Black Cabs?
Does the expression "black cabs" when referring to a London Licensed Taxi irritate you? One thing that both TAXI Editor Stuart Pessok and I have been going on about for many moons is that Licensed London Taxis are taxis and not black cabs. Besides anything else, black is hardly the overwhelming number one colour choice anymore, so why should the most respected taxi fleet in the world – bar none – be referred to so incorrectly?
   I cannot speak for Stuart, but I have of late become increasingly cheesed-off with the number of referrals to black cabs and from whence they emanate. They arrive from PCO press releases, from the Mayor’s office, from LTI and perhaps most astonishingly of all, from our own Dial-a-Cab drivers when sending in letters to Call Sign.
   Up until now, I have "amended" many of the mentions to black cabs and replaced the offending words with Licensed Taxis – but I am becoming overwhelmed with the process and begin to wonder whether it’s worth my while worrying when 90% of the public seem to refer to us as black cabs anyway! In their minds, they associate the phrase with Licensed Taxis as against Private Hire – who are probably just as peed off at being referred to as minicabs!
   So I am seriously considering the option of going with the flow and calling us all whatever the writer refers to us as – Licensed Taxis or black cabs.
   I wish Stuart good luck with his campaign that – unless Call Sign readers tell me otherwise – I will leave in his hands.

Stubborn DaC Drivers!
Tony Guerrier ( L28) and Robert Lyle (W39) have at least two things in common – they are both on Dial-a-Cab and also both are extremely stubborn, refusing to give in to adversity. You can read their separate stories in this issue when both were involved with PCNs - Tony for inadvertently getting caught in the Holborn / Kingsway yellow box junction, whilst Robert went into battle on behalf of a friend who was accused by TfL of clipping the Kings Cross bus lane from which Taxis are banned. Neither was prepared to surrender.
   Sid Nathan (K88) also went up against Camden Council in the last issue, when he told how he dropped a passenger late one evening, outside a supermarket to buy some milk. Unfortunately Sid was videoed parking at a bus stop. He even went on live radio to put his case! In this issue, Sid tells the result of the case.
   They may be "just PCNs" to some, but they are far more than that to DaC drivers who believe that if they are issued incorrectly –

2005 AGM, Call Sign Letters and MI5…
Those of you who were at the recent AGM will have been entertained by a verbal melee
between two drivers who had written to Call Sign and the Editor – ME! It followed an article in the February issue where I wondered whether I had been hoaxed by a letter from Mr Joe Connor (N64) and if that was the case, it would cast a doubt over another two letters received at the same time and which both had seemed genuine on their own.
   Joe Connor had taken advantage of a Call Sign offer to ask a prospective Call Sign Board member a question and wrote to restanding Board member, Tom Whitbread as did Keith Coldrake (J17) and Nick Horton (F15). Call Sign is different from ComCab’s Link and RTG’s Mountview News in that it is not afraid to include any letters, regardless of whether they are in praise of DaC or indeed, critical of the Society. And unless I find anything suspicious, I assume that all letters received are genuine, which is why I refuse to publish letters that other magazines put in as "name and address supplied" because in my experience, many of those are made up and I don’t go in for page filling!
   I arrived at Brunswick Hose one day to check my post. The cubbyhole was empty. On my way out of the building, three letters were waiting having been delivered by hand and all three were published as received in the January issue. I was perhaps surprised that they all chose to question restanding Board members who they could have written to at any time rather that question new prospective Board members, but that would have been their choice.
   Then several days after publication, Tom Whitbread called me and said that he was trying to trace a driver called Joe Connor (N64), but that in Call Sign his name had been printed as J. Conner. Had I made a proofing error? I looked in the letters file and re-read the letter. No, he had put J. Conner at the top by his address and at the bottom under his name. Tom came back to me a day later and said that all Joe Connor’s DaC papers had his name ending in ‘or’ rather than the ‘er’ he had written.
   I didn’t ask Tom Whitbread why he wanted Mr Connor and

never knew until the AGM when
Joe Connor himself mentioned
complaints. What it did do was to plant into my mind the possibility of my being hoaxed, after all, the letter was written in good English with correct spelling – except for his own name! As the other two letters arrived at the same time, I had to wonder whether they too could be hoaxes, but as I didn’t actually see them arrive, I couldn’t prove that they hadn’t just come in several minutes apart. The above led me to write the article in the February issue asking whether the magazine could have been the victim of an elaborate hoax?
  At the AGM, one of the letter writers, Keith Coldrake, demanded an apology from me for suggesting that his letter was a hoax (not quite what I wrote, but let’s not be too choosy). Then Mr Connor got up and referred to me as fancying myself as an agent from MI5 because of my "hoax" story.
   His neighbour had written the letter for him and didn’t know how to spell the name Conner, he told the members present. Why was it so important how his name was spelt, he wondered? He repeated his MI5 taunt again before verbally lashing out at Tom Whitbread. At the end, he still couldn’t understand why someone incorrectly spelling his name twice could lead an Editor to suspect how genuine the letter was! He did, however, admit that he had hand-delivered all three letters himself at which time Brian Rice called a halt to the proceedings, saying that the matter had been given a good airing. I was about to ask why someone who lived in West London and who failed to spell his own name correctly, was delivering letters for two other drivers who lived in central London and Hertfordshire, but no doubt Mr Connor would have told me to get back to my MI5 office and that it was none of my business!
   And apologies? Well of course I’m sorry that my assumption was apparently incorrect, but if Mr Connor can’t see why he created the situation, then I fail to see what other assumption I could have come to. After all, Mr Connor must have read the letter before putting it in the envelope as it was a photocopy – at least the signature was so I assume that the whole letter was. Could he not have crossed out the e in his name and replaced it with an o? And Keith Coldrake and Nick Horton’s apologies? Yes they deserve one, but not from MI5. It was Mr Connor who created the whole situation and hopefully he will apologise to them both for bringing their names into this unpleasant mess…
Roll on the next AGM!

Alan Fisher
callsignmag@aol.com