JEDWARD

I see in the papers today that Sony have decided to drop Jedward, what a relief that we wont have to listen to their god awful singing, but apparently they are set to make millions from putting their name to hair products, now why any sane person would want to have their hair styled like Jedward and look like a complete tit is beyond me, mind you as I have very little hair left I really have not got to worry!

TheTwitterverse

I was first introduced to Twitter by a fellow cabbie Karl, @londontaximan who had been "tweeting" since getting his new iPhone! He explained how it worked and thought that it would be a great way for Taxi drivers to keep in touch and share information whilst out working. I was intrigued but not having an iPhone posed a problem so I surfed the web looking for an application that would work on my Nokia N95 which I managed to find and hence I entered the World of Twitter.

I found it extremely hard to follow Twitter on the N95 so I took the plunge and upgarded to the iPhone, I installed a twitter application and away I went, twittering away to World!

A year has now passed since I first ventured into the World of Twitter and so much has emerged, the number of London Taxi drivers using it has increased dramatically and Karl's vision or it helping cabbies with the work could not have worked out better. Drivers now share information on where the work is, technical help and even a Taxi booking service for other Twitterer's.

Twitter has opened up a new avenue for Taxi drivers to communicate while out working in their cabs, Karl once said to me "its like having 50 mates to chat to while your out working the cab" and he is so right, on a quite day it can really take the boredom out of sitting on a taxi rank waiting for the next job. So i you havent yet experienced the World of Twitter go on ad give it a try!

Off Roading & South East 4x4 Response

I thought a would give you all a little insight into one of my hobbies! and that is Off Roading. I got into off roading quite by mistake really, it was during a break at Centre Parcs at Elverden Forest that I went on one of their off roading courses. The course was run by an outside contractor a Wild Tracks in Suffolk and was quite expensive at £60 for about 20 minutes driving but I sort of got the bug!

On a second visit to Centre Parcs the following year I decided to have another go at the off roading but instead of booking through Centre Parcs I went straight to Wild Tracks and booked direct, I managed to strick a deal for about an hours tuition for £50 which although not cheap was quite a saving over the previous year, by now I had already bought a Land Rover Discovery to tow our caravan with and was periodically buying Land Rover magazines and this combined with my hours tuition off roading meant that I had really got the bug.

About 6 month later I had managed to save up some money with the intentions of buying an old Land Rover Discovery to take off road and one day I managed to stumble on an Ebay listing for exactly what I was looking for, the auction finished on the monday night and after I lodged my bid I waited with baited breath for the minutes to tick away until the end when I found that I was now the proud owner of a Land Rover Discovery that was Off Road prepared!

And her he is!, we named him Egor as giving your car a name seems to be the done thing amongst Land Rover owners.

Well time has now flown buy and I have visited many off road sites and Green Lanes, met lots of really good friends and thoroughly enjoyed myself, makes a break from being around Taxis day in and day out.

Around the same time that I bought Egor I was invited to attend an initial meeting to set up a 4x4 Response group, the group was established and a committee voted in that night. At their first meeting, the group decided to co-opt me onto the committee as I had made a few suggestions that they thought could be of use.

Now what is a 4x4 Response group I hear you say? well 4x4 Response groups have been set up around the Country in various forms for several years. The group is made up of volunteers who offer the use of their 4x4 vehicle in adverse weather conditions to the emergency services, hospitals, care agencies, meals on wheels services and any other essential service, basically they offer logistical support to these agencies when their normal mode of transport cannot proceed due to the weather.

The group progressed through the winter and had a couple of call outs but then during the spring the momentum seemed to slow! An AGM was called for July and the where the committee stood down and I was voted in as Chairman, much to my surprise!

Since then with the help of the new committee with have made huge progress and were called out by Kent County Council during the couple of days snow that we had during December, then in January we responded to approx 500 requests for assistance from our user agencies, we performed tasks like transporting nurses to and from work, transporting paramedics to emergency calls, ferrying care workers to their clients, delivering meals on wheels to the elderly and much more.

If you would like to find out more about South East England 4x4 Response please visit the website http://www.southeast4x4response.org.uk/

New Blog

Well its been a long time coming but I have finally decided that I should write a blog! I was probably one of the very first London Taxi Drivers to start using the internet in 1996 and putting up London Taxi related website on the World Wide Web for all to see. Over the last 14 years I have witnessed alot of changes on the web, there are obviously a lot mroe people using the internet and of course these include a lot more taxi drivers. There was once only a couple of London Taxi websites on the net but now there are literally hundreds! it seems everyone wants their slice of the World Wide Web!

There have been various forms of email lists and Taxi Forums run by different people over the years, most have dissapeared into the abyss of internet heaven (or hell) as it may be, some have remained and probably the oldest and longest running list is that of the Taxi Talk Discussion list which I still run. It is basiclaly an email list where members can send an email that the whole group receives, also any replies are also sent to the whole group.

There is also the advent of Twitter! this has brought a lot of London Taxi Drivers together who have formed TweetaLondonCab, this is a service where members of the public can do what it says on the tin, they can from their mobile phone Tweet a London Cab, the customers seem to love the service and everyone is in a win, win situation.

Well enough about history and lets start looking forward to the future, I will try to update my blog at least once a week and aim to make it interesting, funny and informative!