From The Evening Standard:
Appearing at the Commons transport committee, the Liberal Democrat was highlighting how his department was seeking to axe unnecessary and ancient legislation.
He told MPs: "I think there is an offence of furious driving which only applies to taxi drivers because they used to be Hackney Carriage drivers, from about 1847. I must admit I have not seen any taxi drivers driving furiously; they drive rather slowly in my experience, to keep the clock ticking over."
Thursday, 23 June 2011
Norman Baker's slow return to sanity
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9 comments:
"A transport minister sparked a storm among black cab drivers today by suggesting some trundle along slowly to rack up fares." (From the article itself)
I'm surprised the white ones aren't up in arms also
JQ, that puzzled me as well.
They always talk of "black cab drivers' and "white van man", but my eyes tell me that most taxi drivers are white and a lot of delivery drivers are African-Caribbean or Asian, so really it should be "white black cab drivers" and "black white van man".
In my time as a law student it was an offence to release a puma upon the Queen's highway. I have no idea whether it's still in place but there are thousands of antiquated laws that need culling.
TFB, that seems like a sensible law to me, although unusually specific.
There seems to be some semantic drift taking place before our eyes here.MW is using "white-van men" (hyphens are the answer) to denote delivery drivers where most people mean all those self employed plumbers,electricians etc who roam around skimming overvalued house prices by doing domestic repairs or improvements for cash in hand i.e. evading tax.
A pedant writes: "black cab drivers" can be parsed equally as "black cab-drivers" or "black-cab drivers".
"White van man" can really only be parsed as "white-van man" as there is no construction in English of "van man" similar to "cab driver" or "black cab".
Anyway, what harm do these ancient laws do, apart from making legal books heavier to lift to set against making what is an intensely boring subject slightly more interesting? My two favourites were the law that said that any householder whose door was open could not refuse a passer by a drink of water without charge and the maximum fine for being drunk in charge of a horse drawn vehicle being two shillings. I dare say both have long since been confined to the legal dustbin.
The problem is that this is just high profile housekeeping. What we need is a reduction in statutes that are still applied and create difficulties to people and useless work or costs in compliance but have no relevence.
Tipping black cabs is outdated. They charge for miles,time,luggage and the all have the same level of expertise. There is nothing left untarrifed to warrant a tip. Most jobs charge less when they take extra time, black cabs the contrary.
How about a one-in-one-out policy for law making? That would force the law-makers to think hard about new legislation; it would have to be better than another existing law.
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