The Gathering … Here’s hoping!
Roy January 9th, 2013
I just read an article on the USA today site suggesting it might be having an affect:
36% of Americans taking a vacation say they’ll be packing a passport this year. About a third plan trips both within and outside the USA, and it’s a good bet many will cross the Atlantic: When asked where they’d visit if money were no object and they could go anywhere, nearly a third of those polled mentioned Europe (with Italy and Ireland leading the pack).
Maybe there’s something Taxi drivers could be doing to promote the gathering?
- Taxi News
- Comments(13)
why should we do anything for this state what have they done for us the gathering is only a other way to get revinue into this country and save the td arse.
Today I went out to Dundrum shopping center.
While I was there I had Sushi Orange plate 4.50 red plate 2.75 then €1 for a glass of water which came from a tap on the bar.
Yo ! Sushi no more.
Our prices are too high.
There was a “Gathering of the clans” for Scotland a few years ago, that flopped !
Wheres theres muck theres money. id rather eat my own socks. pure muck. should have went went to eddie rockets for a good feed. fook that smelly fish. get better fish in the dodder. Cant beat a double take burger.
Ger i saw that on the news ok, he should have got 10years, then deported.
Should have got a kick in the nuts when they slammed the plane door on his big thick stupid head.
The gathering of the clans is a fairly regular event in Scotland, or so I have heard. It is a relative novelty here. Maybe there will be some extra visitors to Ireland this year who will not be too much put off by the rip-off culture that still has not gone completely away. All we can hope for is that maybe some more “Yanks” come to Ireland than in previous years. They are good and generous customers like the ones I ferried a good while ago to the K-Club. I had to fold part of the rear seat back to get all their luggage in, golf clubs, suitcases. They were astonished when I told them that in Ireland we are not allowed to charge them for luggage and paid me a good bit extra, voluntarily. In America it is the norm to tip. In restaurants, taxis, hotels, in fact in most cases where service is given. Here, tipping is largely a thing of the past. I once, not all that long ago, had a guy who accused me of deliberately cheating because I had run out of small coins and could not give him the 5 cent (YES FIVE CENT) change I owed him. Made a huge song and dance about it. I forgot what the amount was but I had been paid a few times with 50 Euro notes and I ran out of change. It had been a short trip. He paid a fiver and as said I could not come up with the last 5 cent. Gone are the days when you would get a fiver or a tenner and the punter would say “keep the change”. I am now carefully hoarding one-cent coins and if I have another difficult customer I pay them the change with them. Just to make the point.
No matter what, we are tiny fish in a small pond. We just have to swim in between the sharks’ teeth, pick whatever the big fish left over and hope we can swim out again before we are swallowed.
So yes, I can understand where the others are coming from. On the other hand, there just, maybe, might be a few extra crumbs falling off the big table for us.
alright lads im having problems with my avensis 04 head lamps,any body know somewhere to supply and fit a new pair without haven to take out a small mortgage!!
# geazilson 15 Jan 2013 at 3:07 pm
Reading through the Irish Taxi blogs is like leafing through a Lidl’s catalogue. Obviously shrewd, pissed off drivers have cottoned on that it is more lucrative to flog web space to taxi drivers than it is to sit on the ranks for hours on end hoping for a fare.
The same can be said of the myriad ad-hoc taxi ‘unions’ which havd sprung up around Dublin in recent years. Sign up and pay up and they’ll get you discounts on all kinds of subsidised products and services. But take a drive around the City and ask yourself “what have any of these private venture unions done to preserve my livelihood?
Last week S.I.P.T.U. announced that Dublin Bus drivers would strike from Sunday unless the Company withdrew it’s proposals to impose cuts.
By Sunday S.I.P.T.U. had forced the company to sit at the negotiation table to ‘discuss’ the issue. Why in God’s name do Dublin’s 12’000 taxi drivers and Ireland’s circa 40’000 taxi drivers not have one Trade Union with this kind of ‘POWER’ behind it.
Regulators Boards representing Chambers of commerce, the Govt., etc. have treated low-membership taxi unions like eejits since de-regulation. They recognise that a divided workforce is a weak workforce. There has never been a big, powerful, Paid Up MEMBERSHIP Trade Union to enforce Taxi Drivers demands’. The powers that be laugh at the watery little daytime drive from Parnell Square to Merrion Row that have posed as ‘protests’ in the past.
Even the ad-hoc professional taxi unions themselves don’t even bother with such daytime carnivals any more. And God forbid anyone should mention a night-time taxi strike once the Luas, Dart, Bus, Train drivers are all at home snoring their heads off.
Most of the professional union’s energy is burned up by in-fighting between the various vested interests posing as Trade Unions. There doesn’t seem to be a single ideological minded individual amongs them who understands the true meaning of Trades Unionism.
If in this centenary year of the 1913 lockout all Taxi Drivers joined and signed up under ONE new S.I.P.T.U. taxi Union and got someone like Brendan Ogle of the Train Drivers Union to represent them, the Taxi Drivers could realize their potential as the most powerful Unuon in Ireland within weeks.
The possibility of Night time taxi strikes during the gathering, backed up by a full membership trade union would put taxi drivers on a par with Bus drivers.
Drivers are democratically and legally entitled to withdraw their labour during legal industrial action. This is the only tool that the working man has at his disposal. It is the only tool which ever forced any wealthy, employer or Government to sit down as equals at the negotiations table. It is the tool which the Bus Eireann drivers under S.I.P.T.U. used last week to protect and defend their livelihoods.
Together we will definitely rise up, divided as we are we will continue to fall into the abyss.
What’s the latest lads any craic
anybody get any demerrits yet,has anybody witnessed any movment with the intro of new legesleation?
no staff to enforce it as usual
Same filthbags doing what they always do. cheat,rob,scam and rip people off. and the vermin cry racism when the guards do them. new year but nothing new. dublin has turned into a fooking disgrace. the yanks will think they are in lagos when they come home for the gathering..
people will be fleeced, and never come back to Ireland. the vermin will cost us millions long term.