Uber?
Uber?
We used to dream of catching an Uber....
The northern city of York has voted against renewing Uber's licence as the backlash against the ride-hailing firm's business practices continues. Uber's licence to run its private hire taxi operations in the city is due to expire at midnight on December 23. But the city council has rejected its application for renewal because …
Is it still true that Uber are losing money on every ride? If so, then surely after all this time it's too late to claim they are just doing start-up introductory pricing and are now using their financial power to put real taxi companies out of business. I'm pretty sure that's illegal in the UK yet it never seems to get mentioned in any of the disputes over licensing.
"Is it still true that Uber are losing money on every ride?"
Yes, it very much is. Uber's overhead is actually higher than other taxi firms, since the business model can't take advantage of even the very limited economies of scale other taxi companies do (like, for example, bulk-buying cars and employing their own maintenance teams), while also running a huge and very expensive international lobbying arm and legal department to try and get round local laws.
So unless they're charging some 15% higher than other taxi companies, they're losing money. In their 'mature' markets, they've taken about as much of this from the drivers' share as they can get away with, but these markets still return losses.
There's really no amount of scale that can possibly make Uber profitable - it can only ever compete with traditional private hire firms at a loss. The only way that the business model remotely works is it it can become a monopoly in a given market and jack up prices, and even that is questionable - about 50% of the cab market is very price-sensitive and will simply stop using private hire vehicles if the price rises.
Yet back in the day when cultures were being developed a natural boundary such as a large river or a mountain/hill range was enough.
Dunsinain is about 2/3 of the way between here in Dundee and Perth, there are the remains of an iron age hill fort on the site. Birnam wood is to the NW, not an obvious place for an army from England to come from nes pas?
Except the site of Dunsinain is very steep to the South, West and East but slopes to the North AND around Dunkeld/Birnam the mighty river Tay runs through a narrow steep sided gorge inviting relatively easy bridging. Such realities played a big part in warfare for quite some time. Stirling was the site of so many battles because it sits above marshy ground where the Clyde and Forth headwaters are. Any army heading north had to pass through there.
The original Tay bridge which blew down was not built until the late 19thC. The road bridge was not finished until 1972 if memory serves. This suburb, Broughty (Broch Tay) Ferry is a ferry both because the rail ferry which preceded the bridge but also because horse, pedestrian and automobile transport was from here across to Tayport in Fife until both bridges were up. Ditto the two Queensferries on the Forth. Fine for post riders but you couldn't put an army over on them.
"Appeal is intransitive. We need to know whether the appeal is for or against the decision."
Technically correct, but English is a bastard language that borrows schadenfreudes from around the world and thumbs it's nose at grammatical niceties, and any English speaker reading that will have understood that it means appeal against.
Well not really. Based on common press usage, the North refers to Northern England. They then mass Wales into either South or North, and Scotland, mainland or picturescue highlands, occasionally with islands appended. Now in Scotland of course the South seems to very occasionally refer to England, and splitting my time between Edinburgh (common descriptions from the west === poncy bastard), and the Borders (turncoat Bastard - long memories of the Reavers round here where distinguishing between the pirates who ruled the border areas - England and Scotland - was difficult, they stole from everyone)you get a different type of distinction. I supose (although not having lived there) that Wales has the advantage, speaking a fairly healthy and robust alternative language in lots of the country and can distinguish between "southern bastards", "English speaking bastards" and "English incomer bastards"
The north and south is divided using what is known as the "watford gap".
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Hope that clears it up.
Well given the accuracy of the El Reg headline, we have to assume the article is referring to "The North". If memory serves me correctly, "The North", starts slightly north of Harrogate on the A1, hence York is in "The South"!
But given El Reg is HQ'd in London, anything north of Watford (the town not the Gap) is in "the north".
Please don't confuse the UK with England.
England is most of the bottom bit of the big island, except the pregnant belly on the West, that's Wales. The top part of the big island is Scotland, that is most definitely not England, and I think both countries wish it to remain that way (and would prefer for the other country to go away).
In the middle of the big island means you are in the North Of England, although, if you have a wide definition of middle, you might hit the South of Scotland.
Is that clearer?
"the decision – made with seven votes to deny and three to renew – was met with a "huge cheer" from assembled cabbies at the meeting."
I hope that means "when the cabbies were invited in after the decision had been made". The actual decision-making part of a license application/renewal is done behind closed doors with the applicants and interested parties waiting outside. And also, it is normal procedure to state the decision, never to give voting figures, as it is *the board* that makes the decision, not the individual members.