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A FINE GAEL MEP has hit out at some of her colleagues who want to ban taxi app Uber.
The taxi-sharing service has come under fire on both sides of the Atlantic, with protests in several countries.
Last month a mass protest in Paris saw taxi drivers blockade major transport hubs. The demonstration got out of hand, with cars being torched.
Courtney Love got caught up in the riot – live-tweeting the whole thing.
UberPOP was banned in France as a result of the protests. It differs from the main app because it allows non-professional drivers to register their car and transport other passengers.
Registered taxi drivers claim the app is unfair competition, while regulating it remains a grey area.
The EU Transport committee is currently debating the issue and a number of MEPs want Uber gone.
Fine Gael’s Deirdre Clune has criticised her colleagues for taking this stance, saying a pan-European overhaul of taxi regulation system is needed instead of an outright ban.
Uber is part of the ‘sharing economy’, which includes companies such as Airbnb. The sector is currently estimated to be worth about €10 billion in Europe and is forecasted to grow to €250 billion in the next decade.
Clune, a member of the EU Transport Committee, has said taxi unions across Europe are trying to “wipe Uber out of existence”.
Some of my colleagues on that committee believe that we can and should regulate Uber out of the market completely. This is nonsense.
“The actions of the taxi protestors in France recently were little more than thuggery disguised as legitimate protest.
We cannot regulate Uber out of existence just because the traditional industries don’t like the competition. Those industries must evolve to meet the challenge of the sharing economy and adapt to what the consumer really wants.
“Love it or hate it, the sharing economy is here to stay. It’s time to work with it and harness the opportunities that the sharing economy can bring.”
The Irish connection
There were 28,953 active taxi driver licences in Ireland as of 30 April.
Jerry Brennan was one of the National Irish Taxi Association’s (NITA) representatives on the advisory committee that helped to compile the Taxi Regulation Act 2013.
He said it was “fortuitous” that Uber and a similar app WunderCar “appeared on the horizon” around the same time as it enabled the legislation to regulate their business.
As a result, all drivers who use these apps must be licenced in the same way all taxi drivers are.
Brennan said apps that use unlicensed drivers place the public in a “very, very vulnerable position”.
He said regulations in Ireland also ensure cars using these type of apps have to use a meter connected directly to the milometer, as opposed to a virtual meter that uses GPS coordinates.
Complaints
Uber has faced legal inquiries in several European countries over the last year. The company responded by filing complaints with the European Commission against France, Germany and Spain.
Earlier this month, Uber’s director of public policy for Europe Simon Hampton spoke to a panel at the European Parliament.
If you’re in a city Uber hasn’t come to yet, then creating a group of people to say they want Uber and to put pressure on local politicians – that’s hard.
“If you’re in a city where Uber has been and is about to be taken away from, possibly you’ve got the capacity to persuade people to come out and speak up,” he said.
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To be honest it beats the alternative – having fake brands which really take you out of the film. Nothing worse than a movie character cracking open a can just labelled “beer”
Ya, the movie world is filled with mind reading barmen aswell. I’d love to be able to walk into a bar and order a “Beer” and get what I want every time!
Go to some restaurants in Italy and that’s what happens. A two page list of wine with two beers at the bottom called small and large.
The product placements in Wayne’s World were satirical and totally over the top for the sake of comedy, this example doesn’t really fit in with the rest!
If this article is giving you a headache, Rob Hunt, you should take two Nuprin.
Ah, Nuprin. Little. Yellow. Different.
Or you could try JIMPRIN, a generic version that may be even better!
JIMPRIN! Almost made in Ireland!!
James Bond Skyfall with Heinekin and the Sony laptops.
I think the icing on the skyfall sell out cake was…
M:What was that?
Moneypenny: Volkswagen beetles I believe ma’m
I thought for a second she was going to add ‘what I can’t believe is they start from only €16K’
In fairness Bond has a noble heritage of schlepping. In Goldfinger You could have a drinking game out of the amount of times Sean Connery during his golf march wit Aurich Goldfinger says the word Slazenger.
I Lol’d at that
I hate product placement just about as much as I love a nice ice filled glass of Bulmers on a sunny day…
The movie producers and companies are out to make money, yet I think this speaks more to human beings and their desire to want something that they see in a movie, regardless of how useless that thing may be.
Have you seen the Product Placement in Fair City :) woaaaaa
Too true they’re shameless!
Some other company were offered the placement in ‘Castaway’, wouldn’t take it because they thought the plane crash would be bad for business.
The guy who filmed castaway was a former marine who served his time in Vietnam with the CEO of FEDEX.
At the time the board did not want the company to go ahead and feature in the movie but the CEO managed to push it through, , From memory it is the only actual airline ever to have a plane crash.
There’s a fascinating development in product placement. A company called Morris’s have developed technology which allows post production placement.
Essentially this means that anything which as ever been filmed wether yesterday or 50 years ago, can have products placed in it.
They have a showreel which includes a Kellogg’s cereal on the breakfast table of a Cosby show episode which predates the product by about five years.
http://www.mirriad.com/tag/digital-product-placement/
This means placement can be sold in different territories for different products.
There was a recent episode of how I met your mother which featured one of the characters carrying a shopping bag. The space on the bag was sold multiple times (down to zip code level) by individual broadcasters & where it wasn’t sold. It was blank with no disruption to the scene.
The Truman show. A very very very large product ad
What a moany article.
Are you seriously suggesting there should be no name brand products in films? Yeah, that’ll make it more natural.
There was nothing unnatural about any of these products. Imagine, a named car in a film about… Cars?!
Sharon’s stones ” Toothless Grin” in basic instinct
Remember a blatant one for Nike, in Heath Ledger’s ‘A Knights Tale’. Crap film anyway but that plug was shameless.
Nike not capitalizing… While they did only release 1500 (not 1000 fact check anyone?) pairs they also sold them in a bidding process for $3,500-10,000 a piece.
That’s a BMW Z8 from The World Is Not Enough pictured, not the Z3 from Goldeneye.
I am sick to death of the Apple’s product placement. iphone & MACs everywhere. And if the ‘baddie’ in the tv seriesbor movie takes out his phone, it looks like a blackberry.
The most blatant were Cheerios back in the late 70s, the cereal boxes were framed and lit better than the actors
I’m surprised the movie jack and jill with Adam Sandler was left out of this list…. Worst product placements I’ve ever seen. The ones above aren’t too bad… The whole movie was based on trying to get a Dunkin Donuts commercial made.
Because the film was so bad that no one saw it and the placements.
I’m glad no one has seen it. Horrible money grabbing piece of crap.
The picture of Bond was in Azerbaijan in The World is not Enough standing next to the BMW z8 the z3 roadster was in Goldeneye :)
Don’t forget Mac & Me, an entire movie made to promote MacDonalds
don’t get this article?? product placement is all the rage these days to even in lot of tv shows as well, and animated programmes like southpark
Mission impossible in Dubai. BMWs new 1 and 3 series and X5 used alot! Also in up in the air, American Airlines an Hilton are heavily used and advertised but I heard this was for the free use of the hotels and planes
Surely men in black for ray ban has to be there.
The movie Mac & Me should definitely be on that list. It’s an ET rip-off where the alien character spends his time consuming MacDonalds, Skittles and Coca Cola. It even has a 5 minute dance scene in MacDonalds in which Ronald MacDonald joins in on the fun.
Don’t. Forget the subtle method of thejournal.ie to include newstories which are actually adverts…. how dare they provide a free service and try to recoup costs through advertising … don’t forget talkshows like opera and the late late show. I’m also lead to believe that the rte news is sponsored by the sitting government. :)
They’ve nothing on Microsoft, I mean Hawaii, Five O though.
The Miller truck I bad boy’s 2 was so bad just a long dramatic sweeping camera shot of the Miller truck pass in slow motion
In the movie Anger Management, a movie set in NYC that was released shortly after 9/11, you can see several ads for U.S army recruitment.
What about Heineken in skyfall?
Product Placement has been around for years and always will be.
Watched ‘In The Heat Of The Night’ last night and Coca Cola featured prominently, didn’t ruin my enjoyment of the film though and the funding helps get the films made.
Smoking though does bother me, shameless placement in scenes you don’t see anymore, such as people smoking in offices and bars etc and really should be stamped out.
It is easy enough to get any product placement for the goodies in white hats…….try getting some for the the guys in the black hats, sadly the baddies are not really what the advertisers seem to want .
Oh dingleberrycity.com would never bother with product placement.
Transformers, General Motors, Xbox, Nokia, EBay, Burger King amongst others, and numerous references to Michael Bays other films….
Burger King in first Iron Man
The BMW z3 wasn’t in Goldeneye, it was in The World is Not Enough :)
What about Paddy Whiskey in On TheWaterfront?
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