<p>  <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />London cab drivers who pride themselves on  their knowledge of  some 25,000 streets in the non grid-patterned city are up in arms over a  new program announced by left-wing mayor Ken Livingstone to bring more minorities into the ranks of cabbies according to a report in The New York Times.

<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” /> 

Livingstone has decided to use the dubious practice of profiling to bring more minorities and women into a field dominated by white men.  Yet as has been proven elsewhere just because the statistics show that the cabdrivers racial composition doesn’t mirror society as a whole doesn’t make it wrong or discriminatory.

 

For Livingstone that is of little consequence. So he will be spending about $4.7 million over the next three years to help those that are supposedly underrepresented to obtain the materials and take the necessary exams to become a cabdriver.  That is the average amount of time it takes a person to study and pass the exam known as the Knowledge.

 

The Times quoted Livingstone as saying  about his program “This project will help address the barriers to employment that currently exist for women and people from black, Asian and ethnic minority communities to participate in this important part of our city’s life.” 

 

That all sounds well and good but maybe the mayor should have talked with Courtney Connell, the sole black examiner at the Public Carriage Office, which administers the Knowledge and grants licenses, who told the Times that the mayor fails to recognize that there aren’t many black London youth who want to go through the Knowledge and spend three years in the cold getting knocked off their bike, referring to the necessary fieldwork needed to learn the routes.

 

As for the lack of women drivers, one woman who quit her job 18 months ago to study for the Knowledge said it would be extremely difficult to raise children, make a living and study for the test at the same time. 

 

Another reason that this decision to spend government funds makes little sense is that according to the training manager at the Knowledge Point taxi school 44% of the current group of students is foreign born and there are now so many Muslims he has even set aside a prayer room for them.  That’s a higher percentage than the overall population of foreign born people living in London.  How is that discriminatory? 

 

I can only guess what is going to happen next if the foreign born students don’t pass the Knowledge in sufficient numbers.  He will then go after the test as too difficult and discriminatory on the basis of race and gender and then order that the test be “dumbed down”  so that more minorities will pass and bring a more politically correct makeup of London cabdrivers.

 

If this is allowed to happen you may want to find an alternate mode of transportation lest you get lost with the new breed of cabbies.

 

 

 

 

Share This

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

About the author