Uber is *not* playing by the rules, and this is to the detriment of passengers.
The rules are: - if you want to ply for hire and provide an unmetered service, you have to give customers a firm price in advance so you can't gouge them en route, you have to provide a pre-booking facility. Customers benefit from a cheap known price and some reasonable degree of certainty that you'll be there when you say you will. - if you want to ply for hire, you have to provide a metered service so customers can't be gouged en route, you have to meet high standards of knowledge of London's streets and all the other additional requirements of hackney carriage licensing, including using a hackney cab with all its attendant benefits for passengers (e.g. tight turning circle, seating five so they can speak to each other, accessibility features for the disabled etc). Customers benefit from a regulated price, high availability of cabs throughout central London, the added speed from using bus lanes, and the ability to give someone vague directions and still have them get you there ("it's next to that church near City Hall")
Uber are the worst of both worlds for passengers: they don't provide a pre-booking facility, won't give a firm price, and in practice they ply for hire without providing drivers or cars that meet the standards of hackney carriage licensing. Plus, you cannot just call the driver to discuss how to find each other, which is really fucking irritating.
None of this is material to the crucial questions of editorial independence, impartiality, and willingness to critique the government. The BBC is *the* global example of a media organisation committed to those principles and behaviours. It is this that distinguishes public service broadcasting from both state broadcasters (who are beholden to governments) and commercial broadcasters (who are beholden to their commercial interests, e.g. advertisers).
Christ, it's really irritating when people who don't know shit talk pontificate about a subject, and pray Wikipedia in aid. The BBC is publicly funded, but not a state broadcaster. This is true both in terms of its structure and its behaviour. If the BBC were a state broadcaster, it would take a pro-government line. That is not the case. We have a right-wing government in power in the UK, and the BBC is famously accused of being biased to the left. When the centre-left Labour party was in power, the BBC got in a fight with them too, over the Iraq war. The BBC is not owned by the government, it is publicly owned. It is not controlled by the government, although governments of all stripes have tried to control it to some degree, with little success.
I really don't mind you being right-wing. You're entitled to your view. But do you have to be so fucking stupid? It would take you all of a few minutes research to learn that there is a huge difference, both in theory and practice, between a state broadcaster like Zvezda and a public service broadcaster like the BBC. Evidence matters, for Chrissakes, and this being the media, there's quite a lot of evidence out there.
"The two definitions of respect: that it is deserved as a default vs earned on merit are part of the core ideological conflict between right and left."
That is no part of any established political theory that I've ever heard of.
The right is just as likely to respect people who have not earned respect as the left. The pro-life/anti-abortion right, for example, would say that they respect foetuses, and want foetuses to be treated with respect. Many conservatives would say that those in positions of authority ought to be respected, as should the elderly, irrespective of individual actions.
Life may be simpler if you just caricature the views of the people with whom you disagree, but it's like a filter on the world that strips out everything bar primary colours: it is impoverishing.
Actively hurting London is not what I'm suggesting. But investing the marginal pound outside London is definitely what I'm suggesting. There's nothing inevitable about the midlands or north being relatively uninteresting: it's entirely unsurprising after decades of dramatically lower levels of investment cf London. It's not true in Germany (famously). It's not even true in Italy, where the north-south divide is now less sharp than in England.
Well, the problem with building both is better than only building CrossRail 2, but building only in the north would be better still, as it would start to deal with London's overweening weight. I say this as a Londoner!
Quite a lot of people who use the word "faggot" as an insult are really really scared to admit to themselves that they are turned on by the idea of having sex with men. The homophobia is a cover for their fear and anger.
Are you saying you don't believe infrastructure projects have a shelflife that exceeds a human lifespan?
The London Underground - 152 years old and still going strong - would beg to differ. And it doesn't go nowhere - it goes from Edgware to Morden (via Bank or Charing Cross) and quite a lot of other places besides.
In a just world, he would be in jail for fucking up Northern Rock so appallingly. Instead, he gets to write articles on subjects about which he knows nothing.
Well, duh. This is kind of the entire design philosophy of Apple: a few understandable choices, not endless suggestions. It is the foundation-stone of thousands of flamewars on Slashdot about this approach vs providing more options for power-users.
Uber are very different from other minicab services. They don't tell you how much the fare will be in advance, and they don't allow you to book in advance. That is materially worse for the passenger.
Unless you have especially bad eyesight, you can copy down a license plate from a good 20m away.
The car was in reverse, so it was of course not travelling especially fast. Cars don't go very fast in reverse.
You may claim now that it is irrelevant as to whether there is something in front of the car, but you didn't claim that earlier. You described a scenario in which the driver reversed the car, having no ability to drive it forward, and innocently collided with the guard. Now you are saying that this is not so.
Anyway, you keep on in moral smug-land, lording it over the security guard. It makes you happy, clearly.
The newspaper did, in fact, publish an article "discussing the particulars of a potential or ongoing lawsuit". So it may be routine legal practice, but it wasn't what they did
It had a choice between: 1 saying nothing 2 publishing an article that would have supported a defense against a lawsuit, such as one giving the journalists' account of events 3 publishing an article that would undermine any defense against a lawsuit
They chose 3. They didn't choose 1, despite your raising it here, and they didn't choose 2, despite it being in their direct commercial interest to do so.
That is a reasonable basis for inferring that the journalists have done something wrong and they know it.
Really, what is the point of putting a false argument in my mouth when my actual argument is there for all to see in the previous post?
Was it really so difficult for you to understand that I was pointing out that you had no basis on which to conclude that: 1. the driver was backing out. And backing out means something more than just reversing. You back out from a parking space. You back out when you can't go forward. 2. the safety guard was standing directly behind the vehicle and in close proximity.
I even described the two scenarios: yours, in which a dopey guard stands immediately behind a car that is parked up against an obstacle and so cannot go forward, and who therefore gets run over when the driver reverses; and an alternative, in which a guard stands a few feet back from, and possibly even to the side of, a car which is free to go forward, and the driver deliberately reverses, swinging the car towards the guard and running him over on purpose.
And yet you pretend that I was arguing something else! I mean, it's a bit sad, really. As is changing "out" to "up" because you think it makes you look like you were never implying the driver had nowhere to go in your first post, despite it being patently obvious from your posts that this is precisely what you thought.
Anyway, now that I have explained it all -- again -- and pointed out that there is an alternate scenario -- again, it would be interesting to see you actually engage with the substance and possibly even acknowledge that other scenarios than the one you envisaged are just as plausible, based on the evidence available. Then again, it would be interesting to see pigs fly, and I think the latter is more likely than you admitting you hadn't thought this all through and just wanted to be rude about the choice some poor sod made that landed up with him getting injured, so that you could look clever.
It's more than that. Dragging the driver out of the car is the equivalent of knocking the knife out of the assailant's hand. They were trying to prevent the driver from using the vehicle as a weapon for a fourth time.
And given the reporters work for a newspaper, which would have a direct commercial interest in publishing any exculpatory account they could offer, I think it's reasonable to infer that they acted wrongly and know it. Or they'd have been handed the bully pulpit.
If this is what your powers of observation are like, then I'm not surprised you're no longer working as a security guard.
Tesla say: "As the Tesla employee attempted to record the license plate number on the rear bumper, the driver put it in reverse and accelerated into the Tesla employee"
You conclude: "the first employee to be hit was standing behind the vehicle as it backed out"
Backed out? That is waaay too much stew from one oyster. It could be that you're right. But it is equally possible, based on the Tesla statement, that the driver had a unobstructed path forward, but chose to reverse into the security guard. We don't know, because there is no information to support either scenario in the statement from Tesla. There is also no information to say how close the security guard was to the car, nor whether they were standing directly behind it or were off-centre.
But if you were to be open to the possibilities that the driver chose to reverse instead of driving forward, and that the security guard was standing a few metres away and off to one side, you wouldn't be able to be an armchair general, critiquing Tesla and its safety team. So instead you chose to assume that the driver could not go forward, and the guard was standing behind the vehicle.
Slashdot Mirror
What a pile of pants.
Uber is *not* playing by the rules, and this is to the detriment of passengers.
The rules are:
- if you want to ply for hire and provide an unmetered service, you have to give customers a firm price in advance so you can't gouge them en route, you have to provide a pre-booking facility. Customers benefit from a cheap known price and some reasonable degree of certainty that you'll be there when you say you will.
- if you want to ply for hire, you have to provide a metered service so customers can't be gouged en route, you have to meet high standards of knowledge of London's streets and all the other additional requirements of hackney carriage licensing, including using a hackney cab with all its attendant benefits for passengers (e.g. tight turning circle, seating five so they can speak to each other, accessibility features for the disabled etc). Customers benefit from a regulated price, high availability of cabs throughout central London, the added speed from using bus lanes, and the ability to give someone vague directions and still have them get you there ("it's next to that church near City Hall")
Uber are the worst of both worlds for passengers: they don't provide a pre-booking facility, won't give a firm price, and in practice they ply for hire without providing drivers or cars that meet the standards of hackney carriage licensing. Plus, you cannot just call the driver to discuss how to find each other, which is really fucking irritating.
They're cheap the way a cheap sausage is cheap.
None of this is material to the crucial questions of editorial independence, impartiality, and willingness to critique the government. The BBC is *the* global example of a media organisation committed to those principles and behaviours. It is this that distinguishes public service broadcasting from both state broadcasters (who are beholden to governments) and commercial broadcasters (who are beholden to their commercial interests, e.g. advertisers).
Christ, it's really irritating when people who don't know shit talk pontificate about a subject, and pray Wikipedia in aid. The BBC is publicly funded, but not a state broadcaster. This is true both in terms of its structure and its behaviour. If the BBC were a state broadcaster, it would take a pro-government line. That is not the case. We have a right-wing government in power in the UK, and the BBC is famously accused of being biased to the left. When the centre-left Labour party was in power, the BBC got in a fight with them too, over the Iraq war. The BBC is not owned by the government, it is publicly owned. It is not controlled by the government, although governments of all stripes have tried to control it to some degree, with little success.
I really don't mind you being right-wing. You're entitled to your view. But do you have to be so fucking stupid? It would take you all of a few minutes research to learn that there is a huge difference, both in theory and practice, between a state broadcaster like Zvezda and a public service broadcaster like the BBC. Evidence matters, for Chrissakes, and this being the media, there's quite a lot of evidence out there.
You could start with this: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programme...
What in the name of sweet Jeezus has your very exciting rant about all the perceived evils of US liberal politics got to do with the BBC?
In what possible way? They are an independent public corporation, not a state broadcaster.
you think *Trump* will save you? That's so sweet!
"The two definitions of respect: that it is deserved as a default vs earned on merit are part of the core ideological conflict between right and left."
That is no part of any established political theory that I've ever heard of.
The right is just as likely to respect people who have not earned respect as the left. The pro-life/anti-abortion right, for example, would say that they respect foetuses, and want foetuses to be treated with respect. Many conservatives would say that those in positions of authority ought to be respected, as should the elderly, irrespective of individual actions.
Life may be simpler if you just caricature the views of the people with whom you disagree, but it's like a filter on the world that strips out everything bar primary colours: it is impoverishing.
Actively hurting London is not what I'm suggesting. But investing the marginal pound outside London is definitely what I'm suggesting. There's nothing inevitable about the midlands or north being relatively uninteresting: it's entirely unsurprising after decades of dramatically lower levels of investment cf London. It's not true in Germany (famously). It's not even true in Italy, where the north-south divide is now less sharp than in England.
Well, the problem with building both is better than only building CrossRail 2, but building only in the north would be better still, as it would start to deal with London's overweening weight. I say this as a Londoner!
CrossRail is an extraordinary engineering feat.
http://www.crossrail.co.uk/new...
That said, it arguably should not have been built and the money should have been spent in the North instead:
http://www.theguardian.com/new...
Quite a lot of people who use the word "faggot" as an insult are really really scared to admit to themselves that they are turned on by the idea of having sex with men. The homophobia is a cover for their fear and anger.
Are you saying you don't believe infrastructure projects have a shelflife that exceeds a human lifespan?
The London Underground - 152 years old and still going strong - would beg to differ. And it doesn't go nowhere - it goes from Edgware to Morden (via Bank or Charing Cross) and quite a lot of other places besides.
In a just world, he would be in jail for fucking up Northern Rock so appallingly. Instead, he gets to write articles on subjects about which he knows nothing.
Well, duh. This is kind of the entire design philosophy of Apple: a few understandable choices, not endless suggestions. It is the foundation-stone of thousands of flamewars on Slashdot about this approach vs providing more options for power-users.
Uber are very different from other minicab services. They don't tell you how much the fare will be in advance, and they don't allow you to book in advance. That is materially worse for the passenger.
Unless you have especially bad eyesight, you can copy down a license plate from a good 20m away.
The car was in reverse, so it was of course not travelling especially fast. Cars don't go very fast in reverse.
You may claim now that it is irrelevant as to whether there is something in front of the car, but you didn't claim that earlier. You described a scenario in which the driver reversed the car, having no ability to drive it forward, and innocently collided with the guard. Now you are saying that this is not so.
Anyway, you keep on in moral smug-land, lording it over the security guard. It makes you happy, clearly.
The newspaper did, in fact, publish an article "discussing the particulars of a potential or ongoing lawsuit". So it may be routine legal practice, but it wasn't what they did
It had a choice between:
1 saying nothing
2 publishing an article that would have supported a defense against a lawsuit, such as one giving the journalists' account of events
3 publishing an article that would undermine any defense against a lawsuit
They chose 3. They didn't choose 1, despite your raising it here, and they didn't choose 2, despite it being in their direct commercial interest to do so.
That is a reasonable basis for inferring that the journalists have done something wrong and they know it.
Really, what is the point of putting a false argument in my mouth when my actual argument is there for all to see in the previous post?
Was it really so difficult for you to understand that I was pointing out that you had no basis on which to conclude that:
1. the driver was backing out. And backing out means something more than just reversing. You back out from a parking space. You back out when you can't go forward.
2. the safety guard was standing directly behind the vehicle and in close proximity.
I even described the two scenarios: yours, in which a dopey guard stands immediately behind a car that is parked up against an obstacle and so cannot go forward, and who therefore gets run over when the driver reverses; and an alternative, in which a guard stands a few feet back from, and possibly even to the side of, a car which is free to go forward, and the driver deliberately reverses, swinging the car towards the guard and running him over on purpose.
And yet you pretend that I was arguing something else! I mean, it's a bit sad, really. As is changing "out" to "up" because you think it makes you look like you were never implying the driver had nowhere to go in your first post, despite it being patently obvious from your posts that this is precisely what you thought.
Anyway, now that I have explained it all -- again -- and pointed out that there is an alternate scenario -- again, it would be interesting to see you actually engage with the substance and possibly even acknowledge that other scenarios than the one you envisaged are just as plausible, based on the evidence available. Then again, it would be interesting to see pigs fly, and I think the latter is more likely than you admitting you hadn't thought this all through and just wanted to be rude about the choice some poor sod made that landed up with him getting injured, so that you could look clever.
It's more than that. Dragging the driver out of the car is the equivalent of knocking the knife out of the assailant's hand. They were trying to prevent the driver from using the vehicle as a weapon for a fourth time.
Please, please tell me you deliberately mis-spelled "your" for ironic effect.
And given the reporters work for a newspaper, which would have a direct commercial interest in publishing any exculpatory account they could offer, I think it's reasonable to infer that they acted wrongly and know it. Or they'd have been handed the bully pulpit.
If this is what your powers of observation are like, then I'm not surprised you're no longer working as a security guard.
Tesla say: "As the Tesla employee attempted to record the license plate number on the rear bumper, the driver put it in reverse and accelerated into the Tesla employee"
You conclude: "the first employee to be hit was standing behind the vehicle as it backed out"
Backed out? That is waaay too much stew from one oyster. It could be that you're right. But it is equally possible, based on the Tesla statement, that the driver had a unobstructed path forward, but chose to reverse into the security guard. We don't know, because there is no information to support either scenario in the statement from Tesla. There is also no information to say how close the security guard was to the car, nor whether they were standing directly behind it or were off-centre.
But if you were to be open to the possibilities that the driver chose to reverse instead of driving forward, and that the security guard was standing a few metres away and off to one side, you wouldn't be able to be an armchair general, critiquing Tesla and its safety team. So instead you chose to assume that the driver could not go forward, and the guard was standing behind the vehicle.
Sadly, the real bigots beat you to it.
Thanks.
True -- in London, these are fees levied by TfL. I think Uber pays these as well, however. I'm guessing they'll pay private hire fees.
The hybrid exception is precisely why Uber drivers drive Prius cars.
The congestion thing is absolutely real. It is a complete pain in the arse around Paddington, Marylebone, etc.