Aran Cars: November 2012

Wednesday, 14 November 2012

Why we give price-beat guarantee in London?

Sister company of Aran Cars, London Radio Cars Limited company has launched their YouTube official video. This video will explain about how to book a taxi with online booking engine system, why to book and key uniqueness of this company. You can visit this video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkL4pkk8u7E

Monday, 5 November 2012

Taxi business and London Radio Cars limited

Getting from one place to another in the United Kingdom is increasingly difficult especially in the Capital (London). People face rush on tubes, bus lanes full of traffic and the rail system is not reliable either.

Using a Taxi and a private car hire services are solution to these difficulties.

Why to use taxi services?

Answer to the above question is very simple, Taxis and Private Hire Vehicle offers invaluable services to the people who are keen about the timings, who prefer not to drive in the rush hours and also to those who do not have a car and don’t know how to drive.

Using a taxi or hired cars helps avoiding using trains, buses and tubes all of which comes with delays, difficulties and traffic jams

How to choose a Taxi Firm

When hiring a taxi in advance, use one from a reputable firm. Make bookings by phone Email or make online booking. You can check license number on the sites of the company and can confirm it from the registration authority for taxis and minicabs. Do not be tempted to use unlicensed taxi or minicabs especially late at night in pub/club etc as this can be dangerous. Reputed company will always have very strict codes for booking of taxis.

Why Choose London Radio Cars (Limited)?

London Radio Cars Limited provides transportation services to All Major Airports, Stations, Hotels or any other location. Using a cab from this company means no worries about traffic delays, parking or timely arrival as the system used within in the company ensures the service to be on time, trust worthy, convenient and Cost effective.

Cab drivers in London Radio Cars Limited undergo a demanding and arduous testing of their knowledge of the city, Daily traffic patterns and fastest routes between locations. The result is that the drivers of official London Radio Cars Limited are renowned for their detailed and intimate knowledge of London’s street and attractions.

When booking your journeys with London Radio Cars limited is done, one do not need to reconfirm the booking because as soon as the booking is added to the system all the booking details are sent to the customer via text messages and emails whether it is a airport booking or any other journey, Alternatively on holiday Services hired from London Radio Cars limited may be more suitable – especially if one have few free days to explore surroundings, discover hidden sights etc. If a car is hired for a week or more, free service for a pick up and drop back at the airport is provided. This option allows time to explore at leisurely place. Price starts from £22 - £38 per day, Depending on the duration of hire and type of vehicle.

Consider using a minicab firm for transportation instead of driving or using trains, tubes or buses. This could avoid a lot of hassle, time and money in the long run.

This article is written by Fahad Anwar, Controller at London Radio Cars Limited and he can be accessed at fahad@londonradiocars.com

Taxi trips and business-class flights among Essex MPs' expenses

26th October 2012

James Duddridge

TAXI trips from London to Southend and business-class flights to Austria are among the expenses claims of south Essex’s MPs.
Detailed analysis carried out by the Echo has uncovered some of the lavish claims, totalling thousands of pounds, which have been billed to the taxpayer over the last 18 months.
But our investigation has also laid bare the sharp contrasts between the county’s Tory MPs and what they choose to charge to expenses, with the gap between some of them as much as £18,000.
James Duddridge, MP for Rochford and Southend East, has claimed back £2,000 in taxi bills since March last year, for 24 trips between Westminster and his home in Fermoy Road, Thorpe Bay.
He argued the taxis were necessary because he had stayed in the capital for late-night sittings in the House of Commons, and it was cheaper to pay for a journey home than a hotel room in London.
The last c2c train service from Fenchurch Street to Shoebury leaves at 12.25am on weekdays, while the London Underground routes which serve it do not stop until well after 1am.

Mr Duddridge said: “Most days I commute into London. Since the 2010 general election, I have stayed in a hotel when I have working late and needed to be back in first thing in the morning.
“Normally on these days, I would be working beyond 10.30pm and return to work at 7.30am.
“If I do not need to be in London quite as early, I have occasionally used a cab service, which works out cheaper than a hotel.”
In April this year, Basildon and Billericay MP John Baron claimed back £607 for a business-class flight to Vienna, the Austrian capital.
Mr Baron was visting the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is based in the city, although it is not know which British airport he flew from.

http://www.echo-news.co.uk/news/10007291.Taxi_trips_and_business_class_flights_among_MPs__expenses/

London taxi maker goes broke

•    Permalink
•    Facebook
•    Twitter
•    Expand/Collapse
The maker of the iconic London taxi cab says it's "no longer a going concern."
The outlook is mighty bleak for the maker of London’s famous cabs — as abiding a trademark of the city as red telephone boxes and Harrod’s.
Manganese Bronze Holdings PLC UK:MNGS +2.56%, the maker of the famous taxis, announced in a filing with the London Stock Exchange on Monday that its board concluded it is “no longer a going concern and has filed notice of intention to appoint administrators.”
The move comes after efforts to secure funding from various parties proved unsuccessful the company said.
Shares of the Coventry-based firm were suspended earlier this month after a steering-box fault on its new TX4 model prompted a recall.
According to the BBC, the woes were the latest in a series of blows for a firm that has seen sales dip more than 9% from last year – a development the company blames on the economy.
Already the company reported a loss of 3.1 million pounds ($5 million) for the first six months of 2012, the BBC said. That was followed in August by the revelation the company had underreported past losses by 4.25 million pounds, the report noted. Shares last traded at around 10 pence each, the BBC said.
“The Board remains hopeful that the fundamental strengths of the company, the TX4 model and its global reputation will provide the platform for a successful business in the future,” the company said.
– William L. Watts
http://stream.marketwatch.com/story/markets/SS-4-4/SS-4-14949/

The Blitz diaries: Taking a look back at our time in London

Since you’ve asked (OK, just pretend you asked), here are my impressions of the entire London trip from all angles.
Friday: This was a long day. We took a redeye flight after an early wakeup for Thursday’s media access and arrived in London at 6:30 a.m. local time (1:30 a.m. in Boston), took a cab straight to the Patriots’ hotel and arrived a few minutes before the team. Bill Belichick, Tom Brady, Vince Wilfork, Jerod Mayo, Sebastian Vollmer and Zoltan Mesko held court with the media in a hotel ballroom before not-so-subtly crossing the street for a walkthrough in Hyde Park.
It was an interesting crowd of media, which was expected. Aside from the dozen-ish writers from New England, this was a large London contingent who asked broad-based questions about the players and sport in general. Sometimes, it’s good to take a step back and listen in on stuff like this because it’s easy to get caught up in the minutia of the day-to-day grind during the season. The players were equal parts laid back and exhausted after the seven-hour flight, so it was a fun, unique media experience.
I didn’t get much of an opportunity to see the city Friday due to the combination of work, jetlag and being awake for 24 consecutive hours. I actually fell asleep while writing and woke up to a series of scrambled letters and numbers because my hand was still on the keyboard when I conked out. Good times. I grabbed a coffee from Costa, which is basically their Starbucks, and got a lesson in European java in the process after I asked for them to add a shot of espresso to my coffee. They weren’t fans of that at all and explained how their coffee — an Italian blend — was stronger than what we’ve got in America, so there’d be no need to combine the two. Got to say, they weren’t lying. But I stuck it to the man later in the trip, finding a nice coffee machine in the hotel that let me combine coffee and espresso shots. I did, just because I could, and I’ll never be the same.
Oh, and there’s the whole driving-on-the-other-side-of-the-road thing. That’s pretty bizarre when you experience it for the first time in a cab, but another challenge comes in crossing the street. You take it for granted how easy it is to look left then right before crossing. Yeah, that method will get you killed in London. Plus, there are so many one-way streets that emerge from nowhere, and a lot of them are tight enough to look like a Boston alleyway, so you might not realize it’s a street. I stopped looking right then left. I simply looked 360 degrees before praying while crossing. Won’t miss that.
Saturday: This was when the fun started. The NFL had a fan fest in Trafalgar Square, and the Patriots arrived at 1 p.m., which, remember, was 8 a.m. in Boston. Adjusting to the time zone was impossible in such a short stretch, but it was still crazy to think of the difference. Anyway, this was when Robert Kraft, Wes Welker, Rob Gronkowski, Brandon Lloyd, Brady and Mesko took the stage and addressed the crowd. And, more specifically, it’s when Gronkowski spiked the microphone into the stage, which caused a huge crowd — someone estimated 20,000 — to erupt in cheers. That was a really fun atmosphere, even before the mike spike. Also, no one expected him to spike it, so that was a hilarious surprise when he wound up and slammed the thing into the stage. Surprised the speakers didn’t blow out, too. That was great.
This was my first trip to Europe, so then it became time to check out the city. Karen Guregian, photographer Matt West and I were all over the place. Matt knew the town fairly well, so he led the charge. We took a quick ride on the subway, which is called “the tube” in London, though a bunch of stops were shut down, so the ride didn’t last all that long. Anyway, we walked along the Thames River until we got to the London Bridge and Tower Bridge, then we found our way to Buckingham Palace. Unfortunately, the Welsh Guards aren’t outside the giant gates, so I couldn’t crack any of my awesome jokes to see if I could break their statuesque appearance. Seriously, one of the great missed opportunities of my life. It was still cool to see the place, though.
Also got a chance to experience some real London weather. They said it was colder than usual throughout the week, so it was necessary to wear some winter gear. But it would go from nice and sunny to cold and cloudy with a very light rain really quickly. This was the norm for the trip, but I think Saturday featured more extreme cases.
After doing some work, we went out for some Italian food at a nice spot. I know London gets a bad rap for its food, but it was never worse than decent. The service was slower than what we’re used to in America, but that’s just the way it goes.
Sunday: Game day. We loaded up a media shuttle from the hotel to Wembley Stadium, which took a little less than an hour with traffic and an odd route. One strange thing about London is the system of roads. It’s just about the opposite of a grid system, and there weren’t many streets that could take you from one place to the next over a greater distance in a quick way. Everything was tight, and there was a ton of turning, so you couldn’t really get a great sense of direction. So, when we were in cabs, it wasn’t easy to know if the cabbie was taking us for a ride or not. One definitely did because he drove us through the heart of traffic on the way to the Palace on Saturday, but we couldn’t be sure about the others.
Anyway, the game atmosphere was great. Funny, when we arrived, the English media were all watching the first of two highly anticipated soccer matches of the day on television in the press box. Not that this is a surprise, but it just reinforced the point that soccer would still destroy football in a popularity contest if the NFL moved there. I heard multiple times that darts draws a higher TV rating in London than the NFL, and that was a serious, researched point. Not making that up. There were also plenty of locals who had no idea the NFL was in town, and that was heard Saturday when the league took over Trafalgar Square. London is wide and spread out, but that’s hard to miss. It really shows how much work would need to be done for the NFL to expand overseas. There are plenty of reasons why it’s not practical, but the lack of widespread interest is real.
The crowd was still great. Aside from the previous point, the NFL fans in London do love the game, and they made for a great atmosphere at Wembley. I was hoping for some wild chants that would happen at a soccer game, but I didn’t hear any. Still, the pockets of cheers from varying sections made it feel like a Super Bowl. It was a fun vibe.
Hurricane Sandy was a major topic Sunday, though, because all of our Monday flights home were canceled early in the day, with ours getting shut down by halftime. It was tough news to hear, but we all decided we’d make the most of it.
Monday: Tip of the cap to Marriott for adjusting so well and extending our reservations with the same room rate, instead of the 150 percent price increase that would have happened if we didn’t have the NFL rate. That made things much easier, and we got to stay downtown to explore a little more.
So, we hit up the Cabinet War Rooms. That was the underground bunker that Winston Churchill used to run World War II. Down the street from Parliament and Buckingham Palace, it was his relative safe haven for the German bombings in the city, and he stayed there from 1939-45 when the war ended. And when the war did end, everyone put their stuff down and walked out. In 1948, Parliament ensured its proper preservation, and they opened the bunker as a museum in 1984. For about 30 years after the war, the bunker was still a huge secret for security measures.
It was a really cool spot if you’re a war junkie. Many of the rooms were left as is, including Churchill’s main meeting room with his high-ranking officers, and the central map room, where the war was planned on maps that spanned each wall. Even the tacks were still in place on the maps. It was awesome. Very well done.
We also checked out Oxford Street and some other squares in the city. Back to the food for a second: We ate dinner at The Guinea Grill, which was very good. So if you go to London, try that spot.
Tuesday: Great flight home. Now, it’s time for the bye week.
The whole trip was a lot of fun. The atmosphere of the game and the city’s rich history stuck out more than anything, but it was just a cool place to spend a few days.
The NFL is going to host two games in London next season, so that’s a logical step in the process of expanding the brand. Still hard to believe the league can get a team there on a full-time basis, but as long as they keep having these trips, many will continue to return home with a good time and a new experience.

http://www.bostonherald.com/blogs/sports/blitz/index.php/2012/10/31/the-blitz-diaries-taking-a-look-back-at-our-time-in-london/

Planes, trains and Teletubbies

Sky report

Efficiency central ... Gatwick Airport has a futuristic blueprint for passenger transport. Photo: Getty Images
Gatwick has some futuristic ideas when it comes to encouraging public transport to and from its airport.
While Sydney Airport's public transport remains restricted to an expensive train and one measly state-run bus service (What? Us? Bitter?), London's Gatwick has unveiled an enviable, futuristic PT plan that would wow George Jetson.
Last month Infrastructure NSW drew attention to the dire state of Sydney Airport access in a report identifying 70 projects and reforms crucial to the growth of NSW. It recommended the addition of substantial extra roadway to the airport, and more bus services, the latter to be introduced within the next five years.
A week later, Gatwick's Airport Surface Access Strategy was released, a blueprint for an "intelligent" PT network that by 2030 might include some pretty out-there-looking jalopies including high-speed trains, Teletubby-like little driverless taxis and a range of electric buses (also without an actual person sitting behind the wheel).
Advertisement
But they're not all style over substance. The transport modes are part of Gatwick Airport authorities' aim to significantly increase the number of people using public transport to and from the airport by the time the facility is handling 40 million passengers a year. It serves about 34 million a year now.
The vehicles themselves are not pie-in-the-sky imaginings - all are at least on the drawing board already.
The Robo-taxi, for instance, was created by the famed Czech designer Kubik Petr and intended for use in dense urban environments to zip through traffic. It's powered by two electric motors that run up to 20 hours and can reach 90km/h.
The driverless bus is the brainchild of Capoco Design, which already supplies a substantial number of British buses. The company says 60 per cent of bus running costs go to employing drivers. Without them, the vehicles could be smaller, cheaper and run more bespoke routes. While London bus drivers may not like that, in Sydney, north shore commuters in particular would settle for the deployment of the Partridge Family's old vehicle driven by Reuben Kincaid if it offered them a cheaper airport run.

Highly chatty
A few months back, Sky Report enthusiastically relayed news of a survey run in May by flight booking website Skyscanner, which found 86 per cent of travellers were sensibly against the use of mobile phones on planes.
However, a more recent survey by fare-comparison site Fly.com came up with an entirely different result, with two-thirds of travellers saying they were all for mid-flight talk on their mobiles. Following that, yet another survey, by yet another website, came up with a figure more akin to Skyscanner's.
We suppose it just depends who you're asking. There have long been in-seat telephones and the capacity to chat in the air.
We recall a time a decade or so ago when a few too many wines were consumed at 30,000 feet on a US domestic flight and a homesick drunk dialler, who shall remain nameless, clocked up a lovely surprise on the Amex.
But mostly the practice has been cost-prohibitive - and counter-intuitive. The communally valued sanctity of sky-high solitude usually won the day.
Now, however, as usually sane people can't go to a cafe without putting their phones on the table, the march of the inflight mobile menace appears inevitable. More airlines are allowing mobile usage on certain aircraft equipped to handle it. It's reported that about 25 airlines worldwide now do.
For more than 18 months passengers flying on some domestic flights with Air New Zealand have been allowed to use their phones. Etihad allows it on certain aircraft models and Virgin Atlantic does on some routes flown by A330s. This includes making calls and sending emails and texts from the passenger's own devices.
A barrier to the practice being ubiquitous has been airspace restrictions. The US Federal Aviation Administration has been among the strictest, and forces carriers to shut off their inflight wi-fi provider 250 miles from the US.
Australia was similar. However, last month, Emirates's partner, OnAir, gained approval to enable wi-fi within Australian airspace, which has allowed phones to be used all the way to and from Dubai. The FAA restrictions are also reported to be under review.

Mobile me
Mobile phones and air travel may soon become inseparable in other ways. The 2012 SITA/Air Transport World Passenger Self-Service Survey released last month found 70 per cent of passengers now carry smartphones, up from 54 per cent the previous year, and most want to use them for check-in and other on-the-ground air travel-related functions.
Ninety per cent of those surveyed rated flight status updating on their mobiles and self-boarding as their favourite self-service technologies.
SITA, an aviation IT specialist, found that passengers liked the technologies because they gave them more control and time efficiency as well as reduced stress.
"What passengers really want is to avoid delays and to be kept informed of what is happening," says the chief executive of SITA, Francesco Violante. Nearly everyone who took part in the survey said they would welcome any queue-busting services and 89 per cent voted self-boarding as their top technology.

Home, Jeeves
Brisbane Airport's domestic terminal has a new public pick-up area, with hopes that it will help to ease congestion.
However, in commenting on it, Tourism and Transport Forum chief executive John Lee highlighted a major factor in creating congestion at many airports: our desire for private transportation.
"More than 16 million people use the domestic terminal at Brisbane Airport every year and despite more travellers using public transport to get to the airport and more car parking than ever, many people still like to be dropped off or picked up by private car," he said.
"The Public Pick-up Area will markedly improve the passenger experience, giving drivers collecting someone a dedicated waiting area with 20 minutes' free parking."

Route watch
Tiger Airways is set to introduce a new service from Sydney to Mackay in north Queensland, a gateway airport for the Great Barrier Reef and the Whitsundays. Starting on December 17, the airline will fly the route five times a week return.
http://www.watoday.com.au/travel/planes-trains-and-teletubbies-20121102-28nzq.html

Wragges and Gateley steer black-cab maker's administration

Wragges and Gateley steer black-cab maker's administration
Wragge & Co has won a lead role alongside Gateley on the administration of Manganese Bronze, the stricken company behind London’s world-famous black cabs.

The Coventry-based maker of the iconic taxis filed for administration late last month, with PricewaterhouseCoopers partners Tony Barrell, Matthew Hammond, Ian Green and Mike Jervis appointed to oversee the case.
The company has been making a loss for the past four years and in 2012 has been hit by accounting errors and a recall of over 400 vehicles following a steering box fault.
Wragges London restructuring partner Julian Pallett, London corporate partner Richard Haywood and Birmingham-based director Jasvir Jootla are advising the PwC partners. Gateley is advising the company’s pension trustees.
The administrators announced 156 redundancies last week. The company is 20 per cent owned by China’s Geely International and had been attempted to obtain a loan from the investor to keep it going.

Background to this deal:

Previous advisers to Manganese Bronze including Simmons & Simmons, where Chris Wilkinson advising it on a licence agreement with Computer Cab for a mobile phone taxi hailing system eight years ago (6 December 2004). The group has also instructed legacy Martineau Johnson, now SGH Martineau, and Squire Sanders legacy UK firm Hammonds in the past (16 December 2002).

http://www.thelawyer.com/wragges-and-gateley-steer-black-cab-makers-administration/1015342.article