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Irony now is that, thanks to competition, getting a car in London if it's busy now requires trying your luck with Kapten, Bolt, Uber, Ola, and, if all fails, Ge

Irony now is that, thanks to competition, getting a car in London if it's busy now requires trying your luck with Kapten, Bolt, Uber, Ola, and, if all fails, Gett/FreeNOW for a Black Cab. All the drivers freely admit that they're driving for all the apps, which is great, but it can be a nightmare actually getting a car sometimes due to supply being spread across 4 or 5 apps now. Feels like a TFL run app would be best, but maybe that's communist or something?

selfhoster11 6y ago
The UK doesn't have the "shared == communist" mentality from what I can tell. Communism is not such a dirty word either.
- mhh__ 6y ago
  Well, the Labour party just ran their most socialist campaign in years and suffered a historic defeat.
  - silveroriole 6y ago
    But also the biggest party membership in a long time, the Tories quietly ‘adopting’ some of their policies post-election, the derided free internet idea seeming weirdly prescient when Covid hit, the number of people who voted Tory to ‘get Brexit done’... it’s more complicated than “they lost because people hate socialism”. e: according to the downvotes, no, it is because people hate socialism. It must be nice to live in a world with such simple answers eh :)
    - dkdbejwi383 6y ago
      > e: according to the downvotes, no, it is because people hate socialism. It must be nice to live in a world with such simple answers eh :) It's probably because a lot of users on here are American (and thus pre-disposed to hate "socialism") and also a large number of users on here are wanna ultra-paneer libertarian bozos who think they want a minimalist, economically liberal government so that their startup can _finally_ make the millions it would be making if it wasn't held back by the red menace
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - aries1980 6y ago
        Some of us grew up in a mild socialist/communist regime, in where leaders thought they can more wisely spend the fruit of your labour than yourself. So we emigrated to a country that supposed to be free. In the UK, a middle class earner already pays 40% income tax + 20% VAT + 13.8% NI, that's a neat 73.8% to the community already (not to mention the extra taxes, like the Council Tax or extra duties when you pour a gin). The labour wanted to increase this by 5-25 percentage point. What is communism, if not the political ruling that strips the common people to build up wealth?
        dkdbejwi383 6y ago
        > What is communism, if not the political ruling that strips the common people to build up wealth? That sounds like capitalism to me. > In the UK, a middle class earner already pays 40% income tax + 20% VAT + 13.8% NI, that's a neat 73.8% to the community already (not to mention the extra taxes, like the Council Tax or extra duties when you pour a gin). The labour wanted to increase this by 5-25 percentage point. I am a very middle-class earner and I'd very happily pay more tax if it went to funding the NHS, metal health programs, real addition treatment (not criminalisation of addicts), house building, arts programs. In fact I have consistently voted for this. Your post insinuates that these taxes are just taken with nothing gained. I am happy to pay council tax because I know that pays for services I benefit from, like rubbish collection, parks and landscape maintenance, street cleaning, etc. I am happy to pay duty on alcohol because I know it is an addictive substance, and although I don't suffer from addiction, others do, and in order for me to freely consume alcohol I have to accept that as a society we have to pay for those to do suffer because of it. I am happy to pay income tax and NI because I use NHS services, I went to a state funded school, I use the railways, etc.
        aries1980 6y ago
        > That sounds like capitalism to me. Capitalism encourages private ownership and keeping the means of your labour. High taxation is the opposite of this, because it doesn't leave enough profit at the individual, which prevents private ownership. > Your post insinuates that these taxes are just taken with nothing gained. That's not true. Just because to me the current and Labour-proposed level of taxation is not motivating to do more doesn't mean some level of taxation is not necessary. It is not all or nothing. > I have to accept that as a society we have to pay for those to do suffer because of it. This is the fundamental difference from our point-of-view. I look at free and adult individuals as who are responsible for their actions and can be held accountable.
    - iso1631 6y ago
      "Free internet" idea seemed silly - why not free electricity to power the internet? How would such a system cope with alternate technologies in rural areas where WISPs or Satelite are better provisions. How would alternate providers who provide their own fibre rather than using openreach compete? I went door to door in December, spoke personally to hundreds of people from all backgrounds. A significant number were switching Labour to Tory because they did not like Corbyn. More voted Tory rather than Lib Dem because they were worried about Corbyn. Should they have been worried? Probably not. Were they influenced by unfair media coverage? Probably. Would Corbyn have been better than Johnson? Certainly. That doesn't matter, what matters is what people believe, and Corbyn was a massive millstone around Labour's neck in 2019, which (when combined with a non-democratic voting system) led to a Conservative landslide. Had they dumped Corbyn in November and replaced him with Keir Starmer, we'd likely have had a government of national unity instead of an election, a referendum which would have swung to remain just like the Swiss referendum did, and competence rather than corruption throughout this pandemic.
  - twen_ty 6y ago
    Labour lost because of Brexit, not because of policies. Populism won.
    - pjc50 6y ago
      It's really over-determined; while Corbyn wasn't particularly impressive, I've never seen quite such a set of media smears against a single person. They were really laying on the "communist spy / IRA supporter / anti-semitic" nonsense. Factional infighting was also a factor. It was clear that the right wing of the Labour party would prefer losing to allowing Corbyn to win, because that would lose their personal control over the party. From their point of view, the tens of thousands of new labour party members were just entryists. How do we know that the concerns were insincere? Well, Claire Fox spent twenty years in the Revolutionary Communist Party and supported IRA bombing of Warrington in the 90s, but has now been made a member of the UK's permanent unelected legislature, the House of Lords. People will hate socialism if they're told to do so. Whereas Revolutionary Communist Party members can be promoted to baronetcy once they fall in line. Welcome to Britain.
    - aries1980 6y ago
      ...and because instead of lowering the govn't expenditure, they planned to increase the tax for the middle class: https://www.ifs.org.uk/election/2019/article/labour-s-proposed-income-tax-rises-for-high-income-individuals https://www.ifs.org.uk/election/2019/article/labour-s-propos...
      - silveroriole 6y ago
        As the page says, this would affect 4% of people in the country. Seems like an issue HN will assign disproportionate importance to but would not really have been a decisive issue for the country.
        aries1980 6y ago
        We are talking about 1.6M employee/small business owner, who has families as well. So Labour supposed to punish the most ambitious, hard-working people and their families with even higher taxes (40+20+13.8+... percent) they already pay.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- pjc50 6y ago
  Sort of. We share a lot of media with the US; while "red scare" doesn't work directly, re-fighting the battles of the 1970s seems to. We definitely have a "privatized == better" meme in government despite the public generally hating it. What the people seem to want is a Tory government that delivers state-funded public services, but only for the over-65s.
  - te_chris 6y ago
    Your last sentence chefs kiss. And also keeps the foreigners out of the so-called 'no-go' zones that the cities have become, despite none of the people calling for this living in the cities or even coming into contact with foreigners regularly.
    - pjc50 6y ago
      Oh yes. And respect the concerns of hardworking people and the working class, no matter how many years it's been since they retired.
- kofejnik 6y ago
  actual communism is no better than nazism
  - selfhoster11 6y ago
    Neither Tories nor Labour have realistically much to do with either of those.
    - kofejnik 6y ago
      communism is still one of the dirtiest words around
scanny 6y ago
Seems like a similar dilema to streaming, all the content is split across a bunch of services. I wonder if there will be a way to spin all these threads together someday, I suppose in private hands that would become a monopoly.
mytailorisrich 6y ago
This is not new. It's just that the situation has changed from a multitude of phone numbers to a number of apps. Indeed, only black cabs may be hailed in the street. All the others are minicabs and have to be booked by phone by calling them or their company, and now also through apps. Even with a number of different apps it's still simpler than before.
crispyporkbites 6y ago
A tfl / government run app will be where we land. There’s nothing innovative or new about UberX anymore, the app/infra could be replicated easily. There’s not many reasons why a government would want Uber to run their transport when they can run it and profit/subsidise it themselves, as well as better integrate it into the street infrastructure. If I were Uber I’d be pushing for a lot more regulation to keep competitors out, drivers locked in and the cost of building an alternative as artificially high as possible.
- the_other 6y ago
  Isn't that what the black cabs had? Oh the irony.
dkdbejwi383 6y ago
Kapten no longer exists now and it prompts you to use Free Now if you open the app.
twic 6y ago
But if all the drivers have all the apps, they aren't "spread out". You have all the liquidity on the market on all of the apps.
- te_chris 6y ago
  They’re not all on them at all times though, nor paid equally by each app at all times. From memory Uber penalises being online and passing on work, so assume there’s algorithms for that with all of them. Then you have the fun one where someone accepts a ride, but is clearly finishing one on another app, so your 3 minute wait magically becomes 15.

selfhoster11 6y ago

The UK doesn't have the "shared == communist" mentality from what I can tell. Communism is not such a dirty word either.

mhh__ 6y ago
Well, the Labour party just ran their most socialist campaign in years and suffered a historic defeat.
- silveroriole 6y ago
  But also the biggest party membership in a long time, the Tories quietly ‘adopting’ some of their policies post-election, the derided free internet idea seeming weirdly prescient when Covid hit, the number of people who voted Tory to ‘get Brexit done’... it’s more complicated than “they lost because people hate socialism”. e: according to the downvotes, no, it is because people hate socialism. It must be nice to live in a world with such simple answers eh :)
  - dkdbejwi383 6y ago
    > e: according to the downvotes, no, it is because people hate socialism. It must be nice to live in a world with such simple answers eh :) It's probably because a lot of users on here are American (and thus pre-disposed to hate "socialism") and also a large number of users on here are wanna ultra-paneer libertarian bozos who think they want a minimalist, economically liberal government so that their startup can _finally_ make the millions it would be making if it wasn't held back by the red menace
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - aries1980 6y ago
      Some of us grew up in a mild socialist/communist regime, in where leaders thought they can more wisely spend the fruit of your labour than yourself. So we emigrated to a country that supposed to be free. In the UK, a middle class earner already pays 40% income tax + 20% VAT + 13.8% NI, that's a neat 73.8% to the community already (not to mention the extra taxes, like the Council Tax or extra duties when you pour a gin). The labour wanted to increase this by 5-25 percentage point. What is communism, if not the political ruling that strips the common people to build up wealth?
      - dkdbejwi383 6y ago
        > What is communism, if not the political ruling that strips the common people to build up wealth? That sounds like capitalism to me. > In the UK, a middle class earner already pays 40% income tax + 20% VAT + 13.8% NI, that's a neat 73.8% to the community already (not to mention the extra taxes, like the Council Tax or extra duties when you pour a gin). The labour wanted to increase this by 5-25 percentage point. I am a very middle-class earner and I'd very happily pay more tax if it went to funding the NHS, metal health programs, real addition treatment (not criminalisation of addicts), house building, arts programs. In fact I have consistently voted for this. Your post insinuates that these taxes are just taken with nothing gained. I am happy to pay council tax because I know that pays for services I benefit from, like rubbish collection, parks and landscape maintenance, street cleaning, etc. I am happy to pay duty on alcohol because I know it is an addictive substance, and although I don't suffer from addiction, others do, and in order for me to freely consume alcohol I have to accept that as a society we have to pay for those to do suffer because of it. I am happy to pay income tax and NI because I use NHS services, I went to a state funded school, I use the railways, etc.
        aries1980 6y ago
        > That sounds like capitalism to me. Capitalism encourages private ownership and keeping the means of your labour. High taxation is the opposite of this, because it doesn't leave enough profit at the individual, which prevents private ownership. > Your post insinuates that these taxes are just taken with nothing gained. That's not true. Just because to me the current and Labour-proposed level of taxation is not motivating to do more doesn't mean some level of taxation is not necessary. It is not all or nothing. > I have to accept that as a society we have to pay for those to do suffer because of it. This is the fundamental difference from our point-of-view. I look at free and adult individuals as who are responsible for their actions and can be held accountable.
  - iso1631 6y ago
    "Free internet" idea seemed silly - why not free electricity to power the internet? How would such a system cope with alternate technologies in rural areas where WISPs or Satelite are better provisions. How would alternate providers who provide their own fibre rather than using openreach compete? I went door to door in December, spoke personally to hundreds of people from all backgrounds. A significant number were switching Labour to Tory because they did not like Corbyn. More voted Tory rather than Lib Dem because they were worried about Corbyn. Should they have been worried? Probably not. Were they influenced by unfair media coverage? Probably. Would Corbyn have been better than Johnson? Certainly. That doesn't matter, what matters is what people believe, and Corbyn was a massive millstone around Labour's neck in 2019, which (when combined with a non-democratic voting system) led to a Conservative landslide. Had they dumped Corbyn in November and replaced him with Keir Starmer, we'd likely have had a government of national unity instead of an election, a referendum which would have swung to remain just like the Swiss referendum did, and competence rather than corruption throughout this pandemic.
- twen_ty 6y ago
  Labour lost because of Brexit, not because of policies. Populism won.
  - pjc50 6y ago
    It's really over-determined; while Corbyn wasn't particularly impressive, I've never seen quite such a set of media smears against a single person. They were really laying on the "communist spy / IRA supporter / anti-semitic" nonsense. Factional infighting was also a factor. It was clear that the right wing of the Labour party would prefer losing to allowing Corbyn to win, because that would lose their personal control over the party. From their point of view, the tens of thousands of new labour party members were just entryists. How do we know that the concerns were insincere? Well, Claire Fox spent twenty years in the Revolutionary Communist Party and supported IRA bombing of Warrington in the 90s, but has now been made a member of the UK's permanent unelected legislature, the House of Lords. People will hate socialism if they're told to do so. Whereas Revolutionary Communist Party members can be promoted to baronetcy once they fall in line. Welcome to Britain.
  - aries1980 6y ago
    ...and because instead of lowering the govn't expenditure, they planned to increase the tax for the middle class: https://www.ifs.org.uk/election/2019/article/labour-s-proposed-income-tax-rises-for-high-income-individuals https://www.ifs.org.uk/election/2019/article/labour-s-propos...
    - silveroriole 6y ago
      As the page says, this would affect 4% of people in the country. Seems like an issue HN will assign disproportionate importance to but would not really have been a decisive issue for the country.
      - aries1980 6y ago
        We are talking about 1.6M employee/small business owner, who has families as well. So Labour supposed to punish the most ambitious, hard-working people and their families with even higher taxes (40+20+13.8+... percent) they already pay.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
pjc50 6y ago
Sort of. We share a lot of media with the US; while "red scare" doesn't work directly, re-fighting the battles of the 1970s seems to. We definitely have a "privatized == better" meme in government despite the public generally hating it. What the people seem to want is a Tory government that delivers state-funded public services, but only for the over-65s.
- te_chris 6y ago
  Your last sentence chefs kiss. And also keeps the foreigners out of the so-called 'no-go' zones that the cities have become, despite none of the people calling for this living in the cities or even coming into contact with foreigners regularly.
  - pjc50 6y ago
    Oh yes. And respect the concerns of hardworking people and the working class, no matter how many years it's been since they retired.
kofejnik 6y ago
actual communism is no better than nazism
- selfhoster11 6y ago
  Neither Tories nor Labour have realistically much to do with either of those.
  - kofejnik 6y ago
    communism is still one of the dirtiest words around

scanny 6y ago

Seems like a similar dilema to streaming, all the content is split across a bunch of services. I wonder if there will be a way to spin all these threads together someday, I suppose in private hands that would become a monopoly.

mytailorisrich 6y ago

This is not new. It's just that the situation has changed from a multitude of phone numbers to a number of apps. Indeed, only black cabs may be hailed in the street. All the others are minicabs and have to be booked by phone by calling them or their company, and now also through apps. Even with a number of different apps it's still simpler than before.

crispyporkbites 6y ago

A tfl / government run app will be where we land. There’s nothing innovative or new about UberX anymore, the app/infra could be replicated easily. There’s not many reasons why a government would want Uber to run their transport when they can run it and profit/subsidise it themselves, as well as better integrate it into the street infrastructure. If I were Uber I’d be pushing for a lot more regulation to keep competitors out, drivers locked in and the cost of building an alternative as artificially high as possible.

the_other 6y ago
Isn't that what the black cabs had? Oh the irony.

dkdbejwi383 6y ago

Kapten no longer exists now and it prompts you to use Free Now if you open the app.

twic 6y ago

But if all the drivers have all the apps, they aren't "spread out". You have all the liquidity on the market on all of the apps.

te_chris 6y ago
They’re not all on them at all times though, nor paid equally by each app at all times. From memory Uber penalises being online and passing on work, so assume there’s algorithms for that with all of them. Then you have the fun one where someone accepts a ride, but is clearly finishing one on another app, so your 3 minute wait magically becomes 15.