cheb wrote: ↑Fri Jul 05, 2024 12:13 pm
You've got have sympathy for all those cab drivers barely earning the minimum wage, and they got hit by the banks wanting to charge commission on card payments too.
They can't even give foreigners the magical mystery tour since google maps was launched.
Granted, you do get one or two (I got in a black cab some months ago and he took me on the magical mystery tour to London Bridge station. When we go there I asked him why he didn't take the most direct route, to which he tried to bullshit me, so I told him I'd pay him what I thought the fare
should be), but on the whole, they're not the shysters they're made out to be. Being from south London, I know loads.
It used to be a good gig. Get your badge, buy an old shitter and way you go for the next 40 years of your life. Piles are a given, as is a bad back but you can use the green huts. Most older cabbies simply did fewer days/hours and ran the cab into the ground. Not an option now as the cabs cost c. £80k new, or around a grand a month to lease. The warranties are iffy: if you let it lapse, that's it. They won't give you another one, so you have no real choice.
My mate was an early adopter of the card machine, much to the mirth of his companions who used to declare feck all to the tax man, but he figured that cash was on the way out, especially for the American business traveller who wants to go to Heathrow and tips well, and better to have something, minus the tax, than 100% of feck all.
On the plus side, all these cabbies giving up the game means there's a larger pool of available talent to take over from Southgate when he goes.
For now, trying to list to phone numbers is a total bastard. Even when they think they say them slowly they don't! I had to write a number from a recorded message today - it was the fifth time (and two wrong numbers - first two times I hadn't got all the numbers!) that I realised that soixante-seize was indeed 76, NOT the 75 I'd been writing down 
FFS!! LOL
