IN STAGING yet another bloody-minded strike - timed to ruin Saturday night out for hundreds of people - taxi drivers in Blackburn and Darwen are once more trying to intimidate the council into backing down on safety standards.

What they want is a cowboys' charter - to run the town's taxis their way.

And with an 80 per cent failure rate already in the MoT-type tests the council wants their cars to undergo three times a year, it is plain what their yardstick is: Safety last.

That is something the council should not let them impose.

They must not back down to this dangerous and selfish irresponsibility.

And those who insist in putting themselves before their passengers - either by resisting the tests or by taking part in these blackmail strikes - ought to have their licences taken off them.

That is the way for the council to respond.

Apart from their perhaps legitimate beef about the costs of the tests being too steep, the drivers have not a scrap of justification for their protests about the tests themselves or for these lightning strikes that hit the public.

Time and again the horrendous catalogue of faults found in spot checks on their cabs have proved the need for tougher standards.

But it seems that many taxi drivers believe they are automatically owed a living on their terms by the council and the public.

The council should disabuse of them of that self-seeking notion by sticking to their guns.

And the members of the public left stranded by the strikers would do well in future to boycott the firms who abuse them and their safety with these strikes.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.