Full transcript: Steve McNamara on London Real
0:56 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Steve McNamara, the General Secretary of the Licensed Taxi Drivers Association. For the last eight years you’ve worked to protect and promote the rights and interests of the iconic London black cab. Unfortunately, due to the coronavirus pandemic, your industry has been decimated by a collapse in demand for taxis, with only 10 percent of London’s 20,000 cab drivers currently working.
1:22 Your recovery is now being hampered further by the City of London pedestrianizing streets and reducing the capacities on our roads. The future of London’s black cabs is at serious risk, with no visiting tourists and workers staying at home. You’ve described the situation as quote unquote absolutely devastating. Steve, welcome to London Real. Thank you.
1:41 Well, you’ve just done my job for me there. That’s summing up, that’s what’s happening, that’s what’s happening. Well, you know, first of all, I just want to say, as an American who’s lived in London for 20 years, the black cab is something that I find to be almost sacred. You know, I love it. You’re never coming away from a long trip having that ride, having that experienced driver, having someone who’s kind of the salt of the earth and part of the fabric is just amazing, and I take black cabs every single day, and they always have their finger on the pulse.
2:08 They know what’s going on, what’s not going on. There’s always an opinion. So I really do think it’s the culture of London. It’s a real backbone. It’s not just transport, it’s something more than that.
2:17 So I appreciate you being here because I think it’s an important industry to talk about. Well, I mean, you’ve just summed up our industry really. The reality is that London to most Americans, you know, was fog bound up until a few years ago. And London’s icons, you know, it’s the red telephone boxes. Well, obviously they’ve gone, because we’re all carrying mobile phones.
2:37 The red buses? Well, a lot of them are live ridden sponsored now, and they’re not the buses they were. The London policemen wearing funny hats, you know, under bobby’s hats? Well, they’ve gone. They now sit in BMWs carrying machine guns And the last thing that’s left is the London taxi.
2:54 We have evolved, but we haven’t changed the vehicle that we drive. Now the new vehicle, you know, as you’ll be aware, Brian, is a state-of-the-art 21st century electric vehicle, but it’s still a London cab. The guy driving the cab has still done the same test that somebody would have done 60 or 100 years ago, learning his way around London doesn’t need a sat nav. So yeah, we’re an integral part of this city. We’re in this city’s DNA, but we’re not recognized as such, and unfortunately, through a series of errors, deliberate decisions and accidents, like you know, like the pandemic.
3:30 We’re at risk. We’re seriously at risk. This is the worst time for the taxi industry ever, and it wasn’t this bad, they tell me, during the Second World War, where many people are away working. It wasn’t that bad then, and at the moment it’s absolutely dire, and I genuinely fear for the future of our industry, and make no mistake, the blame will absolutely lie at two politicians’ doorsteps. It will be Boris and Sadiq, two totally opposing, contradictory politicians, but equally supplying, and both of these are both making policies, and then London has to suffer alongside the workers here, and then of course the cab industry.
4:08 And I want to talk about some of those issues you’re facing, like you said, you’ve modernized. I mean, these new electric cabs, I took one home the other night, and like it threw me back in my chair. I mean, it’s beautiful, the glass roofs. I mean, it really is an incredible piece of work. And I know you were moving from the diesel to the electric vehicle, like you said.
4:23 The person driving you has done The Knowledge, you know, which for people that don’t know is, you know, studying the streets of London by memory so they can get there without a sat nav. They know all the ins and outs, and again it’s the culture of the city, and it’s a crucial part of the transport, and it’s what makes London London. You know, I know tourists like love to be there. And at the same time, this is a difficult time, and for a lot of reasons. So let’s start talking about him.
4:49 I was with a cab driver the other day, and we were driving around in the city, and he said, you know, it’s hard for me even to get around in the city, and he said the businessmen now tell me, I used to be able to do five meetings a day. Now I can do two meetings a day because of the traffic, and I said, well, where’s the traffic? Everyone’s working from home, and he said, look, I’ve got this barrier here, this pedestrian barrier that’s supposed to give people more room to work on the sidewalk, but there’s nobody on the sidewalk.
5:12 I can’t go down this road. And I was like, why? I thought black cabs can go anywhere He said no, I’m not allowed to drive here, here, here, and here. Road closures. What is the state of transport here in London and how does that affect the cabbie?
5:25 Well, let’s, the state of transport in London is dire. What’s happened? Make no mistake, the Covid, the coronavirus crisis has led to opportunistic land grabbing by certain people in certain positions. What’s happened over recent years in London? If you go back, it’s pretty much across the country.
5:46 If you go back 20 years, the people who worked in town halls, the local authority and they were people who had started at the town hall and they were very few of them would have had degrees or various university qualifications. They would have perhaps had an A level you know, as sort of, they finished Americans, they would have finished high school, they then sought qualifications and they progressed through the town all over the years, they were predominantly local people. The people who were elected to run the town halls were local people who wanted to, you know, get involved and help, and they made the decisions, and the local people implemented them.
6:24 In recent years, what’s happened is it’s transformed, it’s become an industry. So the people running the town halls, the chief executives and people, and they’re all on two hundred thousand pounds a year salaries. I mean, it’s quite incredible you know, a quarter of a million dollars a year to run a small borough in London, and they’ve got a plethora of executives, you know, on 50, 80,100,000 pounds a year, and there they now see it as a mission to run London in their image.
6:53 Many of them are, all of them will be graduates. They will all live quite centrally, they’ll all be middle class, and they’ve got very middle class values and middle class ideals. So what would happen is, as an example, They live in the very center of the te of town. This is in central London, and they work very centrally and what’s happened is the local cycling groups, again predominantly white people, predominantly educated people, they’ve got themselves in positions of power elected into these local councils, and when Covid came along, they saw it as an absolute opportunity to impose their will on the rest of London, and their will is closed roads, cycle lanes, restricting motor traffic, motor traffic’s bad.
7:37 If they had their way, they would be able to sit in the middle of Oxford Circus or Piccadilly Circus drinking a coconut caramel eco latte without any thought as to how the bits are, you know, constituent parts get there. They don’t care. They’re all about themselves. They’re just selfish. But isn’t it their job to stimulate the economy, and can’t they see that these policies hurt London from moving around?
8:00 They don’t hurt them. Okay, that’s that. That’s that’s the crux, what they hurt is the working class people who have to deliver the goods, the builders, the plumbers, you know, the trades people, and the people, you know, the ordinary people who come to work on the bus, you know, who live slightly out in the suburbs or they live a bit further out, they can’t walk or cycle to work. They have to get the bus. The buses are stuck in the traffic like everything else.
8:24 I mean, I saw a recent survey last week that even though London is virtually deserted, as you’re aware, and bus times are up 40, bus delays are up 40 percent traffic’s down, bus delays are up. Why is that? Because they’re closing all the roads and but it’s good for them. They’re imposing their will on the greatest city on the planet, and London is you know, wherever you’re from, it’s one of the greatest cities on the planet. It is the greatest city.
8:51 Yeah, it’s personally I like San Francisco, but it’s a great, I’ll put it number two, but it’s the greatest city on the, certainly the big mega city on the planet, and these people are building it in their own image, and they’re destroying it, and I’m watching it happen before my very eyes, and they’ve got no shame. and these local traffic neighborhoods that they’ve put in, that local people, working class people, are now beginning to have demonstrations there was a big one in Bethnal Green last week. There’s one every Saturday in Islington.
9:18 There’s been one in Brixton, and the one in Brixton was quite incredible. Brixton is a borough just south of the river in London. There was a large number, cross section of Brixtonians, black people, Asian people, white people, all ages demonstrating that these road closures are killing their businesses. They’re making it harder for them to get to work, harder for them to move, and the local elected councillor is mocking them on Twitter. I mean, it was quite incredible.
9:45 These people have just it’s not people. These demonstrators are saying it’s not democratic because they wasn’t asked. No one was asked. There’s been no consultations no one has been asked. These things have been enforced upon us under emergency legislation and these councillors are now saying, look, you elected me to make decisions, and this is the decision I made.
10:06 They’re just abusing their power. It’s a land grab. It’s wrong for London. It’s wrong for business. It’s a disaster.
10:13 Yeah, and it’s frustrating to hear, because I don’t hear it except for cabbies, or you see these demonstrations, but it’s not really talked about in mainstream. The government’s not telling you what they’re taking away, and yet they’re making these executive decisions. You know, Boris makes these calls, and Sadiq makes these calls without having to be accountable or counsel people for this, and then it has these big ramifications, including slowing down business, which, you know, on top of all the other things you’re saying about screwing these communities up.
10:41 That’s what boggles my mind. That they wouldn’t say, we’re desperate to get this economy back, we got to get the city at least moving around, because it’s a city of commerce, right? And yet people are stuck. I know you’re frustrated No, no, we’ve got a Tory government destroying business. I mean, forget your politics, but that’s the one thing that no one ever accused the Tories of.
11:01 The Tories were always seen, the Conservatives were always seen as the party of business, and yet it’s a Tory government that, through, without even getting into the mistakes they’ve made over this corona and Covid epidemic, forget those mistakes, but just the emergency powers and legislation they’re brought in to stop business, to gridlock London unnecessarily, to stop people from working. I mean, what they’re actually doing as well in some of the suburbs, they’ve rephased the traffic lights to stop people getting in, to actually artificially create traffic jams to discourage people from coming in. What that means is they’re discouraging people from going to work, and people who have to go to work and they’ve got to sit there and take longer.
11:42 So just think about it for a second. Your elected representatives are actually trying to stop you from going to work. I mean, you can make this stuff up, but it’s happening. And the big problem is in central London at the moment with central London politics, and is that the cabinet in number 10 is being the cabinet and actually running government. There’s a few senior advisers to Boris buried deep into number 10 who are making these decisions and making policy, and then often the first ministers are aware of it, is when they’re told what’s happening.
12:16 Now, I’ve spoken to several government ministers recently and I won’t name them out of respect for their confidentiality, but they’re very frustrated at what’s going on. They’re very frustrated. The road closures, the government’s transport policy seems to be to impose the will of cycling on everybody. Now if you think about it, we’re designing a city for cyclists, which is great, but London’s not the warmest place on the planet, and when the sun doesn’t shine, the number of cyclists drops massively, and when they do all these cycling counts, they do it on a warm afternoon in June.
12:50 They don’t do it you know, at ten o’clock at night in November or three o’clock in the afternoon in November when there’s no one in these cycle lanes. Cycling is a commuter occupation for very wealthy inner London commuters. For the rest of us, it’s a nightmare. Right, let’s talk about policy, because this curfew is something we can really talk about. I mean, 10 p.m. curfew for hospitality venues.
13:10 It’s crushing them. I’ve just been talking to a bunch of entrepreneurs in the industry, and their revenues are down 60 since the 10 p.m. curfew. One of the members of SAGE, which is the advisory panel that advises Boris, Professor Graham Medley said it was never even discussed, never discussed with the panel before it was put as a decree across this entire country. It’s crushing these businesses. Hospitality does 140 billion pounds of business, must have knock-on effects to taxi drivers.
13:39 How do you feel about this curfew? Look, we had very old-fashioned licensing laws in this country. You will have been here 20 years, you just to remember them, where the pubs had to shut at 11 o’clock, and the reason we scrapped those licensing laws is because at 11 o’clock everybody was coming out onto the streets, and it was all of getting home and the problems, so quite sensibly they extended the hours to let people out at different times, or we seem to have forgotten that, and this current 10 p.m. curfew, it’s basically ludicrous.
14:06 I mean, any look on social media, any, you know, and just go out and have a look. What’s happening? Tens of thousands of people all coming onto the street at 10 o’clock at night. Many of them are then deciding, well, we’ll carry the evening on back at my place or your place, something they wouldn’t have done normally. So it’s probably hindering the Covid spread more than anything.
14:25 Now the only interesting bit about it is, I’ve heard Sadiq Khan this morning, the mayor of London, he’s criticizing the policy. I know that. Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, and I also understand that the mayor of Liverpool has done the same. The big city mayors are telling the government, you know, this isn’t working. So what should have happened with Matt Hancock’s announcement this morning?
14:44 He should have announced, look, you’re quite right, we’ve reviewed this, it’s not working, we’ve made a mistake and changed the policy accordingly but the big error here is, make a mistake, everyone can make mistakes. Might have been a good idea. It hasn’t worked. Stop it. But they don’t.
14:59 They just keep pushing on with the same ideas, repeating the same mistakes, and this is a fine example. Yeah, and we’ve seen that for the last five months. I honestly would get everyone passed that they just said, look, this was a pandemic, 100 years, we made some bad decisions, but we’re going to reset now going forward. It’s just going to be science-based, and you can choose next year to re-elect me or not, but I’m just going to do the right thing. Uh, I would love that.
15:21 I would forgive everyone, but again, like you said, all the policies seem to be based on continuing with previous uncorrect policies or covering up problems in previous policies, so now it’s all test cases, and yet we’re not seeing the hospitalizations or the deaths. The deaths that we do see are a fraction of what they are for cancer and smoking. Every day, literally one tenth, one twentieth, one thirtieth of smoking related are Covid-related. Why have they locked down tobacco stores?
15:46 They’re not going to, of course not, and yet this is the national crisis. It doesn’t seem to have any sense. It’s not based in science. It’s not proportionate with the danger, and there’s no leadership. You know, you mentioned the mayor of London.
15:58 He was quite silent, I found, until the mayor of Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds started saying, break the curfew. All I get from the mayor of London is a campaign of fear. Stay home. You know, put a mask on, and you know, don’t do anything, because, you know, the Armageddon is coming, and it doesn’t help us get London back to work. Offices are at 13 capacity.
16:18 You can’t run a city like that. It’s that’s less than half of the rest of Europe. I went to a meeting last week for a Confederation of London Business as a dinner. I mean, when last one you went to them? and there was about 80 people there.
16:33 It was all trying to help socially distance on the roof of a hotel and a lot of these businesses are now saying that we’ve got to stop this. It’s crazy. It’s kid in London. It’s killing business. The effects of the pandemic are going to be minuscule compared to the number of deaths, and all the social problems that are going to come with the collapse of the economy.
16:52 Unemployment, as you know, causes mental health problems, and all the stuff that goes with it. That’s going to have a massive knock-on for years. The number of people that are dying as a result of not getting their cancer treatments, who are going to die. A friend of mine is an eye surgeon, literally around the corner here at Moorfields, and he’s sitting there watching people go blind because he wasn’t allowed to operate on them. And he was quite Christian in fact, in so far as we were clapping for the NHS, and he said they were clapping for me, sitting there watching people go blind.
17:19 And I think that just about sums it up. What they should have done, they should have locked down the care homes. They should have locked down the hospitals. They should have had hot hospitals for Covid, call hospitals for not, anyone who gets ill gets transferred It should have been much more evidence-based. It should have been much more logistical.
17:34 And we’ve got to accept there is an element of risk. We’ve been doing it that way, but no more so than the way we’ve done it. The big error is the current politicians, instead of saying, look, we made a mistake. This is what we’re going to do. They won’t do that.
17:47 No one will admit they’ve made a mistake, and so we just keep doing what we’ve always done, repeating the same mistakes. So what can we do for London black cabs? I mean, what are the few things if I could put you in charge, you know, for the rest of the year? What could we do? What would be the three things on your wish list?
18:05 Well, my number one thing on the wish list, it wouldn’t just necessarily be for the black cab industry. It’d be for London full stop, and that would be to get people back to work, to get London back to work. And by doing the measures that I’ve suggested to, you know, you would lock down hospitals with lockdown care homes, you would flood them with PPE and sanitizers and equipment and staff, because the money you would be throwing at that would be an awful lot cheaper than the money they’re throwing at the furlough scheme, and we wouldn’t be facing the massive unemployment figures.
18:31 That’s the first thing I’d do. I would rearrange the way that we rescheduled the way that we’re dealing with this crisis, and I would gradually have a rephase opening of London. That’s the first thing I do. Secondly, I would look up the scale and unnecessary number of these road closures and things that have been brought in. I would get the bus network moving again.
18:52 See, once again, it’s not necessarily the cab tray trades. Get the bus network moving. One of the first things that Ken Livingstone did, he was the first mayor of London. Yeah, I’ve had him on the show. First thing Ken did was to improve the bus network.
19:05 He reduced fares. He got the bus, he increased the number of buses, and London was buzzing because people could move around cheaply. And it was cheap for people to get to work, which means they had more disposable income. It was great. So the first thing I’ll do is get the buses working.
19:19 I’d look at how London moves around and if I, if you’re now making me mayor as a cab driver, the first thing I’m going to do is recognize our iconic status and give us access anywhere that the buses go. Where the buses go, black cabs go. We go. We can then, we’re the only wheelchair accessible 100 door-to-door service anywhere in the world, and an awful lot of our passengers are not necessarily disabled. Do you think wheelchairs it’s not that, it’s people, you know, bad backs, less ambulant people we can take them from their street door to where they need to go.
19:56 You can pick one up on the street and go to where you want to go. At the moment we can’t do that, so we can’t move that percentage of London that relies on us to get around. And what they’ve done, if anything, they’ve increased our fares. Now we don’t want to increase our fares. Cab drivers, the great myth about taxi drivers, the way you make money driving a cab is to get someone where they’re going as quickly as you can, get back and do another job.
20:19 That is the way you make money. Sitting in traffic is a killer. That is what we want to do. That’s what Londoners want to do. They want to get where they’re going cheaply, quickly.
20:27 That’s why they get a cab. You get a cab, you know, if you had all day, you’d walk, but, and we’ve been prevented from doing that. If we can get that implemented and we can move around. We can get the city moving. Business can start moving.
20:41 The shops can start reopening, coffee shops and start doing well, and London can start booming again. If we don’t do that, you know, I’m really fearful as to what’s going to happen, not just to us, but to the city in general. Why has the mayor of London restricted you and restricted your movements and not giving you the recognition as, you know, a part of the transport network? Right. Well, Sadiq would tell you.
21:01 He would list a lot of things that he done for us when that question is put to him He always tells us that he lets us in bus lanes, that he’s got involved in various licensing decisions, and he’s found money to help us buy these electric cabs. Well, he hasn’t found a lot of money to help us buy these electric cabs. He’s actually given us two grand per cab, so on a sixty-five thousand pound vehicle, the mayor’s giving us, you know, two grand, two thousand pounds towards it.
21:26 Not exactly welcome, nonetheless, but not a lot. That’s what he would say. He doesn’t accept that his policies have hurt us. He doesn’t accept that his policies of excluding us from roads are impacting on us. And I had a, I had a very interesting meeting with the Deputy Mayor for Transport, Heidi Alexander, and I said to her, you know, you’re killing us.
21:46 You’re absolutely killing us, and she said to me, but Steve, the congestion charge is only in London, where all the problems are. It’s only one percent of the road network. Why are you bothered? It’s only one percent. And I actually explained to her that it’s 80 to 85 percent of our work area.
22:02 It might be one percent of the road network. It goes all the way out to the M25, but it’s 80 percent of our road map. Isn’t that obvious? Not to her, it wasn’t okay, and that’s the problem. There’s people running City Hall who don’t know, and they don’t care, because they’re career politicians, because they’re career politicians.
22:19 Because they haven’t actually got their finger on London’s pulse. And it’s not just the taxi trades, as I’ve said to you. They don’t, they, they don’t seem to recognize what’s happening. They don’t look at the evidence in their own eyes. They see what they want to see.
22:33 And a lot of the people running City are not necessarily politicians, but a lot of the senior people there are the people that I’ve described to you. They’re building London in their image. They live very centrally. I mean, Will Norman, who’s the cycling czar or commissioner, you know, lives just slightly out to the east. He wants to ride his bike in.
22:50 The main advisor to Boris Johnson, his main transport advisor, it’s Andrew Gilligan Andrew Gilligan is a mate of mine, well, a whole sparring partner, but Andrew Gilligan was the guy who put the cycle super highway in, and now he’s sitting locked up in the basement of Downing Street. He’s imposing that culture and that will on the rest of London. He’s getting the they’ve got control over City Hall at the moment, because they’re bailing TfL out with money, and part of the conditions of the bailout is that Gilligan was put on the board of TfL, so Gilligan is now setting the demands, not just for the country of his policies, but for London specifically.
23:28 It’s no surprise to me that we’re going to wind up with virtually no roads and cycle networks everywhere, because that’s what he wants. But their job is to serve the people. Their job is to make the city better, to build the economy. That’s what their job is, and their job is to have the finger on the pulse of the businesses, the communities, the cultures, and to find out what’s going on and to fix those problems. That’s not how it works, okay?
23:49 At the moment, and the way it works is these people impose their will, and then they spend their time justifying their decisions and trying to tell you why you’re wrong. And they’ll come up with all sorts of clever stats, and all you really need to do is just walk out into the street and look. And when we’re debating these cycle lanes, I say to them frequently, I listen to what you’re saying, loads of people are cycling, that’s what you’re telling me. Why don’t you and I go down to the new cycle lane, Park Lane, this afternoon, and count the number of bikes there at two o’clock in the afternoon and look at the gridlock traffic.
24:18 Let’s go down and do that. They won’t do it, and why won’t they? Because they don’t want to see. You know, it’s the old, you know, hear no evil, see no people, speak no either. That’s their policy.
24:27 This is what I want, this is what I’m doing, I don’t care, and I’m absolutely astounded that in a city like London, they’re getting away with it. People are, well, people were letting them get away with it. As I say, there’s talk now of people standing against them. I went to the business alliance dinner the other night, where businesses are starting to talk, but at the moment City Hall’s not listening, and Number 10 is not listening, and it’s going to be very interesting to see if these people start putting up local councillors in opposition to them, and people start standing in mayoral elections with business agendas.
24:59 Be very interesting to see what happens. Yeah, well, I think that should happen soon, and I agree when I look at these bike lanes look, I’m all for green cities, I’m all for bikes, but when I see three lanes or two lanes and one of them is a bike lane and there’s no one and there’s no one in it and we’re in gridlock, and this city functions by people getting around to other places. I mean, that’s the point of a city. Then I always wonder what was this trade-off, you know, did it get pushed through without really running the numbers and holding people accountable?
25:26 Now they’ve got this site, they’ve got this thing. They tell you that if you build it, they will come. I don’t know the original, you know, that quote, but the thing is they’ve built them, and they have come in the morning rush hours and in the evening rush hours when the weather’s warm and it’s not raining, but for the 20 hours of the day and for four months or five months in a year, there’s nobody in them. But they won’t admit to that, because the other thing they’ll constantly tell you is they’ve got to look at Holland.
25:55 You look at Holland. It’s all over here, is Holland, little Holland, look at Holland. Well, London is nothing like honor. Holland’s a great country. It’s got some great cities to love.
26:03 Holland, but it’s nothing like London. You can’t compare London with anywhere in Holland, and the cycling culture in Holland is for different people. To sit up on big bikes, leisurely riding on big wide roads, taking it easy. In London, the cycling culture, go out and look, or be middle-aged men on bikes in lycra trying to beat their personal best time to work. That’s the cycling culture in London.
26:26 It’s jump red lights, get there as quickly as you can. It’s totally different, and they’re trying to, they’re trying to, we’re trying to build a city to fit that model, and it doesn’t. This is a fried thing, harbor, it’s and metropolis. It’s the, keep saying it’s the greatest city on Earth. It’s a business, a hub, you know, everything happens here.
26:44 It’s why people want to come here if you want to go to some quite Dutch city, and I’m thinking I might want to go then I’ll do that. But when I’m in London, I want London to be London. I want to be able to get around. I want business to thrive on. I want it to be London, and these people are killing it, and they just they’re strangling it.
27:00 Traffic and people moving in London is the lifeblood if you stop the lifeblood flowing, the city will have a coronary. and that’s what’s going to happen, and they just can’t see it. Yeah, I totally agree with everything you’re saying. You’re pretty. You’re a pretty observant guy.
27:15 You’ve been around the block a few times too. It’s not my first road, yet, right? and I can see it and I can feel it, and we do need some leadership that maybe has a business background or that is thinking about getting London back to work and thinking about other agendas, then covering their trail of previous mistakes or trying to get elected next year. I mean, we need someone that’s going to serve the people, that can hold people accountable and just make intelligent decisions, not based on what’s trendy that year, you know, and you’ve seen that, and then again acknowledge the parts of the city that make it work, which is transport.
27:45 Transport is so important, and our transport is a mess. What about these barriers and blockades? What do we do with them? Do we need any of them? There’s no, there’s nobody here at the moment.
27:53 So what they’ve done, they put them in, and they’re expensive to even leave there. I was with cabbie today, and he said, you know, how much those cost every day, and we were on Oxford Street, and there was one lane on Oxford Street. Literally, he was losing his mind. I was trying to calm him down. You know, it’s, it is, it, I know I keep saying it’s, you couldn’t make it up, but we, they’re doing it.
28:12 And they can’t see the irony of what they’re doing. It’s almost intentionally hurting everybody and that they can’t see it, and the thing is, what they tell you is, now we restrict the traffic flows so the idling traffic, which is everyone’s now sitting in traffic idling, and a lot of the vehicles, you know, the diesel, the delivery vans and the lorries, they’re all sitting there. I think so the traffic fumes are going up, the pollution levels, even though only 20 percent of London is at work, the pollution levels are going up, so the next thing they’ll say to us is, my god, what we gonna do about the pollution?
28:43 Solution, close more roads that is the same mistakes being repeated again and again and again, instead of listening to business. You mentioned earlier about people not being able to do as many appointments during the day, and what’s happening now, a lot of the freight companies, they’re having to buy extra lorries and take on extra drivers to do the same amount of business that they were doing before, because the drivers can’t get around their route, you know They can’t, they can’t get around the set route they’ve got in time, so now we’ve got twice as many lorries on the road to do the same amount of work. And but again, they can’t see, and instead of sitting down with the guy who’s doing that, with the business the guy who’s running the business, and I’ve, I’ve given them the contact details, the businesses that are doing this, and said look, don’t speak to this guy.
29:29 And he would say he’s not really doing that. No, he’s not. They’re just saying that because they don’t want to listen, cause he doesn’t suit their agenda. Right, we should all be on bikes. I mean, this guy, you know, who delivers laundry, he should have, should have gone a push by, you know, pulling four ton of laundry behind him.
29:43 It’s just crazy. Yeah, it’s crazy, and it’s crazy also. This myth that we’re all gonna work from home for the next year. First of all, it’s not viable. the work isn’t the same.
29:53 And here’s the news for anyone thinking they’re just going to sit at home for the next six months. Pretty soon your company is going to realize that they don’t need you in England, and your job can go overseas, because the reason they have a headquarters in London is because of the City of London. It’s the proximity of ideas It’s the culture. It’s the innovation. That’s why you have a hub in England.
30:14 If you’re, say, a multinational company, you don’t have it because someone’s in Kent, and someone’s over here, and someone’s over here. They’re probably going to realize, wait a second we can have you in the Philippines, you in South America, you somewhere else, and then everyone’s job is gone. So this is my message to all the big banks in the City and all the big law firms. You need to really think about proactively getting your people back in the City in a safe way.
30:36 Otherwise yeah, you’re gone, you’re gone. Yeah, but it’s the workforce that need to realize that. Somebody in the Philippines, if you’re on a sort of media data input, you know, IT-based job, which a lot of people are, you’re sitting in front of a computer all day. Sure, you could argue that you could do it from home, but the example you’ve just given, somebody in the Philippines will do your job. Forget 40 or 50,000 pounds a year.
31:02 He’ll do it for 10,000 pounds a year. He won’t have any sick pay, any holiday pay, any sick schemes or travel schemes, and he’ll work 18 hours a day, and you’ll be out of work, and then the coffee shop next door will go bust, and the whole economy comes down. That’s not what London’s about. London’s about people coming into the center doing what they do in the center, interacting. You know what they call the water cooler chat?
31:24 Yeah, I don’t quite know where that one come from either. I don’t even like watercolor, but it’s interacting with people. Yeah, you get ideas, you’re buzzing And that’s what London needs. It’s a, you know, a lot of people sitting in their front rooms, home, and I would question actually how good it is to people. A lot of people’s mental health, not getting out as much, and spending, you know, not being able to define your workplace in your home place.
31:45 There’s no definition and then one becomes the other end. It’s no longer a place of relaxation, issue, place of work, and all of those problems, and people are not taken into account. But the country is a mess. The Covid is a mess. The mayor and Boris are ruining London.
32:02 You know, I’m really, really worried about. I can’t be the only one. Well, I know I’m not. What about the mental health of your, of your drivers? I mean, everyone’s suffering, but, you know, the black cabbie has to sit alone and maybe go an hour without a fare.
32:16 And what is it like out there? Well, I was driving a cab in 1990 when we had the big recession in 1990. Well, the biggest recession ahead of this one and just after the first Gulf War, and the worst thing about it wasn’t even necessarily the money you earn, although that was obviously a contributing factor, but the worst of it was you just spent hours driving around and around trying to find a rank, looking for, looking for a fare. That is the worst. You know, you’re stuck in this, this little box On your own with only your own thoughts, and when you’re not talking to anyone you’ve got anywhere to go you’re just on autopilot.
32:52 You’re constantly churning your mind: all the problems, how am I going to pay this bill, how am I going to pay that bill, what am I going to do with a cab? I’m going to all of those things become major, major problems. Whereas if you’re busy you’re thinking of other things. You know, I’m chatting to people in the cab. You’ll get this, and that is the biggest issue, and that’s the biggest concern that we’ve got for our members at the moment.
33:14 The other big concern that we’ve got is that we have to drive that unique vehicle. A London cab has to be able to turn in 25 feet. A gentleman of five foot eight has to be able to wear a top hat in the back. I mean, I’ve never picked anyone up in a top hat, but they have to sit in the back of the cab and at the moment we’ve got one manufacturer who make this great new electric vehicle, pre-Covid. We were buying these new cabs at the rate of 50 a week.
33:40 London cabbies, individual businessmen, had invested 300 million pounds in just over 18 months in buying these new electric cabs. Every cab in London now takes credit cards, as you know, and contactless, and we were doing really well. We were seeing a real resurgence of the London cab trade. The renaissance, if you like. People love the new cabs.
33:59 They like the contactless and we were doing very, very well. The firm that made the cab in Coventry were built with 350 million pounds of government funding, the most modern advanced car plant in Europe. And at the moment they’re not selling any cabs because none of my members are at work, so they’re not going to rush out and spend 65 grand on a cab, especially on their earnings at the moment. I worry that factory that makes these cabs isn’t going to be around if we lose the vehicle.
34:29 No one else is going to come in to make one. So now London has no longer got a manufacturer of his iconic vehicle. Without the iconic vehicle, the mayor is going to have to re-license old diesel cabs or whatever he’s going to have to do, or we’re going to have to, we’ll lose the wheelchair accessibility, you know, another unique status. We can take two wheelchairs We’re going to lose the turning circle. We’re all going to be driving modified transit vans, you know, or, or people carriers or whatever.
34:54 We wind up driving the same vehicles that the private hire industry use, you know, the black car industry, black cab. We would wind up in that situation. London would lose its icon forever. And that is a, that is my biggest concern at the moment. Is we lose the vehicle, we lose our identity.
35:12 And we’re gone forever. You know, 350 years we’ve been around, and I’ve got members who remember Oliver Cromwell who licensed us. He was a Americans are not good on British Civil War, but I don’t know. I love Cromwell. Cromwell licenses for the first time in 1654, or something, and we’ll be gone.
35:32 And it is that desperate. You know, I spend all my days now writing to politicians. I’m writing, you know, eight ten letters a day to, you know, to the Chancellor, to business secretaries, to transport secretaries. I spend a lot of my time on Zoom meetings with various ministers, and I’m telling them this, and I’m telling them this, and it’s just not sinking in. What I’ve now done is now I’ve now written them all, including the mayor and everybody at City Hall.
35:57 I’ve sent them what I call my DNG letter, my doom and gloom letter, and I’m telling them that if this carries on, this, that scenario I’ve just laid out to you is a very real possibility, and what I don’t want is to be in that situation in a year, 18 months, two years’ time, where they say to me, we’d known. I didn’t know, because they all know, because I’ve told them, and I will be standing up everywhere telling them it’s on you, because you knew and you did nothing about it, and it’s not just the Covid it’s the road closures that are killing us. Business is about confidence.
36:30 How can my members have the confidence to invest 65 000 pounds in a vehicle knowing that there’s many, many streets, an increasing number of streets, so they can’t drive down and places they can’t get to, killing confidence in that business. It will kill the sales of these cabs. It will cancel their dreams of a clean electric future. I mean, we were in the position where I was predicting that by the end of 2024 London would have had a completely electric taxi fleet.
36:58 We would have had the best cab service in the world, the only wheelchair accessible cab service in the world, totally electric, cleanest cab service in the world. That’s where we were heading, and we were heading there fast, and now it’s all flipped on its head, and I’m telling you that we might not even be here. Wow. Business is all about confidence, and that’s what our leadership doesn’t understand, because business has to plan for the future. And if they don’t know what the future is, if they don’t know there might be a new policy that gets thrown in in a month’s time, or something’s going to happen, then the entrepreneurs won’t invest, and every black cabbie is an entrepreneur at the end of the day.
37:30 I mean, they run their own business. They have to do capital expenditures, and we’ve heard that some businesses are going to be lost forever, but to know that, I mean, the actual manufacturers of the black cabs to be lost forever. I mean, that’s well. I don’t want to find the vehicle. What are they going to do?
37:45 Yeah, I mean, that’s distressing to hear. That’s dire. I mean, you cannot end this industry. It is an icon for the world, not just for London. Well, if it happens, and I’m obviously, you know, I’m trying to do everything I can to stop it happening.
37:59 You know, I can’t. All I can do is lay out these scenarios to these people, tell them what they should do if they don’t do, you know, or don’t even recognize the problems, and they don’t appear to be at the moment, and it does, you know, this doom and gloom, this prophecy of doom, happens. Then it’s firmly on them. It’s, you know, I’m going to lay it firmly at their door. Sadiq Khan and Boris Johnson have been told.
38:24 I’ve written to them. I’ve told them. I’ve told their ministers. I told their advisers. There’s no instance where they can.
38:29 So I wasn’t aware of that letter, because the similar letter has been sent to everybody. There is, you know, the whole of the GLA, the Greater London Authority, have got it. Transport for London board have got it. The ministers have got it, and most of his cabinet have got it, so I don’t want them telling me afterwards we didn’t know, because I’ve told you, and what we’re asking you is, please don’t let it happen. Do something now.
38:50 Well, I promise to do everything I can to make sure that doesn’t happen. If someone’s watching or listening to us right now, what can they do to also make sure that doesn’t happen? What can a citizen do to help this cause? Well, what a citizen needs to do, anyone watching this now who lives in London or anywhere in the UK is when these councils and these men in lycra turn up in your street and decide they’re going to close your street or the road at the top of the road.
39:15 They’re going to stop you getting to work. Don’t accept it. You know, you’ve got to turn up a council meeting. You’ve got to email your councillors. You’ve got to email your Greater London Assembly members.
39:23 You’ve got to email your MP, and you’ve got to make them aware, because only people power would stop them, because they’re set on a course. They’re determined to do this to you. This is their plan for you, and unless you tell them, no, sorry, that’s not happening. You know, It’s, this is what I want to happen. You know, I pay you wages, and you do pay their wages.
39:44 I elect you. That’s not what you’re doing, and if you do it, I’m going to vote you out, and I’m going to make sure my friends and neighbors vote you out as well, because we don’t want it. That’s what people need to do. Yeah, it’s time to hold all of these leaders accountable for their decisions, because they represent us. They’re supposed to represent us.
40:02 What is your take on Uber? When Uber first pitched up here back in 2012, they weren’t a problem to us. They became a major problem to us around 2014, 2015. Anyone watching this now will remember. But when they first, these apps first launched, even though we had the first app, the Uber type out, but the taxi trade in London had it first, and we had Hailo, which was the first act I used to use.
40:28 Hailo, yeah, it was great. But so, but what happened? But Uber with the amount of money they’ve got and the influence they’ve got, everyone’s going, look at this, look at this great app. I can open this and you see how sexy was it, and it was cold. People were that coolness has faded.
40:43 They’re all the problems that they’ve had, the safety issues. I mean, they got their license back again Monday, and all the problems they’ve had safety-wise, the data problems they’ve had, the sexual assaults, the attacks and stuff that many people are becoming aware of, and also it’s not quite as cheap as it was, because the VCs have stopped pumping in so much money to have it come out the door, and so it’s not quite the big deal it was to many Londoners, and what we saw is when we started accepting card payments back in 2016, it was, it became mandatory. We’ve seen a massive resurgence of a sanctuary renaissance because people were realizing they can get in a Prius and they can go two miles up around the Prius.
41:24 The guy doesn’t know where he’s going. You might miss your meeting. You might be a bit late. You can’t use the bus lanes, and if he misses it he can’t u-turn. He can’t get back, and to save two or three pounds, whereas you can get in a black cab you can pound a card anywhere.
41:37 The guy will get you where you’re going. You know it’s insured. You know the guy’s safe. You know he knows where he’s going. You’re in a better vehicle, especially with his new electric cab, and so we were doing really well.
41:46 So Uber is not the problem to us that it was in 2015, 2016. They’re not the threat to us economically that they were. They’re there, and there’s now, there’s others. There’s that, there’s Bolt, there’s Captain, there’s Ola. All of these firms are now doing it.
42:01 They’re all fighting for the same number of drivers. And so, I mean, you mustn’t forget, and I don’t, I’m not sure of how much about this you know, but when Uber first came to London. They were a major problem to Transport for London with a number of vehicles on the road, and Boris Johnson, who was the mayor then, decided he was going to look at the private hire regulations. These are the powers that have been devolved to the mayor, where he can control certain aspects of the taxi and private hire industry.
42:30 And Boris Johnson decided to do a review. He wasn’t allowed to do that review. He was stopped from doing it by George Osborne, who was then the Chancellor of the Exchequer. It’s all very well documented, and he wouldn’t let him do it, and it then transpires As time went on that was obviously well, why is the chancellor exchequer you know, getting involved in local London, you know, transport issues and it then turned out that the PR lady who ran Uber was married to the business advisor in Downing Street.
43:05 You remember, Steve, the guy walked around his socks, Steve. his name will come. Yeah, his name will come to you. Okay, she was married to him Osborne and Cameron were going to their Christmas parties Fact, this is fact, this is not methamphetamine, and they had massive influence within Downing Street. So I got an invite to Downing Street, and they took me to meet the Prime Minister’s tech advisor a guy called Daniel Kohlski.
43:33 So I go into number 10, and he gives me the tour. I’ve been there before, but I didn’t, you know. So he gives me the turn. And he takes me in the Cabinet Office. He gives me a rather nice coffee, and they got these little, you know, China cups with a little House of Commons biscuits.
43:46 It’s very nice, and he gives me a very nice biscuit, and he says to me, okay, what does he want? So I explained to him what was going on then with Uber they were, uh, they were subsidizing rides, so we were having to compete with a company that were, that they, they were charging the customer one fare, and they were paying the driver another. They were subsidizing the fare, so the customer was getting a cheaper ride, and I was explaining to him that the only reason a company would do that, but to gain market share would be to try and put their competitors out of business, because you can’t keep doing it.
44:15 You know, I explained to him that I know I can put Marks and Spencer out of business tomorrow. It’s dead easy. I open a shop I sell the same clothes as them, and I subsidize the price by 50 percent. I never make a profit. I lose money, but I’ll put Martin’s pound.
44:28 I was expecting, and he sat and he listened to me, and then he said okay He said, well, look, you’re out of touch, people want to do this. It’s all technology. You’ve had your coffee. Thanks very much. I mean, it was literally like that.
44:38 Sort of threw me out the door, and it was only afterwards that we found out that what had gone on, and a lot of the, there’s a big scandal. It was, it was called a chumocracy. It’s what a lot of the papers called it, and that’s how Uber got the influence that they had Fast forward, Theresa May, they lost the influence, and fast forward again Boris is now the Prime Minister. He’s forgotten a lot of the ass he had when he was mayor. He wanted lots of powers.
45:07 He was asking that then Prime Minister for the powers to cap private hire numbers, to bring in various legislation in London And he’s not, he wasn’t allowed them. Sadiq Khan, the mayor now, is asking Boris for the same powers that Boris wanted when he was mayor, and Boris won’t give them to him, and that’s the problem. You got when you’ve got a Labour mayor and a Tory prime minister, even though Boris knows that mrs a legitimate ass, that’s what he wanted when he was mayor.
45:33 He won’t give him to him because he doesn’t want to be Khan to have any more success than he had. It’s all about personality and party politics, don’t care about London, but the mayor should have those powers, and they can make the right decisions for transport. The mayor’s asked for those powers. The government set up a working group from people from across the industry, and it was chaired by a, a professor. He recommend, he wrote this fantastic report.
45:57 You can find it. It was called the Task and Finish Group. Let’s say if you Google it, it will come up. The reports there, a recommendation to government for legislation for more powers, this, that and the other. Absolutely cast-iron recommendation from across the country, across the industry, and the government’s done absolutely nothing’s been put on the bottom shelf, and they’ve not done it yet.
46:17 Again, tell me about it. All right, just to finish up, you’re happy to compete and co-exist with the Ubers of the world and the other apps, now that you feel like the playing field is more level, the playing field is slightly more level. It’s still not perfect. We still have to jump for an awful lot more hoops than they do, but it’s beginning to get better. And as a result of that, their prices are now very similar to ours during the day, and Uber will be a similar price to it, to a black cab at night.
46:49 They still tend to be much cheaper, and the reason for that is because the, they’re still subsidizing their fares enormously. Also, their drivers have gotten much, they’re not trained to any extent. Their income expectations are far less. They’re driving a much cheaper vehicle, and they don’t have to go through the hoops that we do. The very interesting bit is one of the conditions that the court imposed on giving Uber its license on Monday.
47:14 One of the conditions is that their vehicles have to be insured. Well, since when did a court need to tell anybody that you’ve got to have your vehicle insured? I mean, anyone watching this, who’s got their own car, the first thing you know, if you buy a car, you haven’t having a driving licence, you’ve got to have it insured. You know that, but apparently this, this 70 billion dollar American company needs to have a court tell them you need to have your vehicles insured, because they’ve got a nasty habit and not insuring them, and that just about sums it up.
47:41 A lot of stuff that we’ve covered here today. Steve, I think the basic message is we need to find a way to get the city back to work, and find a way to get the transport back, because it can’t get back to work unless the transport is understood, respected, and supported, and if we don’t get both of those things, then we’re headed towards some really dark and dire places, but if we can, we can get London back to its greatness. You know, this is again, you know, we disagree.
48:08 Maybe San Francisco, London, but the greatest city in the world, but it’s because of so many things, you know, the entrepreneurs, the taxi drivers, the businesses being here. It’s that proximity of people that creates all the great innovation and culture. I mean, I’m joking about San Francisco. It’s not, it’s not quite the scale of London. It’s a great place.
48:24 The thing that the thing with London is, it’s everything that we know is, and it’s in danger of dying. It’s going to fall off the edge. What will happen next is they’ll start converting a lot of these office blocks into residential accommodation, and then it will just lose its business. It really is a concern, and it needn’t happen, but while politicians just keep repeating the same mistakes not doing what they should do, and allowing these very small, unrepresentative groups to impose their will on London transport-wise, which is what’s happening.
49:00 London will die. It won’t be the city that we want. It won’t be the city that they want either. That’s the irony of it. It might be the city that they want, because they won’t have a job to cycle a mile too but they don’t get it.
49:11 Yeah, we’ve all been to those cities that are missing something, you know? It doesn’t have the culture. It doesn’t have the vibe. It doesn’t have anything. It’s buildings and streets, and there’s a few businesses, and we don’t go back there because it’s not there.
49:24 There’s nothing there. And London is in danger of permanently losing, like you said, permanently losing the manufacturing company for the black cabs, permanently moving these great businesses, you know, tailors and coffee shops, and, you know, milk and honey. The guy I spoke to today, I mean, and then we won’t have the city back, and then no one wants to come here, and then everyone loses their job. This really is a collective, that is it. Yeah, and we need everyone to hold your council members, mayors, Prime Ministers accountable.
49:54 Make sure they’re making the decisions that are in your interests. And let’s get the city back to work. Let’s show people that there’s a safe way of getting back to work again. Black cabs are one of the safest ways to travel. You guys seem to have seen the future the way you designed your cab.
50:07 Well, you’ve hit an out on the head. Everyone thinks that partition by the way is there to keep the driver safe. It’s not what it was when the cab was a hansom cab with a horse, and the guy used to sit out the front with the horse. He was smelly, obviously. He’s out in the rain in the horse, and so the partition was put there to keep the smell of the driver away from the passengers.
50:27 But just so happens that, fast forward 150 years with a Covid epidemic, and we’ve got a screen that does just that. So for once we got lucky. Well, I think someone’s looking down, and hopefully. Well, we need someone yeah, you do. Steve, you’re a really smart guy, and you’ve been around the block a few times, and you have some great observations, so thank you for putting this stuff out there.
50:47 I would encourage anybody watching or listening to us to take this into account and to speak to your local politicians and start looking around. When you look at those bike lanes, ask yourself, are they really going to help the city get back to work, and think about the policies, and just think about yourself. How can we all do this? Because this is a collective effort. Everyone’s got to be willing to do this.
51:05 Also question some of the numbers and policies your politicians are giving you. You know, do we need this curfew? You know, it’s, we don’t. It’s not helping anybody. So let’s get them to take it back, and then start leading with hopefully science-based decisions, proportional response, and how about some leadership?
51:22 How about someone gets out in the front, you know, and really shows people what it’s like, gets out there, talks with businesses, goes out, rides in the cabs, and really finds out what’s going on. That’s what I’m looking for, some real leadership in London. So let’s try to find some. We know what they say. Don’t you, the reason the country’s in a mess is because all the people you should be running are driving cabs.
51:41 You’re right. I just got to say, finally, I love black cabs. I love black cab drivers, so thank you. I mean, I’ve been living here for 20 years, and coming here for almost 40 years, and it’s iconic. We cannot lose this.
51:53 It’s the fabric of London, the backbone, it’s everything. So, let’s keep you guys in business. Yeah, thank you. All right, thank you, Steve, and thank you, everybody watching. We’ll see you next time on London Real.
52:02 Thank you.
