Author: wnevets

For those who have encountered a situation where they have been unable to win school contracts due to some crazily low bidding from other parties, may not be aware of the services offered by Volunteer Cornwall Drivers. Due to the fact they are operating a voluntary service, the price bidding is generally out of our reach, as most of us would operate at a loss or break even scenario. I posed some questions to the council to get some clarification for everyone – you can see the details here.

Did you know that in the event of ANY road collision you should report it to your licensing officer “irrespective whether it is subject to Section 170 of The Road Traffic Act 1988. This is a statutory requirement under the Section 50(3) of the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1976. All collisions should be reported to the Licensing Officer as soon as practicable and in any case within 72 hours”.

Here is the report form should you be unlucky enough to need it: Council Licensing – Accident Report Form

The council are starting to discuss the Taxi Trade as part of their mission to “clean up” the air in Cornwall. As always we do not want to be an easy target and a quick way to get some headlines in the interests of showing some kind of positive activity whether actually pro-active or not, and beneficial or not. At the last Taxi Forum this topic was discussed, and a presentation was made regarding the pollution from diesel burning engines, where it was highlighted that 40% came from diesel cars. Whether the percentage represents the volume of diesel cars as a percentage of all diesel vehicles, or the actual contribution to pollution as a percentage of pollution is unclear.

Abacus from Falmouth were very keen to speak the benefits of the Toyota Prius Hybrid, both it’s durability of 200k plus miles and a running cost (fuel) of 10p per mile. However, my old Picasso left service at 226k and is still going strong and had an average fuel cost of 11p per mile and averaged 46 mpg, so considering the Prius averages 47 mpg, I have to say what’s the point? It’s a lot more money for what? We are at the mercy of what the motor industry makes available to us, and that an electric car with a range of 90-110 miles per charge in the Nissan Leaf is of little use to anyone who dares to leave town, unless you want to spend 75k on a Tessla for double the range! Oh, and the 7 seat (cough) Nissan NV200 minibus with a range of 90 miles on a good day (would you make it back from Penzance!) seems OK as long as all your passengers are from a long lost tribe of little people with luggage no bigger than a rubicks cube. Needless to say really that a job to Gatwick is out of the question?

There is a new website where you can see a vehicles cleanliness rating based supposedly on real life driving conditions https://equaindex.com/, where apparently you can find some older cars say EURO4 can rate cleaner than some newer EURO6 vehicles! It is aimed to help you make an educated choice when buying a vehicle, but does this mean we have another battle on our hands?

Last Summer we had to fight off the moving of Fore St Rank because we need to be more responsible for peoples behaviour in the absence of actual Police Officers (and I quote “Policing is changing and we need to encourage communities to Police themselves”), because out of the tens of thousands of punters who come through Newquay town in a 14 month period 23 had to go to A&E (not 12 months? Gee, you wouldn’t be trying to inflate the stats would you? The actual stat for 12 months was ’16’). Sounds like a pretty good track record to me, Newquay is not so bad after all, must be why you hardly see any Police.