainline staton taxi ranks resurface?
How the hell can we compete with this?
The saddest fact of all is that this company is also offering metered Taxis !!!
So, why are we currently having to pay in excess of £ 45k for a WAV?
In a desperate bid to distance itself from Uber, Patient transport at Barts Health, has put out this statement to the press.
But it's not Barts who have done the deal with Uber....its Cera.... and in their own words Bart's work with a number of organisations including Cera.
06 March 2017
Following inaccurate media reports about the Trust's use of Uber to provide non-emergency patient transport, the Trust has released the following statement.
Barts Health NHS Trust said:
“We do not have any contracts with Uber to provide non-emergency patient transport. When patients need assistance getting to and from our hospitals we provide ambulances and medi-cars, driven by trained experts.
"We are working with a number of registered organisations, including Cera, to make sure patients get vital support in their own homes. This includes physiotherapy, nursing or domestic support to help people recover after a stay in hospital.”
- ENDS -
What they at saying in Social media:
Looking back a few months, the trade was amazed at the fuss being made about a short video alleged to be showing Leon Daniels, Mike Brown and Malcolm Pace, sitting down (in a public place) at what looked to be a business dinner.
Is this where the trade was sold down the river?
Is this why they made such a fuss about being shown all over social media?
Is that why this triumvirate looked so embarrassed?
This news is all over the media today, and yet our larger representative orgs reman silent.
Only trade leader I've seen commenting on this is the LCDC chairman Grant Davis.
Please tell me again why are we paying subscriptions to representative orgs who don't appear to know what's going on, or have anything to say about it.
Again, lazy journalist >Jamie Grierson< is calling Uber minicabs "Taxis".
Again our orgs will just let this go, as they always have.
The sad truth is the trade as a whole will roll over again.
As predicted, all our leaders have left the battle field.