Uber challenge new rules to impose English tests on foreign drivers

The largest non-taxi owning firm, Uber, has just launched a legal challenge in London against new rules requiring thousands of cab drivers to pass an English test, the BBC reports.

Transport for London (TfL), which regulates taxis and other transport, wants all private-hire drivers who do not come from English-speaking countries to prove their English language skills from October 2016.

Most passengers as well as drivers should support the exam, which is similar to an IELTS and testing drivers in reading, writing and listening skills.

Despite contact with vulnerable people, the private-hire industry is not as regulated as the care industry. Drivers can obtain licenses in some areas with limited driving experience, a few checks and virtually no immigration checks depending on where they operate.

The sector provides a living for hundreds of thousands of migrants from the EU and non-EU countries.

Uber, which has disrupted taxi sector in London (credit cards, online booking and lower fares), is also challenging new rules requiring the firm to inform TfL of any upcoming changes to its app.

"This legal action is very much a last resort," said Tom Elvidge, general manager of Uber London.

"We're particularly disappointed that, after a lengthy consultation process with Transport for London, the goalposts have moved at the last minute and new rules are now being introduced that will be bad for both drivers and tech companies like Uber."

Uber, which originally supported an English-speaking and listening test, now claims TfL has changed the requirements so that drivers have to provide a certificate showing they have an intermediate level of writing and reading. Uber says the test is unnecessary and costly.

The U.S. giant controls more than 30,000 drivers in London, despite not owning or operating taxis or employing a single driver.

Uber is based in Ireland, which accounts for the fact that the company paid just £22,000 corporation tax in 2014, according to The Guardian. The company is one of many American tech giants which pay little or no tax in the UK while generating billions in profits.

The Uber legal challenge, by a firm which pays hardly any tax here, could cost UK taxpayers hundreds of thousands of pounds. The lawyers will, of course, be rubbing their hands with glee. 

Uber is also peeved about a ruling that all private-hire companies must have a customer call centre within the London area that passengers are able to ring during a ride.

TfL confirmed it has received a letter from Uber warning of the legal challenge and will defend it.

In a statement, it said: "We responded to Uber's letter and will be robustly defending the legal proceedings brought by them in relation to the changes to private-hire regulations."

What is your experience with UBER or other taxi drivers? Would you prefer a driverless vehicle and would you feel safer late at night.

Driverless vehicles will replace millions of jobs as the digital revolution changes everything

Uber driverless car 

Uber are rolling out plans to allow users to hail self-driving cars, not in the distant science fiction-based future, but within weeks, the company has confirmed.

The launch will take place in Pittsburgh, where it is teaming up with Volvo. Volvo has already been testing self-driving versions of the same vehicle in Sweden as part of its "Drive Me" project, said Alan Stevens at the UK's Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) and the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET). The firm has also trialled the vehicle in Australia and plans to do so in London next year.

This is a brilliant publicity coup for Uber, as the vehicles will initially be supervised by a driver, who can take control if necessary, and an observer, however, it is clear where this is going. Uber eventually hopes to replace its one million drivers, Bloomberg said.

Uber's founder Travis Kalanick has been outlining a world dominating vision of a self-driving fleet for some years and has raised £10 billion dollars to make it happen.

A spokeswoman for the firm told the BBC: "Starting later this month, Uber will allow customers in downtown Pittsburgh to summon self-driving cars from their phones, crossing an important milestone that no automotive or technology company has yet achieved.

"In Pittsburgh, customers will request cars the normal way, via Uber's app, and will be paired with a driverless car at random. Trips will be free for the time being, rather than the standard local rate of $1.30 [£0.98] per mile."

Over three million people are employed in the transport industry in the U.S. alone. It will be long before most of our goods will be delivered by driverless cars and trucks. Amazon has already started using drones to delivering parcels in America.

Early results from tests show that robot-driven cars are safer than the average human driver – and they don’t drink or get into road rage!

On a more serious point, we are all going to have to adapt to more and more of our jobs being done by computers, robots and  machines. This is happening now across many industries and will remove humans from tens of millions of jobs in the next few years.

The digital revolution is already upon us, so get ready! However, I am convinced that you can work from home and make money online provided you have the right internet training and support and real products of value to market. You need training. If you try tinker at it on your own you will reduce your chances of making enough money to quit your job and living the life you really want. Nearly all businesses use the internet these days, so it's not some obscure idea. The latest internet boom is only just starting, according to the experts, and we can all ride the next wave.

See also:

Uber offering free English courses to migrant worker drivers

Immigration Act 2016 - main highlights in a nutshell

Special Report

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Theresa May becomes the UK's second female Prime Minister

Wednesday 13 July 2016. I spent the day in London witnessing the drama and excitement going on in Westminster and the Houses of Parliament, the home of British democracy.

In a few hours we had David Cameron giving his last speech as PM in the House of Commons behind me, then resigning as Prime Minister and the first female leader since Margaret Thatcher taking his place - and home - in 10 Downing Street.

Within hours of taking the helm of UK PLC, Theresa May started forming her new government. Out goes George Osborne and in comes Philip Hammond as Chancellor of the Exchequer, and surprise move of the day being Boris Johnson's appointment as Foreign Secretary.

Taking Theresa's old job as Home Secretary will be Amber Rudd, the former Energy and Climate Change Secretary and investment banker. She takes over at the Home Office - border control, UK Visas, Police and homeland security -  where Mrs May has lasted longer than any minister in modern times.

Leave campaigner and euro sceptic, David Davis will be in charge of the important BREXIT (Britain's exit from the EU) process, which should dismiss claims that May, a remain campaigner, will not honour the 17 million people who voted the leave the European Union last month.

Governments make policies and run the wider economy, public spending etc, but ordinary folk like you and I have to run our OWN economy.

Home Based Revolution and Digital Economy

It's a strange fact that at least two of the world's most powerful leaders actually work from home! That's right, they live above the shop and have a home office. Well, not quite, but get this. Within a day of the decision to appoint Theresa May as Prime Minister David and Samantha Cameron were packing their belongings and a van turned up to move them out of number 10!

Seriously, there is a huge shift going on today with more and more people opting to get out of the rat race and daily 9-5 grind and seek a new more satisfying way of living. We want more from life, we want a LIFE, and we are not going to get it spending 40 years commuting to an office or workplace 5 days a week while our families grow up faster than we can say "where did the years go?".

Whether you want to be a stay at home mum or someone who wants to persuade their boss to allow them to work from home a few days a week there is a quiet revolution taking place and it has become possible in the digital age. The problem is, most people don't know how they can make the shift from regular job to home-based entrepreneur or worker.

Whatever stage you are at on your journey to find your ideal life, you may want to check out a free video training series which teaches you the basic steps of becoming a digital entrepreneur and gives you some useful ideas that could make working from home and living the laptop lifestyle a reality faster than you think.

EU Brexit vote could be reversed as people take to the streets of London

Britain's exit from the EU is by no means certain, as the main political parties deal with internal splits and resignations. 

Following Britain's historic referendum in June, when 17 million people voted to leave the European Union, there have been mass protests in London at the weekend and petitions signed by millions of people calling for a "second vote".

The EU referendum has divided the nation into two camps – leave/out and remain/in. Just over 50% of voters opted to leave the EU, but that still left 16 million unhappy people who want to remain.

Immigration is again high on the agenda, as those who voted to leave have been branded by some as xenophobic and even racists.  They would argue that the main reason they voted 'leave' was to return control of the country from Brussels to the democratically elected UK government.

There have been sporadic reports of racist attacks, mainly in the form of ugly verbal abuse, against migrants since the referendum.

The tide appears to be turning against the leave voters, with warnings of a UK recession and the loss of its triple A credit rating. This could result in higher borrowing costs for the UK, although I seem to recall that it was the same credit rating agencies which gave the thumbs up to U.S. sub-prime mortgages securities, which led to the financial crisis in 2008. 

The possibility of post-EU job losses does not help the leave camp’s case, with several multinationals and banks threatening to move their headquarters to Paris or Frankfurt.   

Prime Minister David Cameron, who resigned following the referendum, has refused to invoke Article 50, which would officially start the exit process, perhaps leaving the door open for a reversal of the peoples’ democratic decision.

Mr Cameron's successor looks increasingly likely to be the current Home Secretary Theresa May, who was firmly on the side of remaining in the EU.  

Although the referendum vote is not actually binding on the government and would have to be ratified in Parliament, it would be difficult to ignore the wishes of 17 million voters. 

However, with many leave voters suffering from buyer’s remorse, there is no doubt that a second referendum could swing in favour of a vote to remain in EU, especially if previously absent younger voters register and exercise their vote.  

This story is set to run and run. UKIP leader Nigel Farrage, who arguably forced Cameron into promising only the third referendum in English history, has stept down this week. The opposition Labour Leader, Jeremy Corbyn is facing a coup and Scottish Leader Nicola Sturgeon is taking advantage of the chaos and calling for another independence referendum.

Former London Mayor and leave campaign front man, Boris Johnson, dropped out of the race for the top job last week to the surprise of his supporters who saw him as a future Prime Minister. Perhaps he does not want to be seen as the man who actually took the UK out of the EU for good?

In the meantime, ordinary folk like you and me have to leave the politics aside and get on with our lives running our economy. The stock market and pound may go up and down and the Governor of the Bank of England may cut interest rates to stimulate growth, but the average person has to carry on earning, spending and saving.

Are you happy in your job?

UK workers tend to work much longer hours than their counterparts in France and Germany, and our labour laws are more flexible, which is one reason why so many foreign companies choose to invest here. Large numbers of workers are now on so-called zero-hour contracts, which is good for employers but offer no guarantee of how many hours will be offered to the employee on any given day.

Whilst most are grateful to have any kind of job, it does follow they are happy with the daily grind and drudgery of work. Unlike their parents or grandparents who accepted the status quo, many younger people are looking for something more out of life – they actually want a life and are not prepared to work for 40 years doing a job they hate in the hope that they can enjoy their life in retirement.

Even if young people do their time and reach the magic retirement age, the chances are they will have little to look forward to in terms of a pension. The previous baby boomer generation had the luxury of full employment and final salary pension schemes, which are now almost exclusively only available to public sector employees. The country is facing a ‘pensions time bomb’, where millions of people will be unable to retire due to lack of resources even after earning money throughout their working lives.

There are options to save into a private pension (the benefits of which are not guaranteed), but with wages being forced down and the cost of housing reaching record levels due to a population boom, most ordinary workers will never be able to save enough to live on during a retirement which could last as long as their working lives.

The home based work and business revolution

There has been a substantial economic shift during the past decade helped on by the technological and information revolutions.

Millions of people are now choosing to work from home and avoid the pain of leaving their families behind for employment thousands of miles away.  

Major outsourcing platforms like Upwork.com and Fivver.com offer anyone with a laptop and an internet connection the chance to earn a living working from the comfort of their own home anywhere in the world. 

We can also trade stocks and shares or foreign exchange (FOREX) using inexpensive real-time technology that would have previously only been available to large institutions.

Students can also earn legitimate degrees from major universities online at a fraction of the cost of travelling abroad.

Making money with home-based businesses like AffiliateMarketing - selling other people's products for a commission - now offers huge opportunities in the home-based business economy and I believe it is only just getting started. 

Companies like Amazon and Ebay offer affiliate marketing programs, albeit for small commissions meaning you have to sell a lot of products to make serious money. With some schemes, you will need quite a bit of technical knowledge to set up your own websites, systems and marketing campaigns.

More and more people are looking to ditch the daily grind of commuting to work, doing a job they hate and spending their lives trading their time for money working for someone else.

EU Brexit in doubt as demonstrators take to the streets of London

Britain's exit from the EU could be stalled or kicked into the long grass, as the main political parties deal with internal splits and resignations. In the meantime, it's business as usual for the average person who must get on with running our own 'economy'. 

Following Britain's historic referendum in June, when 17 million people voted to leave the European Union, there have been mass protests in London at the weekend and petitions signed by millions of people calling for a "second vote".

The EU referendum has divided the nation and split the country into two camps – leave/out and remain/in. Just over 50% of voters opted to leave the EU, but that still left 16 million unhappy people who wanted to remain.

Immigration is again high on the agenda, as those who voted to leave have been branded xenophobic racists.  They would argue that the main reason they voted 'leave' was to return control of the country from Brussels to the democratically elected UK government. There have been sporadic reports of racist attacks, mainly in the form of ugly verbal abuse, against migrants since the referendum.

The tide appears to be turning against the leave voters, with warnings of a UK recession and the loss of its triple A credit rating. This could result in higher borrowing costs for the UK. The gloom and doom talk of post-EU job losses does not help the leave camp’s case, with multinational banks threatening to move their headquarters to Paris or Frankfurt.   

Prime Minister David Cameron, who resigned following the referendum, has refused to invoke article 50, which would officially start the exit process, leaving the door open for a reversal of the peoples’ democratic decision.

Mr Cameron's successor looks increasingly likely to be the current Home Secretary Theresa May, who was firmly on the side of remaining in the EU. Although the referendum vote is not actually binding on the government and would have to be ratified in Parliament, it would be difficult to ignore the wishes of 17 million voters. 

However, with many leave voters suffering from buyer’s remorse, there is no doubt that a second referendum could swing in favour of a vote to remain in EU, especially if previously absent younger voters turn out.  

This story is will run and run. UKIP leader Nigel Farrage, who arguably forced Cameron into promising only the third referendum in English history, has quit today. The opposition Labour Leader, Jeremy Corbyn is facing a coup and Scottish Leader Niciola Sturgeon is taking advantage of the chaos and calling for another independence referendum.

Former London Mayor and leave campaign front man, Boris Johnson, dropped out of the race for the top job last week to the surprise of his supporters who saw him as a future Prime Minister. Perhaps he does not want to be seen as the man who actually took the UK out of the EU for good.

In the meantime, ordinary folk like you and me have to leave the politics aside and get on with our lives running our economy. The stock market and pound may go up and down, the Governor of the Bank of England could cut interest rates to stimulate growth, but the average person has to carry on earning, spending and saving.

Are you happy in your job?

UK workers tend to work much longer hours than their counterparts in France and Germany, and our labour laws are more flexible. Large numbers of workers are now on so-called zero-hour contracts, which offer no guarantee of how many hours will be offered on any given day.

Whilst most are grateful to have any kind of job, it does not follow that they are happy with the daily grind and drudgery of work. Unlike their parents or grandparents who accepted the status quo, many younger people are looking for something more out of life – they actually want a life and are not prepared to work for 40 years doing a job they hate in the hope that they can enjoy their life in retirement. They want to take the steps to retire young and rich!

Even if young people do their time and reach the magic retirement age, the chances are they will have little to look forward to in terms of a pension. The previous baby boomer generation had the luxury of full employment and final salary pension schemes, which are now almost exclusively only available to public sector employees. The country is facing a ‘pensions time bomb’, where millions of people will be unable to retire due to lack of resources even after earning money throughout their working lives.

You can save into a private pension (the benefits of which are not guaranteed), but with wages being forced down and the cost of housing reaching record levels due to a population boom, most ordinary workers will never be able to save enough to live on during a retirement which could last as long as their working lives.

What’s the solution? To start with, remember two things:  'JOB’ stands for 'Just Over Broke' and employees are someone else’s leverage to get rich.

You may be able to get by in a job, but unless you reach the dizzy heights of senior management, you are unlikely to prosper or become wealthy. Those who do make it to the top of the corporate ladder are often so burnt-out by the long hours and pressure that they are unable to enjoy the fruits of their labour. 

Small business owners or the self-employed suffer the same fate of trading their lives and time for money and being stuck on the treadmill working 12 or more hours a day.

I have experienced working in the corporate world and running a small to medium size business. Whilst both had their merits and served a purpose, I would not want to go back to either situation regardless of how much money you paid me. I would rather work from home and have time freedom even if it meant earning less money.

Running a business had greater financial rewards, but the sacrifice in terms of time and energy was far too costly. I also discovered to my cost that small businesses are particularly vulnerable to market forces or changes to government legislation. They can literally be crushed and put out of business overnight.
  

Robert Kiyosaki's and Sharon Lecter's best selling book, 'Rich Dad Poor Dad', introduced us to the 'Cashflow Quadrant' where most people fall into one of four categories:

1. Employee - you have a job and are someone’s leverage
2. Self Employed - you own a job or have bought a job as in the case of most franchises
3. Investor - you own investments, such as businesses, stocks or property
4. Business - you own a money making system, which leverages others

Employees and the self-employed or small business owners work hard for their money trading their time (life) for money. Larger business owners, or those with a system using the leverage of employees, and investors make their money work hard for them, earning residual income from the efforts of others.

In other words, the poor work hard for their money, the rich make their money work hard for them.

Through the story of the author's two 'dads', one rich and one poor, the book outlines how the western education system is designed to train people to become employees and teaches us to work hard, study go to university and get a steady job. This model has worked well during the industrial age, but is now failing millions of people. The author writes:

"In preparing for the Information Age, you must change the rules on how you manage your money. You can no longer blindly accept the idea that your job is secure, that your hard work will be rewarded.."

To find out more about the cash flow quadrant and other ideas, read any of the books in the rich dad poor dad series or check out Robert Kiyosaki's website.  

So what are the alternatives to employee or self employed? 

If you are in a situation where your J.O.B. is barely providing you with enough to keep your head above water, you may want to consider ways of earning extra money to save for your future or pay for those luxuries like a new car or house.

For those who lack the capital to become an investor, and do not want to ‘buy’ a self-employed job, you could try joining forces with a large business with a sales system which can help you earn new and residual income. 

There is nothing new in this idea. People have been selling products on a part-time or full-time basis for direct sales companies, such as Avon, and network marketing companies like Amway for decades. Selling cosmetics and detergent to their friends and family may not suit everybody, but some, such as the late author and speaker Jim Rohn, became millionaires using these very systems. 

In recent years, the digital age has provided us with multiple opportunities to earn money online, from the comfort of our own home, by selling our own products or other people's products through affiliate marketing schemes. Some are household names - Amazon and EBay – and offer ready-made platforms to help anyone with an internet connection the chance to earn money online.

I have found that the drawback with the majority of these schemes is that you need an above average level of technical knowledge to set up websites and databases. The commissions are also very low, which means you have to sell a lot of products before you can fire your boss!

Having researched hundreds of companies and schemes I found that most lacked the basic attributes which I consider are essential to long term success:

• Ready-made systems or turnkey business structure
• Built-in automated follow-up system
• Ongoing value-based product range
• Residual income stream opportunities
• Tracking systems
• Training and support for affiliates

There were companies which had excellent systems, but low-ticket one-off products or offered no training and support. Most had no training or support and left it to you to build your own systems. Others put up barriers, such as restricting sales to certain countries or even banning the use of pay-per-click marketing!

After searching for 5 years and through trial and error, I finally a company that ticked all the boxes offering stay-at-home digital entrepreneurs who want to escape the rat race the opportunity to earn affiliate commission - without the need to set up websites or possess geeky levels of technical knowledge. The company trains their students online taking them through a structured series of modules at their own pace, backed up with webinars and live support and mentoring from real people.

What I really liked was the fact that the initial video training, reports and information is downloadable and totally free and without obligation. To find out more on how to escape the 9-5 life sentence, join the new rich and live the laptop lifestyle check it out by clicking here.