Re: Banning Uber reduces you to third-world status.
"driven by people who [...], and rely 100% for navigation on a cheap satnav."
Some years back, I spent a series of weekends in and around Brum, getting trains up there, and taxis to get around. So far, so good, except that on trips where I wasn't going to obvious places, it was difficult to get a taxi driver who had even heard of the destination.
Then on one trip, I got in a cab driven by an older Irish bloke, and his response to my question was enlightening. I asked him if Brum had a Knowledge, because the other taxis I had had before that didn't show any sign of it. He said that yes, there is a Knowledge in Brum, and he had passed it properly many years before. Most of the drivers, he said, were [South Asians] who would take the Knowledge repeatedly until they remembered enough to pass it and get their taxi license. And that meant that for practical purposes that there were very few taxi drivers who actually knew where much of anything was, and as this was before the widespread distribution of easy satnavs, getting them to take you anywhere except between the New Street station and the main hotel strip was a, um, challenge.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
