Is it Ober for Uber?

Tweet

Uber have just been judged to be a taxi company in the eyes of European law and will now have to get all the appropriate licences to operate. They have appealed and it will take some time for that to change as they see themselves as a Technology Company and so don’t agree, a so-called interrupter, a business opportunity to scrape money off the top and bottom of a traditional industry that modern technology can interfere with and so profit from. In the old days if you got an official yellow cab in New York or a Black cab in London you would pay top dollar, just because you always had. Uber piled in and slashed prices with their app as people could override the traditional methods of hailing cabs and get 30-40% cheaper fares. In London and around the world those traditional cabbies are angry they are losing their jobs to Uber drivers, especially in London. Uber needs thousands of drivers to make its system work and with immigration as unmetered as a black cab fare it has made those drivers available, and to work for minimum wage, the profit line for Uber. With a £15 black cab fare now £5 with an Uber driver it’s no competition. The people love the company as its dirt cheap but the cabbies can’t accept change. It’s a race to the bottom around the world. Black cab drivers in London have to do ‘The Knowledge’ to earn the official qualifications to drive the more lucrative and profitable black cabs. The Knowledge is pretty much learning every street in London so you can take any fare, anywhere. But with the arrival of Satnav the knowledge had lost its reason and Uber moved in. The Knowledge was why black cabbies were paid more but now their day has passed. Everything else is subject to economics and change through technology so why not a cab ride? Let’s face it; it was a rip off before, a way to fleece tourists who don’t know the city. For once I agree with European law.