As a Licensing Chair I would have understood why TFL has refused to renew Uber’s License. Actually, I wouldn’t have awarded them one in the first place – but that helps nobody now

If you were looking for a textbook example of what disruptive technology looks like when it hits a marketplace, the assault on the Taxi business in London by Uber would be it.

As a former business owner and entrepreneur, business advisor, business planning tutor and Chairman of a Licensing Authority, the case that has been bubbling away between TFL and Uber over a period of many months has become very interesting reading indeed.

It’s not only because the Licensing Principles have come in to question and this has formed the basis of TFL’s excuse to refuse to reissue Uber’s Operating License.

It’s because the License was awarded in the first place. Especially when the Company’s insistence that it is not itself a Private Hire Company is publicly known.

Licensing in London is of course different to the responsibilities of the Licensing Authority covering rural Gloucestershire and some of its Market Towns that I oversaw for 4 years from 2011 – 2015, just on the basis of size alone. But the principles that underpin Taxi and Private Hire Licensing in each and every part of the Country are exactly the same.

It doesn’t matter how much the Company protests otherwise. Customers know and understand the service and the app they use to book it to be ‘an Uber’.

Customers don’t know Uber to be a price comparison website, an advice site, a recommendation site or anything else that could sound like a plausible re-labelling of a what-it-says-on-the-can technology platform. One that aims to distance itself from the very responsibilities that govern the public-facing service and industry that it has aimed so successfully to disrupt – rather than as being a place where you connect online to get a choice of different ‘taxi co’s’.

The real cost of whatever influences allowed and facilitated the entry of Uber into our Capital in the first place – in these circumstances, have only since started to become known.

But the fact that Customers across London have now experienced the low-cost, comparatively easy to use side of a service that exists purely because of what might have been the intentional misinterpretation of Private Hire Legislation, means that the rules that were arguably broken to facilitate the arrival of the Uber service in London, no longer matter where public opinion is involved.

Herein lies the real problem for TFL having this battle with Uber. Because whoever influenced or made the decision to allow Uber to operate in London without the Company accepting and demonstrating that they would meet all of the requirements of being a Private Hire Operator – not only in principle – but in practical form too – at that very point created the problem that is TFL vs. Uber today.

Because TFL awarded a License in the first place, they should now accept that they have responsibility for Uber being present in London. No matter who was in charge then. No matter who is in charge now.

At the same time however, Uber should not expect to continue operating under the false pretence that it is not itself a Private Hire Operator when doing so is little more than an elaborate charade.

Just because so many drivers now provide a Private Hire Service through Uber in London, it should not in anyway mean that a privately owned company can do whatever it likes without impunity – especially where questions of Public Safety are very clearly involved.

However, the reality that Uber has already held a License of the type they are attempting to regain, does suggest that the Company should at least have the opportunity to address the wider issues that are present. To accept the real responsibilities they have towards customers, to employees and to contractors too. And to begin behaving like they are a part of an established and historic British Industry that they can work with, within and in support of, rather than treating it like it doesn’t exist and is something that they can walkover and ultimately replace.

No private company or commercial enterprise should be allowed to behave like a dictator over the provision of any service that involves public safety, at any level or at any stage.

If Uber wins its License back on Appeal, without any review, reform or change of the way that they operate, that however, is exactly what they will have become.

For good or for bad and for reasons unknown, TFL stepped outside the boundaries of the Licensing Principles to award Uber a Licence in the first place.

If it wants to fix the Uber problem properly it will have to be big enough to step outside those rules again for all the right reasons now and use the power and influence that it has to create a Private Hire model in London that works for TFL, for Uber, for the Industry, for the drivers, for the customers and basically everyone involved.

Our Politicians are failing us over flooding, but this is nothing new. ‘Out of sight, out of mind’ is simply the method they use to prioritise everything they do

download (25) — Tewkesbury in Flood. Image thanks to http://www.theguardian.com

It’s now 12 years since the 2007 Gloucestershire Floods.

The people living and working in Villages and Towns around mid and Northern Gloucestershire and South Worcestershire experienced the worst that inland flooding can throw at us – and for a great many even more, when critical infrastructure was affected and the drinking water supply dried up as result.

Nobody could argue that the impact of the event did not come to the attention and supposed scrutiny of Westminster Politicians at the time. Pictures of RAF Rescue Helicopters winching stranded people to safety whilst hovering against the backdrop of the Cotswold Hills quickly caught international attention. I stood outside the Local Council Offices when then newly appointed Prime Minister Gordon Brown arrived.

At the time, within the immediacy of the flooding event itself, it felt like the powers that be simply couldn’t do enough.

But the moment that the floodwaters receded, the RAF had returned their big yellow flying machines to their bases and tap water supplies were restored, the media’s and therefore the attention of the politicians with the real power to do something meaningful simply drifted off to elsewhere and beyond.

Yes, remedial flood protection work took place here and there – especially in places that are very much in the wider public’s eye.

But the changes made in response to the Floods that year were in many ways little more than being aesthetic.

There was then and has been since no change in the way that Politicians, Government and the Agencies address the causes, influences upon and effects of flooding across the UK – despite many similar experiences for other people and communities across the Country that have already happened and are taking place in Yorkshire and the East Midlands today.

What was clear to me as a Local Councillor at the time of the 2007 Floods here, was that the Environment Agency wasn’t fit for purpose; that flooding was and always would be managed on the basis of so-called tried and tested thinking. And worst of all, that there was absolutely no room for new approaches or original thinking to deal with the problem as the specialists and those who possess the fiefdoms that are public sector responsibility would always know best – no matter what the reality and impact upon real people was or would be that was involved.

Nothing has changed.

If anything, things have got worse.

And whilst processes and procedures to deal the impact upon families that have to move out of their homes and perhaps live in caravans as a result for many months now appear to have become normalised, the fact that Government has concentrated only on managing the effects of any flooding crisis at the time, rather than dealing with the causes and what lies ahead should be telling us all that we really need to know.

Flooding isn’t a vote winner when there’s no water on the ground

With the shallow, self-serving politicians that we have in power today, the harsh reality we must all face is that in their majority, Politicians and the Political Parties that they represent are not interested in seeing any task through from start to finish, unless they believe that doing so will secure them more votes.

What our Emergency Services, our Military, and the people on the ground will do in Yorkshire and the East Midlands during the current crisis to help people will not be an issue in Westminster once the water has gone and this ridiculous General Election Campaign has passed by.

Addressing the issues that count and will make a difference – that’s Planning Policy, responding to the Housing Crisis, how we address Climate Change and the way that the Public Sector itself actually works, are not and never will be on the agenda for longer than it remains in the news. Or at least not until we have politicians with very different motives and people-first mindset involved.

Planning Policy

Many people don’t understand that Local Authorities don’t make planning law. They just interpret it.

And with rules that come from the centre – rules that sound great because they seem to consider this and sound great because they appear to consider that – we have all been misled into believing that a one-size-fits-all approach to the way that we build in all locations, environments and conditions across this Country can work out for everyone wherever they are in the same way – even with different people with different motives doing the interpretation that is involved.

There is no room within the Planning System for local understanding and anecdotal evidence to be considered.

For instance, the Planning System is itself so arbitrary that floodplains that have been built up and covered with dumped earth and inert debris then qualify as being safe to build on. Yet there is no consideration for the displacement of floodwaters that would have historically rested at that location. Nor is there though given for how that water might flow around this newly created island or indeed what other properties or places would now be affected by what will be both a new and at time of flooding inevitably different water flow.

For the impact of future flooding events to be limited for existing properties, Towns, Cities and Villages to the same levels and impact that they are having right now, Planning rules and the way that we interpret them must change to embrace the increasing likelihood of the black swans, rather than the imbedded mentality of ‘it couldn’t happen here’.

Unswerving technical adherence to manmade rules doesn’t allow for reach and impact of Mother Nature.

Solving problems without creating others must be a priority for all areas of civic life and activity.

The response to the Housing Crisis

Yet another of the political footballs that is currently being bounced around is the topic of which Political Party will build more houses and how quickly they will build them if they should find themselves in power once the Election question has been resolved.

The myth that we need to build so many new houses evaporates the very moment that you consider how much they actually cost.

How often have you seen house prices drop in any part of this Country when a new estate or development has been built?

The truth is that prices of old and new property in the local areas usually rise and like most things where prices and need can be manipulated, profit and therefore greed are the underlying cause.

Building at the levels we have already embraced is already creating a time bomb for potential flooding incidents that would never have had this kind of impact in the past – especially with planning policy as it is.

There needs to be a massive rethink and politicians who were thinking about the people they represent would certainly bring this foolish and ill considered approach to the problem to an immediate stop.

The way to deal with the housing crisis is to make better and more equitable use of the houses and buildings that we already have.

It isn’t helpful to pretend that the only solution is to keep on building more and more, whilst creating many more real ones than the hollow one that it is supposed to solve.

Climate Change

Yes, Climate Change or the Climate Crisis that our young people are now beginning to champion and the way of thinking that they are challenging is a very real part of the flooding problem too.

The weather in this Country and around the World is changing – no matter what your views might be about the cause.

The cold hard reality that we all have to face is that the weather patterns that are here today will take many years to reverse.

But there are steps that we can take to address their progression and pathway to becoming worse.

It is not simply about legislating to change the behavior of people who are already trying to make the best of what can be very difficult lives.

This is where the inexperience and impractical idealism of young people could easily be seen to make a valid argument that is beneficial to us all seem outwardly very wrong. Like Flooding events, protests soon disappear from the minds and plans of the wrong politicians and that is the truth – no matter how wrong.

Sadly, with Climate Change, much of the problem is again about money and greed.

The businesses that have the biggest part to play just need to be led to think differently and see that the profit which is their obsession is still there for them tomorrow as it is for them today. It will just come from them investing, operating and behaving ethically in a very different way.

Industry and money might not be listening now, but that will be different when we have different people in charge.

The necessity of political change that wont be served simply by having a General Election

The complexity of the problems that are contributing to the Housing Crisis, the failure of Planning Policy, Climate Change and Flooding as an issue in its own right will never be dealt with in the way that it needs to be by politicians who are only interested in the outcome of the next Election and how they convince all of us to give them their vote.

If we want the change that we need with the issues that we are facing not just like Flooding, but which we are experiencing each and every day, we must elect different people into Parliament, our Councils and into positions of power who will put people first. Politicians who know what it will take and – most importantly – are actually prepared to do everything necessary to get all of those things that need doing – and not just Brexit – done.

The only genuine protection for the NHS is meaningful reform

red-herring Five weeks until the General Election and there’s so many red herrings around, you could be fooled into thinking our MPs are trying to sell us a smokery.

The biggest pool of them all surrounds the Labour-led debate over privatisation of the NHS – a topic which is a continual source of dishonesty for the Labour Party, the Conservatives – now the SNP too, and very much a political ball.

The issue was in many ways fuelled by the recent Channel 4 Dispatches Documentary about big pharma and the USA’s probable attempt at assault on the way that the NHS buys drugs as part of a post-Brexit Trade Deal with them.

However, what Labour’s push of ‘we are the only Party who believes in the NHS’ fails to so spectacularly address is the real level of the problems that exist within our National Health Service, how those problems became manifest and have to be addressed, and how fire hosing money at this Public Service might keep the wheels turning, but in the long term it will not save the NHS and in fact could be making all of the problems significantly worse.

The principle of the NHS is a very good one. We should ALL continue to have access to free healthcare at the point of access. But we cannot continue onwards thinking that its existence can be assured in the future simply on the basis of how much We spend.

Privatisation in its most literal sense is – on the face of it – a very big part of the problem of cost attribution within the NHS today. So for Labour to even suggest that they can stop privatisation when it is already present, is either disingenuous on their part, or demonstrative of their ignorance of how the service actually works.

Many of the problems with cost have come about because of deals that the Blair and Brown Labour Governments constructed under the guise of PFI. Others have snowballed because of the cultural steer towards the use of private contractors or consultants to undertake backroom management functions and the excessive use of temporary staffing agencies that were never required before all good sense in employment laws and conditions was excessively overstepped and the door was opened to unbridled levels of profit making which has gone on for so long now that it is simply the way rather than individual choice.

Fixing this problem so that the NHS once again becomes sustainable isn’t easy. And with politicians who don’t even understand how it all works, real or meaningful reform is not even currently on the agenda, let alone being a political choice.

The MPs that we have had, their Parties and the People who lead them have no incentive to really get to grips with what is really going on. Their lack of knowledge and understanding is self evident each and every time they are interviewed – which during an Election Campaign is pretty much every time that we turn the radio or TV on.

Until this changes, none of the problems that we as People within this Country face will be dealt with.

Yet we don’t even have the option of Political Parties or Candidates on 12th December who even have an idea of what is really going on.

image thanks to unknown

Qualified academically or not, we are all capable of greatness or of being complete and utter fools

images (15) As humans we love difference. We love difference so much, we use it as a way to qualify other people by colour, gender, sexual orientation, financial and material wealth, social background, taste, appearance and in many other ways too.

Many of the benchmarks that we carry within our own personal make up as we attribute a value to others are unconscious or to the world outside us, secret from everyone’s view.

And the fact that we effectively make the judgements connected with our way of thinking behind closed doors, means that no matter how hard do-gooders attempt to legislate or rather control our behaviour, controlling other people’s thinking at a personal or very private level is a battle that even the most politically correct amongst us will never actually win.

So obsessed have we become with being able to legitimise our qualification of others when it suits us to do so, we have found it easy to use the markers that society legitimately provides to create yet another set of differences between ourselves and other people. One that stands far outside the purpose for which that system was intended, and the help that it was originally intended to provide.

For a long time, academic qualification has increasingly been used as the preferred way to distinguish the ability, attitude, application, intelligence and any number of other things about an individual that to the audience can be used to distinguish the capability of a person and whether for the purpose they are being considered, they are ‘qualified’ or not.

By-passing the cold, hard reality that academic qualifications, whether it be a GCSE, A’Level, Graduate Degree, Masters or Phd is simply another benchmark created in some particular persons (usually an academic’s) thoughts, the elephants of our society have fallen head over heels in to the trap of believing that academic standards portray the genuine quality or value of each and every individual or person.

They do not.

Yesterday, we witnessed the power of these maleficent social anchors at their horrifying worst, when Shadow Education Secretary Angela Rayner was ridiculed for having what are considered to be 4 very poor GCSEs and academically speaking, no more.

Whilst Labour and their principle spokesperson for Education demonstrate little credibility in terms of the policies they have been putting forward with an eye on the upcoming General Election at their Party Conference this week, there are few of us outside of Westminster who could list with fingers on one hand, the number of politicians from any one Political Party who we could hand-on-heart consider credibly, when it comes to fulfilling their roles properly, and being good representatives of the people too.

Perception is everything. Particularly so when it comes to the influences on our thinking and lives that is played out on social media and TV.

Just because an MP or politician looks good on camera, comes across as confident, sounds competent or can boast an academic cv that included Eton, Oxford or wherever it may be from, it is simply a fact that the reality and truth may be – and in the case of many of our sitting MPs – is that they are not ‘qualified’ by or by being any such thing.

Because we have learned and increasingly been conditioned against the value of the substance of life experience and the practical understanding of people, business, community, their experiences and views that time in the real world gaining knowledge of different situations brings, we have reached a stage where we look for things that make high-profile people stand out for all the wrong reasons, mistakenly thinking that they are right.

There is some rich irony in the fact that it was the Labour Government of 1997-2010 that pushed the envelope of qualification bias to its currently accepted extreme by suggesting that it was not only possible, but should be the case that everyone has a degree.

This malignant and ill-conceived step has itself contributed the biggest change in perception about what qualifies any person.

It has pushed us all much further away from regarding each and every other individual as being equal and the same.

Furthermore, the meddling of Angela Rayner’s political predecessors when in Government bears much of the responsibility for the commercialisation of Higher Education. The rancid truth being that many young people have been condemned to financial servitude by a past Labour Government by being encouraged to take degrees that nobody in industry values.

Others are being left behind simply because they are excluded by the perversion of a system that frowns upon anyone who is not academically inclined, or because they know that a lifetime of debt is not something that they can realistically afford.

Education in its real sense, is only partially academic in its make up. No matter how any person is educated, they are equally capable of greatness or of behaving like fools. And the suggestion that people are only capable of anything great if they have good academic qualifications is a premise that is fundamentally flawed.

When we finally have a Government led by politicians who are responsible and not so easily led, the hard decisions over the way that we educate and support our young people will be addressed properly.

The focus will be brought back to the basic reality that as teenagers, we are pretty much all either ‘heads’ or ‘hands’.

Once we value the fact that not everyone in their early teens is either ready or able to spend at least another 7 years in books, we can then get back to providing a real option of parallel educational – not academic pathways – that developed properly with business and the opportunities that Leaving the EU will give us, will mean that rewarding lives for people whatever their background and birth, will for a great many more of them be fully assured.

image thanks to businessinsider.com

Ignore the climate change concerns of young people and children if you dare. But addressing the shared fate of nations will help to solve many more of our UK problems as they have the same cause

Young people and children share an idealistic view of the world and how it should be. Their view may not be practical or show any understanding of the issues involved. But that doesn’t mean that their passion should not be our guiding light and the one that we follow. Not just in terms of tackling the real causes of the climate problem, but also as we move forward to a future where we work together to put all of the wrongs right.

Teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg appears to have set the world alight with her ideas and passion for the climate cause. But the sensationalism around her carries as much cynicism as it does genuine feeling. In fact, it may well be a whole lot more.

Whether you feel able to argue about the causes of climate change or not, the reality is that change is certainly taking place. It is now in everyone’s interests to do everything possible to mitigate anything and everything that we recognise as being a possible cause.

The biggest problem that we, and the many young protesters that are out and about this world of ours today face, is that the focus on climate change that they and most of us already share is based upon and focussed only on the effects of the problem. Not the actual cause.

We are not talking about the overuse of plastics, chemicals, fossil fuels and more. Those are but the effects of the problem. A problem which is based on a worldwide culture where those with more always want more.

The world uses materials and methods of working which damage the environment because they make everything cheap. Not cheap for us or other end users. But cheap for the people and companies that make, sell and transport our goods and services to us.

Climate change is costly for the future of the entire world.

But for those making money out of it, futures costly misery comes to them today feeling rather cheap indeed.

What we are seeing unfold in front of our eyes really is the fate of nations. Nothing less. Nothing more.

And as our children and young people are rightly telling us, climate change or the effects of it are no longer something that any of us can or should attempt to deny.

The momentum which is now being unleashed by the passion of younger people alone, can now open the doors to dialogue and change that before has been resisted by big business and self interest. It has therefore has been unknown.

But to capitalise on the opportunity, there must come a wider realisation between all of us that we cannot continue to think that the only god available to us is money. A way of thinking that will require our politicians to bring a very different, intuitive, considered and above all selfless way of working to the fore.

The companies, bankers and financiers that sit behind these problems, making money all the time, just need to be handled differently, by leaders able and not afraid to act upon all that they know.

They must be asked the question ‘would you prefer to fold when the wheels fall off all of this in just a few years, or change approach and adapt to a new way of thinking, so that you are making a good profit, albeit ethically in many years time?

To do this, our politicians and the governments made up of them must think very differently and look at every level of shared commonality as what makes us all one.

Politicians can no longer see themselves, their own interests, their own ideas and the people they relate to as the only priority or cause.

This is not a question of creating a world government or trying to use anything as an excuse to build empires.

Its about accepting and being open to working together. Knowing that even across borders, we have things in common as part of a bigger picture, that must now outweigh the comparative trivialities that only define us as nations and as cultures.

We can be different. But also the same.

We only need to make the right steps and to do that we must look all of this for what it is.

We must stop still and pause.

image thanks to unknown