Re: "Dawn Raid Manual"
> Unless lawmakers passed laws that made it illegal and applied it retroactively. Which happens all the time.
>
> You see lawmakers doing this in your face constantly. Take the Boris Johnson confidence vote for example. There weren't enough votes to oust him outright, so those that opposed him decided to push an agenda to change the rules. I don't know how far they got, because the clown resigned before any changes could take place...but it was there on the table.
Honestly, that's a piss-poor example.
Firstly, it's a convention of the Conservative's 1922 committee, not a a law.
Secondly, there was no attempt to apply anything retrospectively - such a change would have affected things going forward (i.e. letting them call another vote).
A retrospective change would be to change the rules to say something (for example, if more than 25% vote against) and then apply that to the *earlier vote and insist he stand down*.
Thirdly, even it if were a law and not simply a Tory rule, Parliament is sovereign and no Parliament can constrain a future Parliament. What that means is that they can change law at any time with no requirement that they be constrained by what they decided previously. Without that freedom, Law cannot possibly evolve with the times.
At best it's an example of how lawmakers can decide they don't like something and add new rules to prevent in in future. Problem is, that's the whole point in having lawmakers (as much as we might disagree with some of their changes).
> I can only assume that the push to regulate and fuck around with Uber was driven entirely by political folks wanting a slice of the pie. I have yet to meet anyone that is staunchly against Uber in any way.
No.
The push against Uber was because existing businesses (cabs and taxi firms) have to operate within a legal framework that exists to ensure the safety of passengers and (to a lesser extent) the safety of others on the road.
Uber skipped these requirements and so was able to undercut the competition, carrying passengers who didn't necessarily understand that the driver's insurance wouldn't cover them if there was an accident and they suffered life changing injuries.
The fact that Uber didn't vet their drivers properly and more than a few turned around and raped their passengers didn't really help their case either.
In *some* places, the existing body of law included stuff that was there to protect vested interests, but that's a minority of the places that Uber was operating, and the issues with Uber existed everywhere.
I can't remember who said it, but there was a quote a while back along the lines of: if someone talks about disruptive innovation, you really need to first look at why the environment exists in a way that can be disrupted, sometimes there are very good reasons that regulation is in place.
> There are plenty of folks that won't use them for various reasons, but nobody that irrationally hates Uber simply for existing
I don't think there's anyone who hates Uber for simply existing. There are quite a few, though, who dislike them based on their history (which includes the stuff above).
> Unless Uber has an agreement with T5 (which seems unlikely) then this would be a shady move, no?
Not really, there's an administrative burden that goes with excluding from pricing.
Uber would need to provide the license number of all their drivers to Heathrow in order to have the excluded from billing (it's unlikely the airport's going to shoulder the admin costs of simply being notified when a Uber driver is destined for Heathrow).
> So yeah, Uber might well be shady, but that doesn't preclude everyone else around them being just as shady also.
True, but that doesn't mean we should let Uber off the hook for being shady. It just means we need to work to ensure we're holding the others to account too.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
