Uber drivers in London- more Stewart Lee
Whilst in England, it reminds me of the absolute black and white of thought processes that make life so much easier for some. But not others. Well, others don't choose to adopt the black and white, and hence find it not so easy. Is that self determination?
the Plagiarist here shown counting out the number of stones in the Stone Henge.
The Supreme Court here decided yesterday that taxi cabs are different from UberX vehicles under their regs, as the licensing of taxi meters doesn't apply to the method of UberX calculation of fares (by GPS, satelite, and presumably, guesswork).
Anyway, I caught a UberX driver from Leicester Square to the Strand last week, on my way to a drinky poo session with Alexander Downer at Australia House, and the driver said to me, "all homosexuals should be killed".
Now whatever you think of that, as a statement, you have to admit it's a bold opening conversational gambit. With a stranger. And I was a bit taken aback. I thought "is this any way to run a new alternative cab system, with independent contractor drivers, and is this a failure of regulation, should Boris Johnson step on this and bring back "the Knowledge"?"
[Separately, what do you think about Boris trampling that little Japanese school kid under foot in a touch rugby play?]
But back to the discussion with the UberX driver:
"Oh, why do you think that, that all homosexuals should be killed?"
Pause - as he'd never had to go to the next level of the argument, fraternising mainly with Uber drivers, where apparently that was mainly accepted as a point.
"Well (he said), "because homosexuality is immoral."
I responded "I'm not sure how much weight you can afford to place on the notion of morality in this argument, because morality is not a fixed thing. It changes its parameters, culturally, historically, over time." I said. "For example, look at ancient Greece. To this day, we still take most of our fundamental principles about ethics, aesthetic, philosophy, medicine, science, whatever from ancient Greece. An yet, in ancient Greece, love between two men, far from being immoral, was actually considered the highest, most ethical, most profound, if you will, most moral form of love that there could be" [my acknowledgement to Jim Paltoglou of Melbourne, himself a Greek Australian - or vice versa - for alerting me to this moral philosophical argument when we were discussing goats one day].
So, I said "all I'm saying is I'm not sure how useful morality is, given its flexible nature, as a cornerstone of your argument on this subject".
And then he said to me, truly: "Well, you can prove anything with facts, can't you?"
the Plagiarist here shown counting out the number of stones in the Stone Henge.The Supreme Court here decided yesterday that taxi cabs are different from UberX vehicles under their regs, as the licensing of taxi meters doesn't apply to the method of UberX calculation of fares (by GPS, satelite, and presumably, guesswork).
Anyway, I caught a UberX driver from Leicester Square to the Strand last week, on my way to a drinky poo session with Alexander Downer at Australia House, and the driver said to me, "all homosexuals should be killed".
Now whatever you think of that, as a statement, you have to admit it's a bold opening conversational gambit. With a stranger. And I was a bit taken aback. I thought "is this any way to run a new alternative cab system, with independent contractor drivers, and is this a failure of regulation, should Boris Johnson step on this and bring back "the Knowledge"?"
[Separately, what do you think about Boris trampling that little Japanese school kid under foot in a touch rugby play?]
But back to the discussion with the UberX driver:
"Oh, why do you think that, that all homosexuals should be killed?"
Pause - as he'd never had to go to the next level of the argument, fraternising mainly with Uber drivers, where apparently that was mainly accepted as a point.
"Well (he said), "because homosexuality is immoral."
I responded "I'm not sure how much weight you can afford to place on the notion of morality in this argument, because morality is not a fixed thing. It changes its parameters, culturally, historically, over time." I said. "For example, look at ancient Greece. To this day, we still take most of our fundamental principles about ethics, aesthetic, philosophy, medicine, science, whatever from ancient Greece. An yet, in ancient Greece, love between two men, far from being immoral, was actually considered the highest, most ethical, most profound, if you will, most moral form of love that there could be" [my acknowledgement to Jim Paltoglou of Melbourne, himself a Greek Australian - or vice versa - for alerting me to this moral philosophical argument when we were discussing goats one day].
So, I said "all I'm saying is I'm not sure how useful morality is, given its flexible nature, as a cornerstone of your argument on this subject".
And then he said to me, truly: "Well, you can prove anything with facts, can't you?"
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