Morning:
10°c
The days of cream fares splurging across town may be over: the begging box costs a packet to keep on the road, whether it's leased, owned or on the full-flat, while the City getters themselves aren't pulling down their old-style bunce.
It's as flat as the kipper season out there - with no sign of things picking up; no wonder there's friction, both between licensed drivers, and especially directed against those mini-cabbing scum, the plonkers who tout for them, and the jug-head doormen on the clubs - a lot of whom are getting kickbacks.
Forgive the slang - but when it comes to discussing London's cab trade with anything approaching authenticity, the flavour of the trade (as they universally describe what they do), cannot be conveyed without it.
Besides, it's all really pretty straightforward: a "cream fare" is obvious, while if you didn't guess that those quaintly foursquare vehicles with the titchy turning circles resemble mobile begging boxes, then you can't have been paying any attention to the London streets.
Paying attention is what the trade is all about for London's 20,000-odd (some very odd) licensed drivers.
Paying attention to their world-famous Knowledge for a start, for without their encyclopaedic memorising of all streets and all the notable public buildings within a six-mile radius of Charing Cross - plus the 'burbs - there's only the sherbert (sherbert dab = cab) to distinguish badge-holders from their TomTom-beating competition.
Paying attention, also, to the streets themselves, for despite all the messing around at the PCO (Public Carriage Office, now under the authority of Transport for London), there's still only one group of drivers in the city who are licensed to ply the streets for public hire.
And there's the nub of it: now the recession has begun to bite, a cab ride is one of the first things that people begin to economise on.
My informants in the trade (for authenticity's sake, let's give them nicknames: "the Poet" and "the Shrink") report that business is variable.
The Poet says some days are fine - better even than before last October - while others are at least 35 per cent down. The Shrink, on the other hand, describes it - hardly surprisingly - as "schizoid, but overall it's definitely well down".
Both men are in their forties and experienced drivers who weathered the last recession. Neither of them is on a radio circuit, such as Dial-a-Cab, nor are they among the surprisingly large percentage of cabbies who do little else but rank up at Heathrow and wait for work - they're out there for the hours they choose, scouring the streets for fares.
They are in some ways the old face of the trade: white cockneys, working class in origin - but beware of stereotypes when it comes to cabbies.
The Poet is also an accomplished poet; while the Shrink is - yes, you guessed it - a qualified psychotherapist.
The Shrink may be the third generation of cabbies in his family but while he hails from Bethnal Green he has no time for the mentality that grips his colleagues when they're seated round the table in one of their landmark green shelters.
"En masse," says the Shrink, "they're animals: ignorant, lairy and racist." An enthusiastic supporter of a children's charity run by drivers, which does a lot of excellent work, he himself can be in two minds about the trade.
I told him about how I'd been talking recently to a well-known British actor (who happens to be black), and when the subject of London cabbies came up, he became furious, describing how even now they refuse to pick him up in the street, while if his wife - who is white - flags one down, when he steps out from where he's been hiding to join her, the driver will pull away.
"Ah," says the Shrink, "there's undoubtedly some truth in that - and it's despicable. But to give you the other side of it, not a lot of punters know that we have our own etiquette.
For example, if one driver lets another out - so he's in front, the first driver always leaves the next fare for the fellow behind.
This happened to me the other day with a couple on the Commercial Road. The bloke was black, and I explained to him why the other driver had turned his light out. 'Thank God for that,' he said to me. 'I was getting paranoid there.'"
But professional etiquette is the first casualty when the revenue drops off - the Poet tends to lay it on the fares: "The vast majority of the general public are," he says, "perfectly well-behaved - but there's a small minority who're simply dreadful, and I have to say in the past six months this is increasing."
The Shrink, on the other hand, notices the drivers getting more ruthless. "People are nicking fares shamelessly - which just isn't done. I've found myself having rows with other drivers every day of the week, bus drivers as well - and I'm normally very respectful of them, I think they're doing an important job."
With tensions running high, inevitably they're going to spill over. The licensed drivers' particular bête noire is, of course, the minicab driver - whether licensed or not.
The PCO's approach to dealing with the glut of unlicensed drivers, whose touts ply for the West End and City club and pub trade, has been to permit some touts who are supposed to direct punters to appropriately licensed minicabs.
This system has been open to abuse - with kick-backs all the way up to the club doormen. It's a situation that's rankled with the cabbies, and a few weeks ago they began to strike back, by ranking up in large numbers outside well-known night spots.
At the Abacus on Cornhill - just the sort of City watering hole that during the boom years positively spurted out cream fares - it all kicked off, and a black cab was rammed by a minicab after a fight involving several drivers from both sides.
Two arrests were made - one of each! - but as Steve McNamara, a columnist in the London Taxi Drivers Association's own paper, Taxi, put it: "(The City) police are about as much use as a chocolate teapot."
Needless to say, the PCO is now revoking the touts' permits, but this leaves the same situations as before: a lot of drivers, many of whom are wholly illegal, chasing a declining number of fares.
I wondered if, given this, the aggro was the shape of things to come, after all, there's not only the economic downturn to cope with but my impression is also that fares have risen precipitately.
The Shrink said this wasn't so: "The PCO has been putting the meter charge up a couple of percentage points every year for the past few - I think it just looks like a lot incrementally, now people are more conscious of money."
Some of the most highly conscious will be the cabbies themselves. Up until a couple of months ago, when the new Mercedes Vitos started appearing, there was effectively only one type of vehicle that a licensed driver could buy.
Costing in the region of £30,000 for a new cab, drivers had to arrange finance to buy, lease, or rent - none of which are cheap options, and all of which entail a fixed outlay.
Next time you get in a cab and feel tension emanating from the front compartment it's worth bearing in mind that your driver may be enduring a particularly hideous form of negative equity, with his outgoings far exceeding the metered fare.
Still, none of this excuses bad behaviour. The London cabbie may have a reputation for being mouthy - even bigoted - but most Londoners have retained a deep affection for the trade.
In my view, rightly, we understand that the licensed cab is far more than some handy icon, to print on tea towels alongside red phone boxes, pearly queens, and tit-helmeted coppers, but a vital resource.
Obviously the appalling case of John Worboys, the licensed driver recently convicted for rape and multiple sexual assaults has dented our faith a little, yet still there are few - if any - other people beside cabbies whom you'd happily accost at night and trust to take home your children/aged relative/tipsy girlfriend in complete safety.
Besides, arguably the Worboys case says far more about the chocolate teapots than it does the tea towel icons.
No, what I see as the greatest threat to the status of the trade isn't the recession, or the brouhaha about demarcation, but the satellite navigation systems that almost all licensed minicabs now use, and which I've even seen in black cabs.
Surely, with instant pinpoint navigation available to any driver, no matter how ignorant, there's no longer any real premium on doing the Knowledge?
Predictably, the Shrink doesn't agree: "Well, they don't really work for a start - not in town. I don't know why cabbies have them at all - I wish they wouldn't.
"I do have an A-Z map that's GPS-linked, so that as I drive it shows the position of my cab in relation to the city streets but you have to have the Knowledge to begin with to use it. Even so, I feel a little off key with it on the dash in case someone thinks it's a sat-nav."
The Poet explained that his system draws a line, on screen, between start point and destination - but of course, this was only a computerised version of the method he'd used to do the Knowledge in the first place: stretching a thread between the two points on a map, and then - as they say in the trade - "doing it on the cotton": memorising the streets along the most direct route.
No minicab driver ever has a fraction of this London lore tucked inside his mind; but in my view, if the cabbies want to keep their exclusive right to ply for public hire, then they must keep up their esoteric Knowledge, while driving towards racial enlightenment.
Reader views (13)
I always use a black cab out of respect for the driver, who has given up years of his life to earn the right to join one of Londons greatest trades. I dont find them much more expensive than minicabs, and they are ceratinly cheaper than the minicabs you find outside clubs in the west end. In the end i go for value for money, and compared to the service you get from a minicab driver, black cabs are certainly that. Oh, and the banter isnt bad either!
- Luke, London
The Knowledge-what a joke! As a recent arrival in London, of the five times I have used a black cab I had to tell the driver where to go-even from Fulham Broadway to Wandsworth Bridge.
- Daryl Keeling, London.
imho daryl i think your telling porkie pies mate and your not even funny.
- Steve, braintree
There is an awful lot of generalisation regarding black taxi drivers, it's ironic that certain selective stereotyping is deemed acceptable when discussing black taxi drivers point of view and general behaviour. If you have ever intensively studied a subject for over three years, you probably find yourself with a degree or possibly even a Masters. However, if you should study the streets of London, where you will be subjected to exams both practical and non practical, you will find yourself with a badge (that you have to pay for) and you will pay something in the region of £30,000 for the priviledge to use it. In the process of doing your job you may be told by customers that you don't know where you're going or that you haven't gone the best route, you may also find yourself competing with someone armed with his own car and a Sat Nav, often illegally and taking your fare, which in the PCO's complacency, is generally accepted. Black Cab drivers in my opinion are professionals, in every sense of the word.
- Jim, London
"games dead!" " No money in the game anymore"
I've heard the same bleat from black cab drivers for the last twenty years!
Still plenty of people doing the knowledge can't be that bad out there.
- Simon, london
black cabs are a lot cheaper than minicabs i wish people would get this idea out of there heads
- Jason, orpington kent
Nice article Will, I must say that I use Black Cabs all the time, and why does it cost them £30,000 to but their vehicles ?
No wonder the fares are what they are.We need the drivers to have cheaper cabs, and we need cheaper fares.!
I was given a Taxi newspaper by a driver the other day " The Badge " with a article by a black radio presenter.Seems some are leading the way already
- George Taylor, london england
The Knowledge-what a joke! As a recent arrival in London, of the five times I have used a black cab I had to tell the driver where to go-even from Fulham Broadway to Wandsworth Bridge.
- Daryl Keeling, London
The problem is price. If a taxi ride home is going to cost as much or sometimes more than I've spent up to that point I'm simply not going to take it. I'm fairly well off, but I defy anybody to not feel bilked when asked for 30 pounds after 25mins.
- Mark, London
This is an entertaining article, and it is nice to see a bit of actual journalism happening, rather than the morbid nonsense that has passed for journalism over the past week. However, there is a gross disservice being rendered here to minicab drivers. For a short time - while on my uppers and trying to survive financially seventeen years ago - I worked for Star Cars out of Hoxton Market. We worked hard for reasonable competitive rates,constantly overseen by a bunch of pretty hard managers in the cab office who were determined to ensure all drivers gave customers a reasonable deal. I was on permanent nights and at the end of the night I had usually been robbed or swindled, but I never swindled a customer and if I did, the controller would have sacked me. Let's remember please, there are some principled minicab drivers out there, so please drop your stereotypes, and particularly the racist stereotypes which are so hideous.
- Gareth Thomas, Rome, Italy
I never use a black cab, I prefer to agree a price for the journey before we set off and actually be able to talk to more of the driver than just the back of his head.
I also ride a motorbike and have had so many run-ins with black cabs that think they own the roads I would rather not give them any money.
- Gordon, Slough
It was a rainy night in Crouch End,time was short & we were taking a country friend to a concert near Euston.A minicab seemed the ideal option.Jumping in,we directed him to Euston Station saying we would direct from there.The driver took one of the two most plausible routes out of Crouch End and,since the weather and darkness precluded a sightseeing commentary,we started to chat amongst ourselves.Some 20 minutes later,in expectation of having to offer exact directions from Euston to our out of the way destination, we looked through the rain soaked windscreen to orient ourselves. We were re-entering Crouch End from a different direction.Needless to say the driver's English was not quite up to the ensuing banter.
- Sara, London
The simple problem for black cabs is the price. If I can get a minicab for half the cost then I will. If the route is a bit slower I don't care as the cost is fixed and not based on a meter charge.
Look at the cost of taxi fares across Europe and compare to ours. Black cabs are exhorbitantly expensive and despite the iconic design actually quite uncomfortable for long journeys.
- Bruce, London
Cheers Will! A very good read. There is not much actual journalism going on nowadays your piece is a welcome one.
- Tyler Durden, Milan
