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Anti-Uber Taxi Protest Blocks Access To Airports In France
An anonymous reader writes: Taxi drivers in France have been complaining that a recently passed law against unlicensed commercial drivers is being flouted by Uber, and going relatively unenforced by authorities. They claim to have lost 30% of their income to Uber over the past two years, and they've become fed-up with the situation. The taxi drivers have now started an indefinite, nation-wide strike in protest. Part of that strike involves blocking access to Paris's Roissy airport as well as the main road encircling the city. Protesters have also blocked access to train stations in Merseille and Aix. "The drivers — who have to pay thousands of euros for a license — say they are being unfairly undercut by Uber, which is not licensed by the authorities. Prosecutors have cracked down on Uber, filing almost 500 legal cases involving complaints about UberPOP. About 100 attacks on Uber drivers and passengers have been reported in recent weeks."
You'll want to avoid Paris in general when travelling by air; pick a different airport to change flights if you can. Good advice from my travel agent. If it isn't the cabbies on strike, it'll be the air traffic controllers, baggage handlers, caterers, customs officers, cleaning staff, or the guys with the lollipos guiding the planes to the terminal.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Because something is illegal doesn't make it wrong and enforcing all passed legislation is impossible in most countries. Most police officers use their discretion to enforce practical laws (when is the last time you were ticketed for jaywalking?). The legislation in question is a protectionist movement for jobs that will die anyways. Its like protesting immigrant workers taking cruise liner jobs as the cruise ship is sinking into the ocean.
Brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
Let's see... How about blocking the roadways? Very illegal. Even worse are the violent assaults.
And, unlike Uber's own illegality, the blockings and assaults are malum in se whereas Uber is guilty of merely malum prohibitum.
Welcome to Bill Maher show. Save your class warfare rhethoric until 2017, for the centennial celebrations of the Great October Socialist Revolution.
The "idle rich" don't care, whether a ride costs €20 or €40. It is the rest of us, for whom such trifle sums matter.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
When I bought a new car, I had to leave my truck at the lot and come back for it. I tried to get a taxi on three different occasions (I've never been in one before), and all three times I got screwed over; two just didn't show, and the third wanted to charge almost $50 to go less than 8 miles. I installed the Uber app, and had a car in front of my house in less than ten minutes. Only cost $17 for the ride. I will walk or just stay home before I ever take a taxi in this city after that experience.
As far as them inconveniencing everyone, I'm with the above poster: if I was caught in that, I'd do everything I could to avoid them there as well while doing everything I can to support anything that takes them out of business. There are any number of ways they can protest. Disrupting traffic when people need to either get to jobs or possibly a hospital is just doing it wrong.
http://www.threefeloniesaday.c...
-- I was raised on the command line, bitch