Recently, I’ve almost not had a day go by where a taxi driver doesn’t attempt to rip me off in my home town of Oxford, here in the UK. Just a couple of days ago during a short shopping trip to Oxford city I stopped a black Hackney cab and asked him to take me home which is about a six miles journey. On route, I noticed he had turned the meter to fare #3 which is the most expensive and is illegal. Taxi drivers are obligated to not overcharge their customers illegally and use the correct fare numbers at the correct times.

Most of the time, taxi drivers should have their meters set to fare #1, unless it’s after 10pm or all day Sunday which is fare #2. The most expensive and rarely used, (legally) is fare #3, fare #3 is for Christmas day and long trips beyond the city limits. A typical taxi driver would virtually never have to use fare #3.  It nearly doubles the cost of any reasonably long journey (10 miles or more) and adds approximately 30% to the cost of a 5 mile journey.

I challenged the driver and he blew me off with, “well, I’ve just got off the motorway” (yeah right) and then he didn’t change it! He said it would add something like 30 Pence to my 6 mile journey when in fact it added £3. When I got home, he expected me to pay full rate which of course I didn’t as I knew what it should have cost – he then argued further saying the figure I had worked out was much too low. Pure and utter dishonesty. I didn’t pay what he wanted.

My second encounter with a dishonest taxi driver of the week occurred today; I had a guy start the meter within my 5 minute grace period – so the meter was running as I got in the car off my train from London!

I’m really sick and tired of these taxi drivers ripping people off in Oxford. I’m writing this post to encourage people to make public the names and details of the criminal taxi drivers, here around Oxford.

If you’ve been ripped off, please leave the details in the comments and I’ll publish them, details like taxi numbers, type of car, the offence caused, name of taxi firm and any other details will be most helpful in actually figuring out who these people are so the council can investigate these peoples nefarious activities.

Please do not use bad language or emotional language in the comments, however hard it maybe, I will not publish the comments if they contain language as such. Just the facts. Also, do not comment if you only suspect you’ve been ripped off, you need to know beyond reasonable doubt that some guy took a chance and tried to rip you off.

Please cut and paste the layout directly underneath this sentence so the comments will follow a logical format:

a) Three number license for taxi as issued by the council for their taxi license:

b) Date & time of offence:

c) Journey – From & Too:

d) Name of taxi company that provides the radios or cars

e) What Happened? – How did the taxi driver try to illegally overcharge you:

f) Type of car, Make- Model – Colour:

g)  Any other details which may be helpful.

Here are the names and numbers of taxi firms in Oxford, should you ever need to call one. I do not know which of the companies is the best or the worst, it seems like pot luck as to whether you get a lying, dishonest toe-rag or not.

ABC Taxis: 01865 770077 / 01865 775577
Botley Taxis: 01865 423264 / 07866 423264
001 Taxis: 01865 240000
RadioTaxis: 01865 242424 / 01865 249743
Royal Cars: 01865 777333
Oxford Cars: 01865 406070 / 01865 406080
Elite Cars: 01865 250500
Star Cars: 01865 777695

I may have opted in as I tried the site, but the amount of text messages and emails I get from these people is ridiculous, one night I got fifteen emails. Yesterday, I got six text messages in three hours.

This is after I logged in and changed my settings, maybe it took a few hours to take effect, however, whatever the circumstances, Madbid.com have really annoyed me with their very aggressive marketing.

I for one, will never use them again because if it.

BT Broadband, while the service levels seem to be good, the results are as useful as a one armed trapeze artist with an itchy arse.

Really crap.

3 days waiting for an engineer, 3 visits, one engineer several hours late. 30 – 40 telephone calls. No solution to my unreliable BT broadband that’s been dropping the line intermittently since I moved into my new apartment.

Totally and utterly incompitent – however willing.

The funny part is, after each engineering visit, BT (India) call you to ask if it’s fixed and what the engineer said.  Don’t you have the facility to ring the engineer yourself? Why ask the customer what the engineer said?! It’s very unprofessional and really highlights the hard work they have put into being so incompetent, it’s paying dividends.

I trade online and have lost a small fortune because my broadband line has a knack of going down right at the point of when I want to close a trade. Think I’ve lost the equivilent value of a small car thus far, thanks for for eroding my investments BT. Nice one.

I’ve got a 4th engineer booked for tomorrow, I’m not hopeful.

For a while this week, I thought we maybe in Manama Souq,  Tehran or Cairo with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or some other Dictator  Hamad ibn Isa Al Khalifa in an less than appealing country or Kingdom. Instead of the UK.

If you’re enraged or wondering why I’m willing to make such a libellous or strong statement as such, here is my reason:

David Cameron, Prime Minister stated:

“So we are working with the Police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality.”

WFT – OMG.

So, MR. UK Government, I ask you this: When there is an event that you don’t like or agree with, will you just shut down various forms of communication? Sort of like the Middle East does? For the record, I’m not condoning the activities of these criminal Yobs, in fact, if I was in control of the sentencing, I’d give each them ten years of hard labour. However, that doesn’t change the fact that you cannot simply shut down various forms of communication when you feel like it. It’s illegal censorship of the highest order and it should never, ever, ever, ever be allowed to happen here in this democratic, free country.

Even Boris Johnson’s technology advisor named Mike Butcher seeming surprised that the Blackberry Instant Messaging service hadn’t been shut down?! WTF! Surprised that the UK government hadn’t illegally censored the media?!

This is serous, very serious. We cannot allow this to happen when events disagree with the people and power and in turn they decide to start censoring bits of the media on a whim. The riot censorship was a test, thank God it didn’t happen but once it’s the “norm” it’s downhill from there. That’s not to say this isn’t a corrupt society already; I’m angry and deflated by recent events and the realisation over the last several years that we’re all living in a Cesspool of lies and PR spin as the rich and powerful do as they please. As they say, “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em”. I just wish I could bring myself to do it.

I’ve never completely “got” Twitter; it’s always felt unnatural in terms of communication to me – like Skateboarding, but with your other foot forward. It’s manageable, but awkward.

It’s no surprise that Twitters traffic is starting to level and even decline,  to me at least. What is surprising though is how quickly it’s changed from a strong degree of acceleration to a slight decline within a matter of months. I guess part of the decline is down to G+ opening up and many of the prolific Tweeters experimenting with G+ and not Tweeting as much, which draws other people off the site and towards G+ which exacerbates the downward cycle.

While Twitter is a cool gadget, I’ve never thought that it was a great way to communicate, the random illogical conversations in your stream and on the off-chance one spotted something that was interesting, you need to click back and seeing where the conversation started between the two people was sort of, annoying, and a little confusing.

I’ve never been a Twitter Fanboy and think I’ve Tweeted about thirty times in three years. However, I do find it useful when looking for breaking news. Twitter does have its uses, but I suspect it’s oversold and we’ll see an “adjustment in traffic” where it’ll lose a large number of users and then stabilise. That is, if they can make it profitable.

I’ve included a screenshot of Twitter’s traffic over the last year or so. Look for the recent decline.