Cracking the Code

21 June, 2011 at 12:46 am | Posted in Potporri of whinges | 5 Comments
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london-postcodes

With the news that the Olympics site has been designated with its own postcode, my question today is: “Does anyone understand postcodes in London?”

Until now, the E20 postcode of Albert Square in BBC’s soap Eastenders (no I don’t watch it either) was merely fictitious, but Olympic bosses applied for premises on the Stratford site to use the iconic postcode, and the move, due to be take effect for the start of the Games next July, has been made despite the next available East London code being E19. Postcodes it would seem have no obvious logic to their designation and no relevance in relation to the adjoining areas.

To complicate life for a cabbie house numbers sometimes have even and odd numbers on opposite sides of the street, while on others the numbers run sequentially up one side and down on the opposite site, in addition some houses are designated a street and number even though their front door actually opens onto an adjacent road; the lowest number on any street is supposed to be the house closest to Charing Cross or is that an urban myth?

If London’s postcodes are allocated alphabetically why is it that E2 is Bethnal Green; E3 Bow; E4 Chingford; E5 Clapton; E6 East Ham; E7 Wanstead; and then arbitrarily E8 Hackney?

Conversely if the postcode number denotes its position away from the centre of London why is NW1 near Mornington Crescent but NW2 miles away in Cricklewood; and Sloane Square SW1 while Brixton Hill is SW2 and Scotch Corner just yards from Sloane Square near Harrods SW3? How does that work?

You have to ask yourself, just why it is necessary for Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens to be in five different postal districts unevenly divided between W1, W2, W8, SW1 and SW7, with the lines curving and twisting through the parks.

It all started out so simple; during the 1840s the number of letters being sent in London was increasing rapidly, with many localities having similar street names, letters were often misdirected. So in the 1850s a committee was instructed to find a way to stop the confusion. They originally planned to rename the streets, but many residents objected, so they decided instead to split the city into various sectors. The two central sectors were EC and WC (East and West Central) and the outer ones were named N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W and NW after the points of a compass. A scheme which involved people adding these letters to their addresses was implemented during 1857 and 1858. In 1866 in author Anthony Trollope, then a surveyor, who also introduced our red pillar boxes, suggested that NE be merged into E and then S vanished two years later, after being split between SE and SW.

While it is immensely helpful for the Post Office in locating addresses, without a vast knowledge of the postcode system it is of little use to the man, or cabbie, on the street, except to perhaps point people to a general area, say within 10 miles from their destination. If you want to find where you are going don’t rely on a postcode; use a map or better still jump in a cab and let him figure it out.

Some notable postcodes:
SAN TA1 – Father Christmas
GIR OAA – Girobank
RM1 1AA – Royal Mail Customer Service
E20 – Walford (Eastenders) or the Olympic Park
SW1A 1AA – Buckingham Palace
SW1A 0AA – House of Commons
SW1A 0PW – House of Lords
SW1A 2AA – 10 Downing Street
SW1A 2AB – 11 Downing Street
W1A 1AA – BBC Broadcasting House, Portland Place

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A dressing down

17 May, 2011 at 12:45 pm | Posted in Potporri of whinges | 2 Comments
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Eddie Stobbart

The news recently of the untimely death at 56 of Edward Stobart – who took his father’s small haulage business comprising of eight lorries, and turned it into one of the most successful logistics companies in the country – should remind us all in the transport industry what is meant by customer service and brand awareness. Stobart’s 2,250 trucks make a delivery every 5.5 minutes travelling a total distance every day the equivalent of 21 laps of Earth.

The success of Eddie Stobart can be attributed to Edward’s ability to create an icon; the drivers are always smart and until recently would face disciplinary action if they did not wear a shirt and tie at the wheel. The truck, always immaculately clean and each painted in the highly recognisable corporate colours. The trucks are driven competently with care and consideration to other road users – they say an Eddie Stobart truck is passed on England’s roads every 4.5 minutes – note it’s not the other way round, with the truck thundering past the motorist.

Compare and contrast that with London’s cabs. Once an internationally recognised icon; first the colour was changed from Henry Ford’s “you can have any colour you like as long as it’s black” to a kaleidoscope of colours; next advertising was permitted, and now other manufacturers produce “black cabs”; now with the proliferation of private hire vehicles, it’s hardly is surprising that tourists find identifying a cab confusing. Many of London’s cabs are filthy both inside and out, gone are the days when the driver could be ordered to clean his cab before picking up another fare.

Now with summer approaching drivers will be seen with the most bizarre apparel, looking only fit to be seen on a Spanish beach than providing a professional service driving what was once one of the most iconic vehicles in the world.

Stobarts even have their own fan club with 25,000 members, about that same number of London Black Cab Drivers ply for hire on London’s streets. If only black cabs could engender enough loyalty for themselves – many have lost the values that Edward Stobart understood so well.

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A paucity of plumbers

15 March, 2011 at 2:42 am | Posted in Potporri of whinges | 3 Comments
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Low emission zoneVery soon we will experience our first taste of spring. We will flock into London’s parks and gardens to enjoy the first rays of sun and to see the flowers of spring in all their glory. It wasn’t so long ago that we would marvel at nature’s ability to throw off the shackles of winter and look forward to warmer days, indeed early man would celebrate the spring equinox as a magical event and the prelude to summer with all its bounty.

Nowadays whenever we get a pronounced change in the weather the doomsayers predict that its cause is climate change, and if man doesn’t heed the warning, unpredictable warm spring days will become the norm.

The first scientist to claim he could change the world was Robert Oppenheimer when after inventing the A-bomb he declared, with some justification; Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.

Now a massive industry has been created around climate change forecasting and the proposition that man is the destroyer of worlds; with each individual within this new industry needing to justify his or her remuneration. The London Mayor’s office is no different; they have created the Mayor’s Air Quality Strategy, which slowly has prevented any commercial vehicle operating in London if it is deemed hazardous to the environment.

After buses had been converted the cab trade was next to receive their attention. First all cabs had to comply with Euro 3, entailing for many an expensive conversion. Not content with that the Mayor’s office have deemed that all cabs over 15 years old must be scrapped, with no cabs to drive this will mean that many part-time and older full-time drivers will retire – so much for the Government’s initiative to have us work into our retirement years. The 15 year limit will also remove about a third of the current vehicles currently plying for hire.

Now the Mayor’s Air Quality Strategy has gone further. The Low Emission Zone encompassing the City will become tougher. From next January any lorry, tipper-truck or motor home weighing more than 3.5 tonnes has to be less than 6 years old or it will cost the driver £200 per day to enter the City. Larger vehicles face a fine of £100 per day if they are found to be over 10-years old. Refusal to pay the fine will incur additional costs of up to £1,000.

So after all the razzmatazz of the Olympics have died down and you want a self employed, plumber, decorator, bricklayer or taxi and don’t want to employ the services of a large corporate company, just remember why they are in short supply in London, there’ve all moved on to a place in the country. As the American economist J. K. Galbraith said “There are two classes of forecasters: those who don’t know, and those who don’t know they don’t know”.

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Man the pumps

22 February, 2011 at 12:07 pm | Posted in Potporri of whinges | 2 Comments
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I read an interesting article regarding the fuel rises of late. Someone with more time on his hands that is really healthy came up with these interesting figures. Being the same age as me he started driving in 1965 and according to his calculations, the national average wage was £700 a year or around £13 a week (I was on £5 per week, but no mind), and I was paying four shilling (20p) for a gallon of diesel. That meant I could buy a total of 67.5 gallons if I was earning £13 a week. The national average pay today is £22,000 a year or £423 a week and the average price of diesel is £5.81 a gallon, so I can now buy 73.15 gallons of fuel with a week’s wages. As a percentage of my earnings, I’m paying less for fuel than I was 46 years ago. So why do I get angry over the cost of motoring or is it that as a cabbie I’m buying over £120 of the stuff a week?

This simple “back of a fag packet” calculation would indicate that we have nothing to complain about when it comes to fuel prices, for they are charging less in real terms than they were 40 years ago. Should we be concerned about the companies that sell the product, who cares that Shell was raking in £1.6 million an hour in the final quarter of last year? Well, yes we should.

With oil reserves becoming so inaccessible it produced the fiasco that BP found itself in the Gulf of Mexico last year. And now with proposals to drill under the polar icecaps, and all the difficulty that will entail, not to mention the possible cost to this fragile ecosphere, you would think that the diesel for my cab would be remorselessly rising faster than the cost of living. But according to my fag packet calculations that is not the case.

For more added value can be obtained from processing the black gold. Shell makes the vast bulk of its profits on the “upstream” side of the business – producing oil and gas – rather than the “downstream” refining and petrol sales. These by products are much more profitable than flogging diesel to London cabbies, which after all are only going to burn it and come back for more.

0_my_photographs_scotland_petrol_pumps_-_shell_zoom-inIt is for this reason that oil companies are increasingly trying to alienate themselves from the motorist. Take the typical petrol station, its forecourt is dirty, fuel often leaking from nozzles and covering your hands with diesel, and here’s the rub: Notices that tell the motorist – and only the motorist that he’s dishonest. The motorist is photographed from every angle while you brace yourself from the wind that always seems to blow through these soulless places.

The petrol pump in a faded Shell petrol station in the Scottish Highlands © Peter Stubbs. www.edinphoto.org.uk

There is on the forecourt a presumption of guilt. On each pump the sign reads: “Make sure you have sufficient funds BEFORE you fill up. We will prosecute anyone who drives off without paying for their fuel.” And this might surprise some, at night garages insist on payment up front, so you have to queue up in the cold twice to pay (the second time is because the high prices make it impossible to stop at the desired amount). When paying up front I once requested a receipt and I was told once by the poorly paid attendant I’ll give you a receipt after you have filled up. My reply was of course: “If you don’t trust me, I’m hardly going to trust you”.

If you are lucky to enter the warmth of the shop what do you find? Well, if it is in Chelsea or Fulham everybody doing their weekly shop. So you have to queue as if it was Tesco on a Saturday morning. And here’s the thing: those shoppers don’t have to pay up front for their frozen peas, milk or bread, nor are they told as they peruse the shelves they are potential thieves.

So here are my suggestions taken from when I was paying 20p a gallon: Stop serving coffee and selling groceries; man the pumps and clean the forecourt; have you staff in smart uniforms and pay them enough so they actually do care if I buy diesel; trying getting your attendants to fill the tank so they get covered in diesel and not me; and get them to wash my windscreen if it is necessary. But it’s unlikely to happen for you see the multi-national oil companies only make a few pence profit per litre – some estimates are as little as 2p a litre.

Finally, and I promise this is the last gripe, why, with previous Governments spending a fortune encouraging motorists that drinking and driving don’t mix, are these shops which happen to have petrol pumps attached to them, allowed to sell alcohol?

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Committed to Committee

1 February, 2011 at 1:19 pm | Posted in Potporri of whinges | 6 Comments
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Olympic Stadium

What’s the difference between the Millennium Dome and the O2 Centre? Well, when the Dome was conceived and built on the Greenwich Peninsular – probably the most inaccessible spot on the planet – the “stuff” the Dome contained was chosen by a committee; worse than that, it was a Government appointed committee. So after deliberating interminably they came up with riveting ideas to pull in the punter, such as Faith: Making of Key Life Experiences, How Shall I Live?

Within one month of its opening it was running at a loss, nobody wanted to enter its canvas portals. Even the charismatic and talented Pierre-Yves Gerbeau could not persuade people to cough up the cash for a visit.

When it closed it was costing over £250,000 a month just to sit there gathering dust. Then the American billionaire Philip Anschutz came along, bought the venue, spruced it up and persuaded O2 to sponsor the place to the tune of £6 million. And do you know what? With a government committee allowed nowhere near the place it’s been voted three years running as the world’s favourite popular music venue selling 75 per cent more tickets than its nearest rival. Yes, that’s right, better than Madison Square Garden, Wembley Arena or Sportpaleis in Belgium. An oversized tent in the middle of nowhere surrounded on three sides by water the world’s favourite – amazing.

Roll on a decade and we now have the Olympic Delivery Authority getting their collective knickers in a twist over who will take on the 2012 Stadium in east London.

Now here I should declare an interest – or more accurately – a non-interest, I don’t follow football. Get in my cab and I won’t be regaling you with my opinion of the upcoming transfer window; my interpretation of the offside rule, or for that matter; talking about Beckham’s left foot. What does rather exercise my brain however is how this Government, through its committees, spend my hard earned taxes.

The Olympic Stadium which is expected to cost £547 million and seat 80,000 spectators, who might be expected to pay on average say, £20 per seat per day, and given that the 2012 Olympic Games will last 17 days plus 12 days for the Paralympic Games, £46.4 million could be generated from ticket sales. That is if the Olympian God of profit (Dionysus the God of wine, celebrations and ecstasy possibly) was on their side,but unfortunately that leaves a short fall of at least £500 million.

Now two London football clubs are bidding for the venue. The original design allowed for 55,000 seats to be removed at the end of the 2012 Olympics which seems to be agreeable for West Ham with their smaller gate, but they apparently need a Government subsidy to pay for the Stadium. The other contender is cash rich Tottenham who have promised to redevelop the dilapidated athletics facility at Crystal Palace as part of their bid to take on the Olympic Stadium, which they intend to demolish and rebuild without the running track. Who want to demolish the stadium and as a sweetener is prepared to upgrade Crystal Palace Sports Centre, seems crazy to me. Why don’t Spurs just build a new stadium – in say – Tottenham?

Anyway my advice to both clubs don’t employ a government committee to help you in your endeavours, you’ll be bankrupt before next season.

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Good Moaning

21 December, 2010 at 2:43 pm | Posted in Potporri of whinges | Leave a comment
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Sid James

Cary Cooper the professor organisational psychology at Lancaster University – no doubt taking time away from encouraging his students to man the barricades in Parliament Square – has concluded that the “Brits like to enjoy a good moan”.

According to a survey of 4,000 people, we complain for eight minutes a day. Good Brief! Only eight minutes a day, what a strange world it must be in the organisational psychology faculty at Lancaster University (no I hadn’t heard of that esteemed branch of higher learning either).

In my world I come down to breakfast after my wife has had 30 minutes to read the Daily Mail. Ken Clarke’s idea of inspired genius to allow knife wielding yobs off with a slap on the wrist prompts a rather lively debate before my first mouthful of cereal has reached my lips, I seem to recall. My wife then goes on to inform me that I’m donating £300 to bail out the Irish – apparently we export more “stuff” to Ireland than anywhere else. I can’t afford the stuff, but my money is going to Ireland so they can buy it. Thinking my blood pressure can’t rise any further I head for the door to start a day’s work. “Oh! By the way the coalition are building a new aircraft carrier to replace the Ark Royal they have scrapped, but they haven’t any planes to fly from its deck”, my wife informs my retreating back. I can ignore that comment, she’s just trying to ruin my day, and even Gordon Brown in his most insane moments as Chancellor wouldn’t have done that.

I drive my taxi through the chicanes thoughtfully provided by the utility companies, half a million holes in London’s roads this year and counting. Not a workman to be seen, still mustn’t complain, they don’t in Lancaster.

Arriving at Paddington Station where the police have thoughtfully parked their car near the exit while they have a cuppa causing a half mile tailback, I pick our trade newspaper. What this! “Bicycle Clips” Boris plans to scrap all cabs over 15 years old, I’m informed. Far better to release all those dangerous metals locked into my old cab, than offend Europe with my polluting Euro 3 emissions. Oh Well, that’s knocked a few thousand from my cab’s value, maybe the Irish can have my worthless cab in lieu of the £300.

At last a passenger gets into the cab, completely ignoring my cheery, albeit forced, greeting of good morning.

Bang, the tip up seat crashes into the partition as he removes his dirty feet from it, why didn’t the manufacturers just put in recliner chairs so these slobs could really feel at home?

While driving my way around London’s streets I speculate, will my homecoming be greeted with a letter from a London council informing me of a traffic violation, or is it to be a Red Letter Day, without the need to help fill that council’s coffers, Victor Meldrew had it easy, he should have been a London cabbie.

Some find me curmudgeonly, even accusingly me of being a Luddite (why wouldn’t I want to change my cab every three years). To my passengers and you dear reader I say it’s simply the moaning that helps keep me sane.

The French, they have their Gallic shrug, while our contribution to European culture is a good whinge, it suggests our subliminated anarchic streak, our desire to overthrow the political correctness that’s pervading our lives, and mourning the loss of common sense and courtesy.

Whinging in short is a person’s daily attempt at rebellion, in fact we English excel at it and it should be a source of pride and not shame that we lead the world in this field. And if you are a stoic London taxi driver, you’re really just not trying!

It would seem according to researchers at Bristol University, that since writing this article I have put on weight. According to their findings, distractions such as playing games or checking e-mails, make it harder for us to remember what we have eaten. This absent-mindedness stops us feeling full, and sends us reaching for snacks. It is thought that our memory of what we have eaten plays a key role in dampening appetite – now did I have that fried Mars Bar, or didn’t I?

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The tipping point

14 December, 2010 at 2:15 pm | Posted in Potporri of whinges | 6 Comments
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TIPME

The earliest explanation for tipping I can find refers us back to the days of Dr. Johnson and his 18th century circle of wits. Upon entering his local coffee shop for a session of epigram-flinging, Dr. Johnson (or rather, one presumes, his flunky, Mr. Boswell) would drop a few pence in a box labelled “To Insure Promptness” (“T.I.P.”–get it?) in order to encourage a greater display of vigour on the part of the generally listless attendants.

Now, you can tell that Christmas is near when this old chestnut of tipping is discussed among London’s cabbie fraternity; should you give a gratuity as a means of rewarding personal service; is the practice outmoded; and should cabbies go down the road of adding a service charge to the fare on completion of a journey?

Hairdressers are usually the major recipients, if only because we see the same person every time. I tell my barber to pay special attention to the back of my head as this is the side of me that my customers see, he tells me that it is my best side, but still I always tip him.

Older drivers claim that in the 1960s, while there may have been fewer customers, their regulars would generally tip, often adding 25 per cent on the metered fare. Nowadays those that do tip will generally round up the fare to the nearest £1.

Now an increasing ground swell of opinion is suggesting that traditional tipping should be replaced by a service charge, negotiated at an agreed rate with the Licensing Authority and built into the tariff.

But why tip? It’s not likely you will see the waiter, doorman or your cabbie again. Surely the service charge should already be built into the salary of those who work in service industries, not compulsorily added as an addendum to one’s bill.

Many companies are now telling employees when using a cab on company business not to tip and so your passenger will ask that the receipt doesn’t show a tip even when proffered.

The next few years will see taxi tariffs rise considerably as insurance increases due to uninsured London drivers causing accidents, fuel duty rising remorselessly, and if Boris gets his 10 years limit on the age that cabs can be licensed, write down values will increase and will have to be added to the tariff.

If I was a fare paying passenger in a London taxi I would be very annoyed at having a 10-15 per cent service charge added to the fare, whilst being driven by a self-employed driver, who is let’s face it, just doing his job.

CabbieBlog will of course be happy to receive any donations that you feel I have deserve for the service that is provided.

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Fat Flying Friends?

28 September, 2010 at 9:33 am | Posted in Potporri of whinges | 2 Comments
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St Pauls and pigeon

Using my ATM has of late been a hazardous experience, not from any street crime, but a far more dangerous assailant coming from the sky. Our local bank has erected a rather splendid sign above its frontage which has proved a perfect perch for pigeons, dozens of them. While ex-mayor Ken Livingstone most positive contribution to London has been to reduce the pigeons of Trafalgar Square from 4,000 to a mere 120, they have like other vagrants just moved elsewhere.

Mayor Ken first banned the sale of pigeon feed in 2001 resulting in a family business that had traded for decades having to shut shop. Next at a cost of £60,000 a year he introduced a pair of Harris hawks, with their handler, the expense has almost certainly been covered by the reduction in the cost of cleaning up pigeon droppings from the surrounding areas. Unfortunately the rest of London is still plagued by these feral creatures that carry (sorry about this!) histoplasmosis, cryptococosis and psittacosis, so it would seem the pigeons above my ATM could previously have been a tourist “attraction” from Trafalgar Square.

On my garden on the bird table are regularly two ring necked doves, slim beautiful creatures, even if they are a little stupid and the contrast between our doves and London feral pigeons could be not starker.

Now with our fast-food litter lout culture it has given us pigeons so fat that they can hardly fly out of the way of my cab, with many of them having trouble taking off as they are missing a toe or foot after standing in the piles of their own corrosive droppings. These urban birds are even more stupid than their rural cousins, after centuries of evolution, not one of them have realised that by placing their foot even if it is now a stub, on a piece of bread, they wouldn’t have to throw it over their heads, tearing a piece off in the process.

The numbers of our wild friends, along with foxed and rats needs to be reduced, reports recently have included, dive bombing seagulls, foxes biting children in their beds and if it is to be believed rats 30 inches long.

Sparrow hawks regularly kill pigeons in my garden while the other birds are clever enough to get out of the hawks way it’s only the pigeons that get caught, they could be used to keep the numbers in London down, feeding them something to reduce their sex drive might deprive Londoner’s the opportunity of the amusing spectacle of the males courting rituals, but could have the desired effect.

Writing in the Evening Standard Sebastian Shakespeare suggests a course of action which might prove rather startling to tourists, as the bird’s fall of their perch (or their hands) and I quote:

A more pragmatic way might be to hand out poisoned bird feed to tourists and actively encourage them to feed the pigeons. This would kill two birds with one stone, so to speak: the tourists would still get their photo opportunities and it would be a very cost-effective way of keeping the pigeon population down.

If you still have the need for more about pigeons, I would direct you to Pigeon Blog probably the largest site you find on everything that’s amusing about our fat flying friends.
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Requires no skill to operate

24 August, 2010 at 12:03 pm | Posted in Potporri of whinges | 2 Comments
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Walking-with-mobiles

The man who invented the world’s most intrusive device described his instrument as: “The telephone may be briefly described as an electrical contrivance for reproducing in different places the tones and articulations of a speaker’s voice so that Conversations can be carried on by word of mouth between persons in different rooms, in different streets or in different Towns
. . . The great advantage it possesses over every other form of electrical apparatus is that it requires no skill to operate the instrument”.
[My italics]

Alexander Graham Bell (if ever a person’s name was better suited for his invention, I’ve yet to find), couldn’t have imagined what his invention would lead to in the 21st century or for that matter what idiots would make use of it.

So what has the latest reincarnation of Mr Bell’s invention got to do with CabbieBlog I hear you muttering amongst yourselves? Well, driving in London is becoming ever more stressful with pedestrians engrossed in using their i-phones walking into the road, then looking up with a startled expression when they see my cab bearing down on them.

Women are often accused of lacking spacial awareness, but men, sorry chaps it’s usually the male gender, that seems engrossed in their phones, and whatever they are doing on it, certainly excludes any road sense.

So when Alexander Graham Bell informed the populace that his “apparatus . . . required no skill to operate he should have added the caveat – but retraining might be necessary in the art of crossing a road, for how to talk on one’s phone and cross London’s busy roads needs a skill that many have failed to acquire.

FOOTNOTE: Around the mid 1800’s many were trying to invent the telephone, the most unfortunate was the American Elisha Gray who actually filed something called a patent caveat – a sort of holding claim that allowed one to protect an invention that wasn’t quite yet perfected – on the very day that Alexander Graham Bell filed his own, more formal patent, unfortunately for Gray, Bell beat him by a few hours.

Thanks for checking out CabbieBlog just don’t do it while crossing the road.

And thanks to Dan Forys at http://thelondonrulebook.co.uk for permission to use his cartoon. Check it out the site is very funny.
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Whingeing Smörgåsbord

17 November, 2009 at 2:27 pm | Posted in Potporri of whinges | 3 Comments
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A diversion from our usual bill of fare, mainly because I couldn’t be bothered haven’t written a more considered and longer post, I give you today a veritable feast of whinges.

Chuggers
Sitting in my mobile tin box, I’m rarely accosted by these salesmen. They of course have no interest in the charity they purpose to represent, their sole purpose is to get you to sign on the dotted line and earn their commission. Who in their right mind would tell a complete stranger with a clipboard and wearing a dubious jacket their bank details? Are you going to give that information to a Nigerian who tells you via the internet he has won a fortune, well maybe you have.

Hands Free
No, that isn’t the name of a gay German rock band, it’s what every driver should have in their vehicle in London. It’s hard enough negotiating around all the hazards thrown up at you as you drive in London, without trying to steer with one hand while holding a phone in the other. White van man please note, your company should provide a hands free device if they want to contact you at work.

Electric Cars
359123912_3b568797d0 Uncharacteristically for me, but I’m beginning to get irritated at the sight of these miniature milk floats being driven around town. It’s occupants usually have a permanent smug look on their faces suggesting “look how green and clever we are”. And have you noticed the free plug and park bays also have green lights on them when charging, just to show off their environmental credentials?

Women Gondoliers
Venice the waterborne city is undergoing a sea change (sorry about that). First it was adverts in St. Mark’s Square, followed by plastic striped mooring poles replacing the traditional wooden one. Now they are allowing women gondoliers, is nothing sacred?
The next thing London will follow suit with female cabbies; cabs with adverts; post offices closing; no bobbies on the beat; Routemaster buses withdrawn and no conductors; Mercedes vans purporting to be licensed taxis; allowing 400 rickshaws to ply for hire; and put 44 foot long bendy buses on London’s streets.

I’m getting indigestion just thinking about it. 
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