London Uber Alles Over?

Couldn't resist referencing a Dead Kennedy's song, especially as Uber are handy when you're too drunk to fuck...

Uber has lost it's licence to operate in London.

Okay, I love Uber for it's convenience, but, like a lot of modern tech companies, it's played fast and loose with regulations and rules. Most companies doing that would find themselves on the receiving end of a public backlash, but convenience compels forgiveness I suppose.

They've needed to sort themselves out for a while, the concept is brilliant and taxi firms have needed 'disrupting' for a long while. In Madrid, if the driver thinks you're a tourist you can expect them to pick a leisurely route, so I use an Uber - I can audit said route.

I'm also expecting the decision to be reversed, despite very basic employee checking, Uber is a lot safer than the night bus or a late tube journey, especially for women on their own, and Uber rakes in an awful lot of cash from London - they just need to clean up their act. Things like Greyball, trying to have their cake and eat it with employees not being employees, but being restricted from working for competing services at the same time, on the other hand has shown a rather grubbier side to things. If any company has beset by it's own worst impulses, it is Uber.

Along with the EU, amongst others, getting fed up with the legal loopholes and moving towards new taxation methods, is the first sign that the love affair with tech companies is coming to an end?

From a personal view, watching the tech companies the last few years has been like reading a precursor to a William Gibson novel

Uber's a convenient, cost effective, and useful service that satisfies consumers while cutting priviledge-dispensing politicians and their taxi company beneficiaries out of the equation.

OF COURSE local governments are against it.

Uber is kind of a shitty company that treats its employees poorly (and they are indeed employees, regardless of how Uber tries to structure it).

Lyft is my preferred taxi service because it is marginally more ethical, and, most importantly, marginally cheaper.

I'm going to be driving for Lyft soon. I passed the background check, I'm just waiting on a rental car to be available.

Sign up with Lyft using promo code "Dayton3Rules" and get a $5 credit.

Edit: Yes, that is a real promo code.

1) No one has found any proof that Greyball has ever been used in London. There is a claim that investigations need to be done just to make 100% sure but absolutely no evidence has been found despite multiple previous investigations in the UK.

2) The employees vs contractors debate is a legit one vut that gets decided via national law not via individual cities otherwise systems will become extremely patch work and you will find you cannot get a cab from one place to other due to differing regulations.

3) My personal take is they are employees because unlike an independent contractor they cannot set their own rates.

4) This is 100% all about political corruption and the traditional taxi companies who are upset that their legally protected rent seeking racket has been disrupted. They are mad because defacto rates have dropped by 75% for consumers and having lost in the market place they are now trying to use legalistic restrictions to prevent free, fair, and open competition, so as to once again have the power to raise prices on consumers, and to thus steal money from every single person in and around London who use a cab.

5) London's taxi regulations are badly out of date and need modernizing. The old knowledge test where every driver has to prove he has every road memorized is no longer needed as now everyone has a cellphone with a navigation app. That is just one example out of many.

I have been doing Lyft for the last three weeks mostly just on Friday nights and weekends. I have found I pretty much make about $400-$500 per weekend. That is gross so take out a tank to a tank and a half of gas and that is my net. Over all it is not a bad little side gig though the mileage does add up quickly on your car.

As a side note we had a massive problem with this issue in San Diego where legally only three politically connected companies could buy taxi permits from the city (at a cost of $25 per permit with only 10 permits issued per year in the entire city). Those three politically connected taxi companies would then immediately turn around and sell those permits for $125,000 each or else rent or lease them to people at a cost of more than $8000 per month. Prices for taxi rides were among the highest in the nation with even a short ride being $30 or more.

Ride sharing apps have completely disrupted this with $4 being the new price for a short ride. When the corrupt politicians and politically connected taxi companies tried to kill ride sharing (as the corrupt London city government is currently trying to do) the people rose up, showed up at city hall meetings screaming bloody murder and even throwning chairs and threating to lynch said corrupt politicians often while others burned the effigies of said corrupt politicians in front of city hall. Meanwhile the local news media did a number of great investigative journalism pieces on just how incestuous the relationship between those corrupt politicians and the politically connected taxi companies had become.

We decided to use direct democracy to bipass the corrupt politicians taking away their ability to sell taxi privilages and now two of the three traditional taxi companies have gone bankrupt while around a dozen new taxi companies have sprung up. In addition we now have three app based taxi services (Uber, Lyft, and Bounce) so competition has never been stronger and consumers have never been able to get lower prices. That is a win for the free market.

Still feel much safer riding in a regulated taxi or black car. If my Uber driver puts me in the hospital Uber is going to say he's an independent contractor and they are not liable for his actions. Good luck getting any restitution from Uber.

About Bounce.

The argument

Don’t know about the UK but in the US in a lot of cases each cab car is its own corporation so if something does happen your not getting squat either.

I'm probably over 100 rides with Uber (and a small number with Lyft) now, and no bad experiences to report.

Said it before, and I'll say it again: if Uber's available, I'll never take a taxi again.

Really in a few years this will all be academic.

There will be no taxi drivers. Once driverless cars start taking over the taxi drivers will be the first to go out the door.

No one is going to pay for a driver. There won't be cab companies. Everything will be like Uber and Lyft.

Would federal farmer survive game of dwarf proms?

I like that the Johnny Cab actually tries to murder you if you don't pay.

What's hilarious about that is you could just set it up so you have to pay first.

But nope. Not in this dystopia. Murder is the order of the day for non-compliance.

That would hold true if it was more than just London after them. Pretty much every other local government in the UK are happy to leave them be.

If it was London simply looking to protect the Black Cab drivers, then you don't provide lengths of rope for them to lynch you with.

Fact is Uber has a history of thumbing its nose at the law. Well the law just thumbed back.

It's not a bad thing. Uber provides a good and needed service, it just needs to stop acting like a prickish teenager. It's just discovered there are consequences to not doing your chores.

What laws was Uber thumbing its nose at?

As far as I know there has been zero evidence that Uber actually has broken any laws in the UK or in London specifically. There has been lots of maybe, possibly, could be type innuendo and all of it spread by the politically connected rent seeking taxi lobby or their corrupt politician buddies. Sadq Khan is an asshat of the worst kind and a corrupt politician simply trying to protect a big donor group even though doing so will cause financial harm to millions of people in the city.

Fuck him and the horse he rode in on. I look forward to courts slapoing this corrupt twat down and siding with the millions of Londoners who will be financially harmed by his corrupt twattery.

Uber likes providing the service. All of the drivers work voluntarily, and only when/if they want to. And consumers are so happy with it, they use it...a lot.

The system is entirely made up of willing buyers and willing sellers. So, what's the government's problem with it?

From the article:

Not sure if I agree with London's reasoning, especially because this article doesn't go into the city's reasoning in depth. However, the premise of public safety is certainly within government's scope of power (perhaps even its duty).

Uh huh.



I'd like to see a statistical comparison of Uber's safety record and that of official London cabs. And, unless it's dramatically worse for Uber than the cabs, I call bullshit.

Because claiming something is about safety and security is nowhere near the same thing as producing evidence that it's about safety and security.

Yeah.

I read somewhere that some Uber drivers in London had been arrested for sexual assault.

Sounds bad.

But than the people complaining about Uber forgot about the black cab drivers also arrested for sexual assault.

It's probably why Uber will win in court. Everytime London says, "well Uber drivers have done X" Uber can turn around and say the same thing about the cab drivers.

So the safety and security argument really falls flat on its face.

I generally agree--their explanation is lacking, and seems more like they are catering to the existing London taxi industry's demands.

Their problem is obvious they disrupt political corruption. There are groups who pay for said corruption and their are corrupt politicians who dispense the favors in exchange for cash. Both are unhappy with this disruption.

Indeed. Anyone making such a probably untrue statement should be put in prison. It is an argument by stupid people for stupid people.

National and local ones regarding registration of private hire drivers. In many regions it started off as an illegal taxi service.

Now, yes, there are instances where vested interests have ensured Uber became illegal, but being a victim in one territory does not excuse being a perpetrator in another.

In London's case, the concern is about whether it is a fit and proper company - something Uber itself recognises is an issue, and has spent the last few months trying to put fires of its own making.

The primary concerns are it's lack of contact with the police - the Met are incredibly pissed off that Uber does its level best not to report any criminality, and the Met can be real arseholes - rightly or wrongly - when they feel the need. They're also concerned over Uber's attitude to victims of crime, such as the dubious acquisition of a victims medical records in India, and of course Uber's rather bland responses to questions about Greyball's use in London.

It isn't some binary thing. I mean, isn't illegal immigrants working in the US a system made up of willing buyers and willing sellers of labour? So what's governments problem with that?

It is because there are other considerations. Same thing here.

Fair enough. That said it would be nice if Sadiq Khan or his rent seeking taxi cab buddies could come up with a single example of Uber actually breaking the law. So far all they have is a bunch of unproven innuendo while their true motivation, simply to pick winners for political reasons and to stiffle competition, is obvious to any honest observer.

As for reporting crimes, what is their legal obligation in the UK?

Khan's a slimy little shit, but I'm doubting this is purely political mainly as plenty of his voters use Uber and will remember any issues come next election. It would be a spectacularly bad piece of political manoeuvring.

My suspicion is the Met had had enough and put their foot down.

They've a legal requirement to inform TfL, but had been told - repeatedly by TfL and the Met - to also report it to the police, as do other providers. TfL have a fault in that their mechanism for elevating reports from suppliers to police is slow.

Uber ignored the requests, repeatedly, and consequently received a kick in the bollocks for doing so.

Basically they did a Dayton.