So after 30 hours of travelling my daughter has finally arrived in Bali, where there is imminent danger of a volcanic eruption and she sends a text saying “terrible news from London”….”OMG” I thought to myself, “what’s happened now”…as I checked the news channels nervously. Couldn’t see anything untoward…”about Uber, not getting it’s licence renewed” she followed on with.
If Uber could have got involved with rallying the millennials to vote, by maybe offering them a free ride to the polling station in exchange for their support, we wouldn’t have been dealing with bloody Brexit right now – they would have come out in droves to vote and we would still be in the EU. I have never heard the young things so up in arms. It’s all they’ve known and Uber’s have got them all out of some seriously dodgy situations and got them home safely. It’s hardly surprising that the Uber petition has already reached 400K.
I have mixed feelings. I love our black cabs and would love to support them. They should not be losing out to Uber, despite the fact that I have embraced Uber myself over the last few years – mainly in order to pay for my children to get home safely, or sometimes even to college if I can’t drive them and there’s a train delay. I have met some lovely drivers and learnt their life stories. Most are great, but I understand that there have been a number of incidents regarding public safety and lack of reporting serious criminal offences and security (in terms of their background checks on drivers) and this is of course a key issue. Generally speaking the journeys are much cheaper too, but on many occasions I have ended up having to pay almost three times as much owing to a 2.7% increase because of a surge of demand and this has made it way more expensive than a black cab would have been.
Not sure whether a public outcry will have any effect on Transport For London’s decision not to renew Uber’s licence. It will be interesting to see how the appeal goes and how long that will take – because obviously they can still trade until their appeal has been considered, so it could be months until it gets resolved (YAY, my Christmas work party Uber might still get me home safely without losing my bag on the way home).
The night bus drivers must be looking forward to a massive increase in vomit and kebabs and of course sing songs if they don’t get their licence back.
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