New Labour Socialism: Taxi driver barred over apostrophe placing.

Only in the mad socialist experiment that is New Labour's "Cool Britannia" could something like this happen. Imagine being turned down for a job because you were unable to do something that had nothing to do with your ability to do the job. In fact, you were turned down having done that job perfectly well before. That is exactly what has happened to Laurence Kirk.

Another socialist council shows that it loves to meddle, loves to show that it has the power over the plebs and proles.

Another reason why a certain Mr Gordon Brown, our dour, unelected PM will lose the election, no matter how much clunking he does between now and then...

As an experienced cabbie, Laurence Kirk knows his home town like the back of his hand.

But he has been refused permission to resume his old job - because he isn't sure where to place an apostrophe.

He was denied a private hire driver's licence after failing an English exam designed to test his grammar.

'It's barmy,' said Mr Kirk, a 50-year-old grandfather. 'I have spoken to a number of taxi firms and they are screaming out for drivers. There are so few coming through because of this bureaucracy.'

Mr Kirk was a taxi driver in Bournemouth six years ago but had to give it up because of family commitments.

His private-hire licence has since expired and so he applied to Bournemouth Borough Council for a new one but was told he would have to take a three-hour test.

It was a GCSE English exam, which consisted of 40 questions covering six pages. Mr Kirk, a former scaffolder and roofer, got a mark of 60 per cent - the pass rate was 70.

He said: 'The last time I went to school was 35 years ago and I didn't pass my exams then. If I couldn't pass them then what chance had I of passing one now?

'Most of the questions were, "Where does the apostrophe or semi-colon go in this sentence?" or, "Here are four sentences but which is the right way of writing it?"

'I did my best but it was not enough. So now I can't drive a taxi because I don't know where an apostrophe goes.'

Mr Kirk must now attend a taxpayer funded, four-week, part-time college course studying GCSE English before he can re-sit the exam.

He said: 'It took me one hour to go to the bank and arrange a £14,000 loan to buy a car so I can earn a living but it is taking me months to get my licence.'

Mr Kirk, from Branksome, Poole, added: 'When I got my licence six years ago I filled in some forms, had a medical and then had a driving test to prove I knew the area and they passed me.'

Bournemouth is the first authority to insist on cab drivers taking a Business and Technical Education Council qualification in 'Transporting Passengers By Taxi and Private Hire'.

**However a cunt employed by Bournemouth Borough Council by the name of Steve Wright - no relation to the serial killer I hope? - and who has a typical Guardian type non job of "principal licensing officer", I wonder how much taxpayers money is pissed away on his salary? Attempted to defend this, after all remember the council is there to "help" and "rules are rules."

Steve Wright, principal licensing officer for the council, said the English exam was a way to evaluate the level of support the drivers will need to take the BTEC.

'The test allows us to assess the candidate's abilities and understanding to enable us to offer the right support in order to fulfil the further requirements in gaining their licence. These include a local knowledge test as well as the BTEC required by the council.'

The BTEC for taxi drivers was introduced by the exam board Edexcel in 2005 with the help of the Department for Transport.

It is up to individual authorities to decide whether or not to adopt it as a requirement.A case of what the fuck? A taxi driver, hell half the taxi drivers down here that I meet can hardly string a sentence together in English. So long as they can understand directions from point a to point b and have a valid driving licence I care not a jot about the rest.

I would be more concerned over say his ability to do a three point turn, drive people to where they want to go in a safe manner, obvious taxi related stuff.

Still this shows the rise of the uber-state, the fact that common sense has been replaced by targets, stats and non job wankstains like apostrophe obsessed Steve Wright and the dickheads in Bournemouth Borough Council who dreamed this shit up.

A quick glance of the cuntcil webshyte will show that in Bournmouth they have their site in three strange scripts of barbarous babble, as well as French, Spanish, Dutch, Korean, Polish and Portuguese.

Yet no tests for people reading in those languages?

click to enlarge.

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