A massive protest by thousands of London Taxi Drivers will take place in London on Wednesday 11th June at 2pm and will gridlock the capital.
The Mayor of London is due to answer questions in the London Assembly at 10am on the same day.
It is not difficult to imagine the scenario of angry taxi drivers protesting in the Assembly and pelting the Mayor with eggs!
Either physically or metaphorically it is likely that Boris Johnson will have egg on his face on Wednesday.
Cabbies Against Boris is fully supportive of the London Taxi protest which is against the many improper and unlawful decisions imposed on the taxi trade by Transport for London and the Mayor.
These include the improper London Taxi Age limit and failure to enforce Private Hire Law (including the recent issues with Uber the mini cab booking app) and many other decisions.
The Mayor of London has been in office for 6 years and in that time more than 25,000 people have died from Air Pollution in London, according to the Mayors own statistics.
London Taxi drivers are probably the group of workers worst affected by the pollution; if workers in any other situation were exposed to toxic pollution all day every day of their working lives the Health and Safety Executive and Unions would have that place of work shut down immediately and the health risk resolved.
In London, instead of taking action to resolve the problem Boris Johnson implemented a Taxi Age limit; he recently claimed in a letter to the Environmental Audit Committee (dated May 8th 2014 )that he has reduced pollution in London by ‘retiring 3000 of the oldest, most polluting taxis’.
In written evidence that the Mayor of London submitted to the same Committee in a report in 2011 he stated
‘’11. NO2 levels have not fallen in recent years as modelling had predicted. This is a problem across major cities in the UK and across the EU. Emerging evidence, including a report by King’s College London, suggests that this may be due to the failure of recent Euro standards to deliver expected reductions of NO2 [1] .
A Euro 5 car, for example, emits around five times as much direct NO2 as a fifteen year old car.’’
In this report he acknowledges that he had seen a report from Kings College London (prior to 2011) and that a new Euro 5 car would emit around five times as much NO2 as a fifteen year old car.
The Mayor of London had previously stated the same in his Air Quality Strategy report of 2010
He then implemented a taxi age limit needlessly scrapping the fifteen year old taxis, which he knew would not reduce pollution at all.
In fact it has been proven to have failed by a Defra report in May 2013 following testing in London carried out by the Environmental Research Group at Kings College London who tested the emissions from tens of thousands of vehicles.
The results of this testing confirmed what the Mayor had said in his statement more than two years earlier and before he implemented the taxi age limit; that the newer taxis actually created MORE NO2 than the older taxis.
The Mayor was asked on many occasions in Mayors questions by London Assembly Members to conduct proper emissions testing BEFORE he needlessly scrapped taxis, to prove that this strategy would actually reduce pollution.
It is a requirement of Public Law for decisions to be evidence based so it would be reasonable to conduct at least some basic testing of taxis.
The Mayor point blank refused to conduct any testing whatsoever, instead relying on the fact that the newer vehicles were Euro 5 and therefore would be cleaner, even though this completely contradicted his own written evidence that he had submitted to the Environmental Audit Committee in 2011.
This is a clear example that proper process has been ignored and that the Mayor of London’s Air Quality strategies have not complied with Public Law which is why they have failed.
The Mayors failed strategies will surely be exposed when he appears in person before the Environmental Audit Committee.
The Mayor and TFL have also ignored proper process on many of their decisions in relation to the London Taxi trade which makes these decisions unlawful.
In 2010 in an interview with LBC the Mayor claimed that he could not interfere with a TFL decision about traffic management at the Blackwall Tunnel because if he did and someone died he could be charged with Corporate Manslaughter.
His decisions about Air Quality in London have meant that 25000 people have died; does this mean he should be charged with Corporate Manslaughter?
