Our beloved taxi drivers have blockaded our main airport.
Their reason …deregulation will mean further hardship for them.
They have some valid grevances. But they are still making a living and the taxi situation in our capital is deplorable. Queues of over an hour and a half are pretty much standard after 1am in the city.
These guys have taken the move of blockading our airport , civic offices and government buildings bringing the city to a sstandstill and causing hardship and anger for everyone.
Our police force has adopted a policy of standing around looking at them. The blockade is in day 2 and they are threatening a month of blockades.
Yup, lets get the taxi drivers.
These are among the highest earning profession and the highest tipped industry. Yes, they have a point, but it seems that once again, the people who suffer as a result in Ireland are the General public. I’m going to a concert tonight, and am very much dreading the 5 mile walk home from the City center. The Bus Drivers, the Train Drivers, the Teachers, everyone wants to strike.
I was in Dublin back in October with a group of mates. To save money we decided to stay in a hotel outside the city centre (Glasnevin). Big mistake: we ended up queueing from 2.30 a.m. to 4.30 a.m. for a taxi at the rank in the middle of O’Connell Street. In the freezing cold, and the pissing rain, half cut and desparate for a piss.
I have never been anywhere in the world where it is so damn difficult to get a taxi. I’d have had better luck trying to hail down a black cab in Finchley to take me south of the river at midnight on a Friday.
If it isn’t sorted before I go back again (probably in the Spring), I’ll pay more to stay in a city centre hotel, which means the cabbies will lose about £15 of my business. Not much, I know, but if enough foreign visitors do it, it adds up. It also adds up for the out-of-town hoteliers who are perfectly blameless in all this.
Im back in Dublin alright.
No mistaking this place.
I was down on Winetavern street this morning. Cops all over the place. They even had a tow truck. What were they doing?
Chatting with the criminals.
This wouldnt be tolerated from any other public group.
Rail operators I have sympathy for.
They seem to be getting royally stiffed. But watching tourists around the place I wonder how long bemusment will fend off fury.
Tribunals , strikes , corruption , bad planning decisions , no overall concept of how a city should be managed , still talking about rail links and Luas…and on , and on , and on…
I understand the ones who are upset because the licences they had to pay £80,000 for six months ago are now going for £100. That’s unfair, and the government should compensate them.
However, I cannot believe the cheek of the ones who say “if taxis are deregulated we’ll lose our homes, our livelihoods” etc. I just want to grab them and scream Listen you gobshites! We are not here to pay your mortgage, YOU are here to serve US!
Fair fuckin play to the courts for finally doing what the Government should have done ages ago.
ruadh, who’ll probably still walk everywhere, because she can
I feel exactly the same way about farmers and hauliers in the UK.
Just out of interest, what exactly is the Government proposing? Is it complete and total deregulation (i.e. anyone can operate a cab) or is it an increase in the number of licences?
London cabbies seem to make a fair bit of money without supply being so constrained that it’s impossible to get a cab.
The plan is deregulation of the Cab licences. It would make the licences about £5000 to buy. Of course, If you have a wheel-chair accessible Cab, the licence can be as little as £100.
The government has proposed a system of re-embursement, but Its not good enough for the Cabbies. Plus they are worried that they will not be making enomous amounts of money anymore.
They should be compensated, but It is not the governments fault that they will lose so much. If I bought a house for £120,000 and the price fell to £60,000 I couldn’t turn around and sue the estate agent, could I? They bought the licence at at time when licences were very expensive. The price has fallen (albeit at Government intervention) and they got caught out.
Yes, they should be re-embursed, but their current course of action does little to help their cause. The general public pay once again for the stubborness of a few.
There are links to other sides of the story on the page.
Like most people I know I have very little sympathies for the taxi drivers. They have been making too much money and not supplying a good service for too long now. They have fought every attempt to put more taxis on the road which has led to almost everyone in Dublin having several horror stories of being left in the cold and rain for hours in a queue.
The sooner the extra taxis get on the road the better IMO.
The can claim losses back through tax ( that’s if they have being reporting their true earnings ).
My uncle is a taxi owner and he has being making a fortune for years now.
It is not just at night these delays happen. I have waited for over an hour during the afternoon, this is caused by taxi’s concentrating on corporate accounts because they can charge a extra premium to companies.
It is also quite frankly embarrassing when you are with visitors and have to explain the situation to them while waiting 2 hours for a taxi.
So fuck them with a capital FUCK THEM. The city needs a taxi service that is adequate for the population. The drivers have forced the government to this by being immovable on this subject for so long. They have made their beds and now have to lie in it. :mad:
Just curious…why do cabbies have such a stranglehold on Dublin? I mean, why don’t people just drive themselves? I can see that it would be a major problem if the airport was completely blockaded and you couldn’t get in at all, but would the cops actually allow that? As for going someplace else, why not share a ride with a friend?
(Remember…this is a Merkin speaking. We drive any distance over 100 yards.)
When you go out for a drink in town you can’t drive home coz that would be stupid and illegal. A lot, and I mean a lot of people drink in the centre of town and buses not being great at night you really don’t have any other choice.
Also there has been a concerted effort my the government to dissuade people driving in the city because of our terrible traffic problems (clamping etc.).
The traffic problems is another point actually. More taxis means more competition and hopefully prices would fall. If there was confidence in getting a taxi I think less people would drive into the city and thus cut back on the horrible congestion that fucks the city up everyday, IMO naturally.
Not that I’m disagreeing with anyone here, but why exactly were taxi licenses £80,000 in the first place? I mean, if taxi licenses in the States were $80,000, no one would ever drive a taxi. You can buy a house in the suburbs for $80,000. You can buy two brand new BMWs for $80,000. These drivers had to be pretty damn rich to begin with, no?
Well as far as I know it’s just market forces that got them that high. The government only issued a fixed no. during the last few decades.
It does show the find of money these guys are earning if that is the value put on the plate ( the term used for a licence ). A lot of them have got loans/mortgages to pay for them but the banks are not just going to give you that sort of money if they don’t think you can pay it back.
Obviously with deregulation anybody can now get a plate, once they pass all the tests etc. these plates are going to be almost worthless now. The current drivers can claim their losses against the tax they pay.
To give you an idea how much a driver who owns a plate is earning over here. My uncle who I mentioned earlier told me a few years ago that he cleared nearly 80k which shows you why they are trying to protect their income.
Unfortunately it has just gone too far and has to be sorted out. Deregulation is the only option really left open as the drivers union has halted any plan to increase the no. of taxi’s again and again.
And this isn’t America. A relatively high number of people in the city don’t own cars, and you’d be surprised how many don’t even have a driver’s license. And most would be horrified at the idea of needing a car to get around as is the case in so many American cities.
Not forgetting the increasingly frequent horror stories of people being attacked and killed while walking home late at night, which they were forced to do because they couldn’t get a taxi.
