Posts by BenWilson
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I imagine no one reading that article failed to notice what Uber means by "standing beside drivers 100%"? It means "we'll get back to you on that". Seriously, did the spokesman just make that up on the spot, that they urge drivers to contest cases? FFS anyone busted has no choice but to test it in court. They already are testing it in court. And losing, because there is no case.
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I mean Uber could at least front up with the legal preparation of what case could possibly be brought by a driver that the law should not apply to them. "Because Uber" is not a defence in NZ.
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Speaker: Confessions of an Uber Driver…, in reply to Sacha,
It's quite amazing that they would have the arrogance to suggest that the drivers they shat on should be testing their right to be shat on out of their own pockets on behalf of a corporation with billions. There's so much wrong in there it's hard to know where to start.
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Speaker: Confessions of an Uber Driver…, in reply to goforit,
In my case the world of Uber has gone quiet because I have an extremely difficult exam tomorrow. Which made the 4 or so hours I spent on this particular move that Sacha linked to very much all I could give to the rights of drivers today. An interview, and a discussion about whether to send someone to talk on TV in the morning. In the end we're holding off. Now I'll get back to Cramer-Rao lower bounds and the intricacies of least squares estimators.
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Great post, David. Whatever you say about seasonal gloom, it feels like summertime, when I hear you "rise up singing", like this. I don't feel like winter is coming. It feels like the solstice was yesterday. Wait, what?
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As far as I'm aware, a number of corporations have already tried to make their displeasure known to Uber about the April bundle of kicks-in-the-balls, but have found something that practically every driver experiences in communication with the Uber management - that they are very hard to reach. Good luck using the telephone. Good luck with meeting anyone at all in person, unless you want to go down to the "Green Light" center and hassle one of the poor sign-up staff (who would seem to have even higher staff churn than the drivers themselves, so punishing is the cognitive dissonance involved in the job).
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Wellington airport makes a very sensible choice.
I hope some other major NZ corporations take note of this. The risk to their own reputations is very real when it comes to health and safety laws, and what putting their staff into vehicles that are essentially completely uncompliant with NZ passenger laws, and probably not even properly insured, might mean to them on that sad day that a really bad accident happens.
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Polity: Custard, in reply to oga,
Isn’t that how National got into power last time? Saying nothing, and relying on the population to vote National …. because they’re not Labour.
Sort of. And at the end of the day, that’s actually the main real power of a democratic system. It’s not really that great at selecting the best possible government, but it is quite good at getting rid of a really bad government. Which is where I think we’ve ended up now. So sure, positive messages from Labour, packed with policy and brimming with the competence of their people would be great. But in order for the risk of change to even seem worthwhile, people do have to realize just how bad things have got.
It’s really shocking how normal outright poverty and exploitation have become in this country. This has to stop, and in a way, I think that’s finally become more important than getting the perfect Leftist dream team together. So long as they’re pretty much competent and the alternative is there, I think that the missing million do have something to vote for.
ETA: I should probably point out here, that I'm not saying people have to vote for Labour. In signaling a closer relationship with the Greens, Labour have really pulled their heads out of their arses about how they can win this election. If people prefer what the Greens are about to what Labour is about, they can vote for the Greens with reasonable confidence that if Labour is elected, it will be with Green support, and there is a whole world of progressive influence contained in that understanding. That would be a real change, something we have never yet seen in NZ. I would personally be prepared to give it a try, definitely in light of National fiddling while our whole way of life burns.
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I’m not a massive Labour fan (although I fully admit that they have significantly grown on me since Little took the helm), but seriously, it’s getting to the point where the very much lesser of two evils would be a very big step.
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We don't even need right wing commentators, so rapidly can we turn a discussion of the major shortcomings of the government into about the much lesser shortcomings of the opposition. It's like we've internalized the right wing talking points.