minicabs

More on why poorer people rot at home and rich people drive: private cab drivers fight for equal access

Hackney private minicab driver Victor Hume is known, apparently, as the Robin Hood of the private-hire vehicle industry - a modern-day folk hero and mahatma of customer service who has clocked up a Hackney record in parking and stopping fines (no small achievement) for stopping his cab on red routes and in bus lanes to drop his passengers home.

Hume, who will be 71 in March, says that he feels he's good for at least another decade of torturing parking wardens. 'I am fit,' he reports, strutting about the stage at Conway Hall in London's Red Lion Square and flexing his large arm muscles. 'I am very fit.' His audience - perhaps 200 or so private-hire drivers from around London - nods appreciatively and applauds. People here are liking Victor. Everybody here drives a private minicab, or van, for a living, and everybody believes that private-hire drivers should have the same rights as black cabs and buses when it comes to using bus lanes and setting passengers down on red routes.