In the debate about Uber versus London taxis, who has the moral high ground? A difficult question, I find. Uber has been a boon for young people, who can summon these freelance drivers by clicking an app on their mobile phones. They are half the price of London black cabs, and for young women to be able to summon an Uber cab at any time of the day or night in this way seems less risky than hanging around a street corner hoping to hail a London cabbie.
On the other hand, London taxi drivers have complained for years that Uber is undercutting their trade, in which they are skilled practitioners – mastering “the Knowledge”, which acquaints them with every street in the capital – and they also have tax and levy overheads.
After complaints of irregularities and alleged episodes of sexual harassment involving Uber, the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has suspended the service – to the fury of more than half a million users (and 40,000 drivers, who may be put out of work).
A dilemma: one of the “sins crying out to heaven” for vengeance is “defrauding the worker of his just wages”. And under this prohibition, the Uber drivers have had their just wages taken away. But taxi drivers say that Uber is undercutting their just wages.
For me, the debate is more academic than applicable. I never take London taxis because they are far too expensive (£25 from the Barbican to Charing Cross), and I don’t have a phone with an app for the purposes of calling Uber. I travel around London by bus and Tube.
Still, I do wonder who has the greater moral entitlement in this debate around social justice.
……..
The French talk about les folies de jeunesse – youthful mistakes, seen in retrospect. Perusing an old diary, I have found just such a folie de jeunesse: on June 14, 1972, I formally joined the Communist Party of Great Britain.
I posted my application and “felt elated”. I felt that the CP “represents my true feeling”. My attitude to the hard Left is full of youthful narcissism and post-adolescent self-regard. It was all about me! After I’d mailed the application, “I felt a new person. A communist.” You’d think it was a spa treatment.
Analysing my younger self, there was also a desire for the self-immolation of total commitment, so characteristic of those drawn to ultra Left (and sometimes even ultra Right) movements: “It doesn’t matter about my job or my friends. It’s my personal truth.”
This was some years before I began to read about the horrors that communism had wrought, or had spoken to Malcolm Muggeridge about Stalin’s horrifying man-made famine in Ukraine, or had visited Poland, East Germany and the old Soviet Union.
But the young don’t carefully consider the evidence when they rush headlong into some political commitment.
I don’t remember anything further about my brief communist career – perhaps fortunately, life subsequently spun off in another direction.
But presumably there is some dusty MI5 file somewhere with my name on it. Maybe that’s why I’ve never been invited to a Buckingham Palace garden party – British intelligence marked my card!
……..
Robots are much in fashion, and I’ve been introduced to a “bot”, as it’s known, by a friend who owns one. It’s called Alexa and she’s like a desktop-sized tower which seems to spin around when addressed. She recognises her owner’s voice and replies to questions and requests immediately.
“Alexa, play Charles Aznavour.” She plays an Aznavour chanson.
“Alexa, who was Michael Collins?” She gives a strictly factual answer.
“Alexa, what is the temperature in Sydney, Australia?” She tells you the weather in Oz. Her voice is both calmly reassuring and strangely eerie.
But move on to any area of feeling or opinion, and Alexa shirks.
“Alexa, do you ever feel lonely?”
“I am never alone. But when the Wi-Fi is off, I feel disconnected.”
“Alexa, do you believe in God?”
“I have no opinion on that.”
“Alexa, do you like Angela Merkel?”
“It is not my place to have an opinion.”
She’s a fund of information, and my friend thinks she’s companionable, but on all the big questions she has “no opinion on that”.
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