That's probably easy enough to dismiss as the mouth being a few dozen paces ahead of the brain, Doc. I take a more cynical view of Joe's campaign. It's no secret that the dispatch firm reps on TAC want more taxis/hackneys/rideshare. Hard not to conclude that they successfully "lobbied" Joe to pave the way for NTAs recruitment drive.
It's a valid point of view, DM. However, to be fair to John et al, they did manage to maintain a closed shop for 22 years. The facts of entry liberalisation are as I posted some moments ago but, as you note, there are drivers who speculate that the deregulation case might not have happened if Bertie's Forum took a more aggressive approach to increasing numbers, something all the unions would have opposed. We should also note that entry liberalisation itself wasn't the disaster many of us envisaged. Minister Molloy told me at the time that it mightn't be as bad as I thought and he was right. It was only when the economy collapsed in 2008 that the trade became unviable. The problem, of course, is how do you safeguard against boom/bust economics with no significant barriers to entry?
