Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Confessions of a taxi driver

Dizzy writes today about government use of taxis - I know you'll be amazed, but apparently they spend eye-wateringly large sums on cabs.

In the late 1980s, I drove a mini cab in south London, on and off, and one of the firms I drove for did account work for one of the borough councils. A regular source of early evening work was the ferrying of Italian and Portugese aids sufferers, who were in London because they'd receive better, free healthcare than they would at home, to buy their smack.

That's right, minicabs drove health tourists to their drug dealers, with tax payers footing the bill. It was so regular that on several occasions I had a new arrival sitting in the back, craning their head trying to identify the flat they'd been told to visit, and since I'd been there so often and knew quite well what was going on, I'd end up just telling them which one they were looking for.

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