Friday, 12 November 2010

Hotel Du Vin


This is my picture of the week for me, The Hotel Du Vin, a great Hotel in the heart of Birmingham's traditional business district. Housed in the old eye hospital. It could quite easily double for London and in fact has several times on the TV show Hustle.

Friday, 10 September 2010

Ramadan

Today has been a very busy day due to the fact it has been Eid Al-Fittr and a very high proportion of Taxi drivers on TOA are Muslim and have had the day off to celebrate. Apologies to anyone who's Taxi was late or worse still did not turn up.

Friday, 30 July 2010

Birmingham Airport Drop Off



I don't know about everyone else who drops off at Birmingham Airport but I am getting completely frustrated with the current arrangements. The times there is an entry lane/exit lane closed is just the beginning of things, then there are the payment machines....always at least one out of service.

But my biggest gripe other than the fact its £1.00 to literally go in and drop off (East Midlands Airport is FREE for 10 mins) is there is no designated drop off area only parking spaces, now speaking as a Cab driver this is utterly ridiculous....when the drop and go is heavily congested you have to park between two vehicles to unload, this is very difficult to try and unload 5 passengers with luggage without them opening the doors onto the vehicles parked either side and then attempting to get the luggage out, again trying not to damage other vehicles including my own. Why can't the powers that be have a similar drop zone as East Midlands Airport as shown in the photograph, you could have an express entry lane for taxis who only want to drop, the lane could be partitioned from the actual parking area to ensure cars looking for parking spaces are not impeded by the cabs.
Then there is the issue of people not paying and they get to the barrier and cause a jam, true the new exit machines take credit and debit cards but not many people take that option and prefer to either a) try to reverse back from the barrier or b) jump out of the vehicle and go and pay at the paystation, either way it causes chaos, so please please improve the signage for people BHX.

Sunday, 18 July 2010

City of Culture

Well it came as no surprise that Derry/Londonderry was chosen for City of Culture 2013 last Thursday 15 th July 2010. Birmingham always seems to get piped to the post with these competitions. European Capital of Culture, the new Wembley Stadium and whatever else we've gone for. The thing is as much as I love this City its obvious not everyone has that same level of love, why? Well its just easy to knock Birmingham isn't it, the accent, the 60's architecture, the ring road, Spaghetti junction to name but a few. But from my perspective the biggest problem this City seems to have is not the London based journalists or our Northern friends in Manchester who think throwing up a building taller than anything Birmingham has makes it the 2nd City no.....its our own people, the people who bemoan the City, constantly talking it down, constantly criticising. Don't get me wrong even I have a good old moan at the City as you will read in the coming months, but hey come on lets start shouting about the good stuff...the great stuff and the darn right brilliant stuff this City has to offer and then just maybe we will start to make some sort of progress with peoples perceptions of Birmingham.

Lets tell everyone at every opportunity how great Birmingham is, after all that's what our Northern friends do about their City/City's.