Posts by J.G.Harston 3723 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Mar 2009
"where the actual workers aren't employed"
Irrelevent. If Uber wants to operate as a dispatch service renting out its dispatch service to self-employed drivers, "renting a radio" in the old parlance, go ahead. If Uber wants to operate as a taxi fleet, employing drivers, go ahead. It could even do both. There's nothing stopping it, and there's nothing missing from current legislation to permit or control it.
Uber needs to decide: is it a private hire fleet operator, or is it a radio control dispatcher? There's nothing to stop it being both, of course, but a private hire driver buying the services of a radio control dispatcher doesn't make that driver an employee of the dispatcher. In a way, it actually makes the dispatcher an employee of the driver.
And it's not the business of Uber to be doing background checks on "its" drivers, that's the job of the licensing authorities. Presentation of your private hire license to your fleet employee/dispatcher is a declaration that you have been background-checked - by the licensing authorities. However, if Uber fails to check that its drivers/its dispatch clients have a private hire license, then *that* is failure of duty, just as much as a dental practice failing to ask a new partner to see their DDS qualifications.
Uber is nothing special. They are Just Another Dispatch Service, or Just Another Fleet Operator. There are existing laws to protect the travelling public, those laws should^W must be enforced, not ignored, there is no need for new laws.
"Governments help by tilling the ground: property and contract law"
The UK government better make sure that foreign investors don't get to know that the UK government gives no truck to contract law, and tears up any contract it doesn't like, as it's doing right now with its contracts with doctors.
"repeal the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 and succesors and don't replace it with anything at all"
As long as building regulations control isn't repealed as well, and there is some sort of overview so that you don't get a ten-mile long road with houses filling both sides meaning it's impossible to develop the next bit of land out as there's nowhere to join on an access road.
Rolling with your argument about big one-off decisions vs small multiple decisions, building needs regulating (the building itself, not the permission to do so) as it's one of those big rare decisions. You can't say: oh this house fell apart around my ears, I'll not buy another house from this company next time.
Hackneys are under stricter control than private hire because hackneys ply for trade. You get whatever random cab happens to be going past you and sees you waving at them, or whichever random cab happens to be at the front of the rank. With private hire you go through a booking system, which records the booking, the driver, and the passenger, even if that booking system is a single sole trader.
Personally, I'd go over to the Hong Kong system where every taxi is both a private hire and a hackney.
"As long as cabs continue to charge based on time + distance traveled instead of a fixed cost from A-Z"
In a licensing area where fares are regulated any taxi is prefectly at liberty to charge whatever the hell they want up to the regulated ceiling. In areas where fares are regulated, it's only ply-for-hire fares (ie black cabs) that are regulated, private hire fares are unregulated but usually use the ply-for-hire fares. Legally, private-hire fares, as they are pre-booked, are whatever is negotiated prior to contracting the booking.
If any taxi (hackney or private hire) wants to charge a fixed A-to-B fare there is absolutely NOTHING stopping them*. Go on. If you think that's your Unique Selling Position, put your money where your mouth is and go ahead and do it.
*Other than the hackney fare ceiling.
It's irrelevent if it's a private car or not, if the juristiction has laws that state that a vehicle-for-hire must be licensed, and the driver driving it must be licensed, then they must be licensed. The Rule Of Law is founded on you NOT being able to pick and chose what laws you obey. Go ahead, get a license and charge less than other taxis, if that's your Unique Product then customers will come flocking to you. But if you are wanting to carry members of the public, then you shall f****g well comply with the laws that are their to protect those memebrs of the public.
And, yes, I'm fully in favour of civil disobedience to protest against laws that you believe should not exist, but the whole point of civil disobedience us that going to prison is a part of the breaking the perceived unjust law.
Exactly. Almost all employers demands that you already have the skills that are acquired from working for that employer before that employer is prepared to employ you.
E: So, what experience do you have in programming micromedical monitoring software?
A: I've got a first in software engineering and did twelve months' placement writing automotive monitoring and management systems software.
E: So, you have *no* commercial experience in micromedical monitoring software? **** off.
"When I'm unemployed I'm not taking your tax money, I'm getting money back from my Insurance payments"
Semantically, that's correct, and your entitlement is based on the NI contributions you've paid, but in reality, the tax and NI you pay today pays today's claimants, your claims are paid by the people paying tax and NI when you're claiming. There's no pot that your NI goes into where it sits for years'n'years until you draw it out. It's all a pyramid scheme. If the government could be held to account like any other financial services provider, they'd have been smashed to pieces for fraudulant accounting practices decades ago.
"the government becomes a co-op, using its muscle in the market to secure very favourable deals for electricity, gas and housing,"
Before 1948 most local councils ran electricity, gas and water companies, able to keep consumer costs down and roll out some of the fastest and deepest service provision in history. Then what happened? The most socialist government in history stole them all without recompense. 40 years later another government learned from this and stole municipal transport and housing.
"people have to pay for higher incomes for the poor... we don't think that their willingness is all that great"
Yeah, the shop staff in Aldi should be paid more! What, you mean I'll have to pay more for my milk? Bugger that!
Universal Income has a problem getting past the Daily Mail purple retired Colonels.
"it's going to take rather more than that 2lbs of bread to get me out the door of a winter's morning"
What, how **DARE** the workers not actually work???? Don't they realise that's their entire purpose in life?????
A universal income?? Giving slackers money for nothing??? How ***DARE*** people have enough money to be able to not work???? We must force everybody to work, make it illegal to have enough money to not work, make it illegal to pay anybody more than enough to keep them alive just for that day's work, make it illegal to have savings and pensionsl!!! (brain explodes)
I can't quite live on £130 a week. I could if I got rid of all the expenses I have that I incure by attempting to get paid employment, but that's sort-of the point, isn't it. It's enough to let you just tick over and not starve, and if you have any aspirations to more than that you can choose to seek somebody willing to pay you for something.
Commenting on the post upthread about a single person easily living on £15k/£6.5k/whatever, but not somebody with extra mouths to feed, I thought the whole point of a universal income was that it would be universal - so those extra mouths would have their own universal income to pay to feed them.
"... import tariffs to artificially raise prices..."
If the policy outcome wanted from putting import tariffs on something is to reduce the amount of it pruchased via the higher prices, then that's a success. I thought throughout history most import tariffs were just that - trying to reduce people's purchasing, the revenue raised being a side effect.
"The problem is that books (and movies and games, and most other leisure activities) are only partly fungible."
Demonstrated most clearly by my childhood where adults/parents thought "television" was entirely fungible. For instance, I only ever got to watch The WIzard Of Oz the whole way through when I was about 25, as every Christmas it was on as a child, parents would drag us off partway through for meals or something, with comments such as "you can watch television later". Yeah, but I can't watch *this* *programme* later.
I like Tim's articles because he's essentially approaching economics as an engineer, and this is essentially an engineering site. He sees things and points out: hold on, it works like this because of the underpinning maths; where other people say, no it will work like this because pink bunnies!
And yet, when I reply to targetted emails from DoE saying "we want *YOU* to enter the teaching profession", and apply for teacher training, I get turned down. When I see the vacancies still there in Clearing and apply again, I am again turned down.
If they want more teachers, stop turning away the b****y applicants, especially the ones you specifically target to try and get into teaching.
yawn.
Well, actually, with more use of small-screen devices, non-serifed less-rounded fonts are easier to read. A couple of years back the Beeb de-italicised their logo as upright lettering is crisper on the more common smaller displays people are using.
Edit: just noticed somebody else posted exactly the same point while I was typing.
But Google and OS are in two completely different map markets. Google Maps are absolutely utterly f***g useless for anything other than route planning. 95% of the useful information on an OS map is absent from a Google map. Google maps don't even have something a fundamental as f****g grid lines. lat/long or NG, don't care which.
Have an upvote. All through the article I was thinking: the post-WW2 boom was because we'd all bombed ourselves halfway into the stone age and had to rebuild all the infrastructure. People forget that 70% of 1945-1965 was a under a Conservative government. Hardly hard-on socialism.
Nobody (in the UK) pays road tax. Car owners pay *CAR* tax.
"Bicycles damage roads, they should pay tax".
Ok, how? **CAR** tax is calculated on the vehicle emissions. So, bicycle=zero emissions=zero tax.
Wah Wah! bicyles wear the road just as cars do!!! Wah!!!
Ok. Road wear is proportional to the cube of the rolling weight of the vehicle. My bicycle with me on it weighs 80kg. My car weighs 1600kg. 1600/80 is 20. The cube of 20 is 8000. So, my wear-on-the-road bicycle tax should be 1/8000th of the £180 vehicle tax my car is liable for. 2.25p TWO AND A QUARTER FUKCING PENCE. Now, who do I send the cheque to?
"When I last took an Uber and asked the driver if he had hire and reward insurance (you know the same as every other mini-cab driver needs) he said he didn't need it Uber Covered him."
Sorry, that's not how the law works. You can't chose whether to comply with the law or not, and you can't contract to not comply with the law.
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