The battle for the right to ferry Londoners around continues, with Transport for London ( TFL) turning down Uber's yearly application to operate cabs in the capital,coming up for renewal at the end of this month. TFL, the body that controls all taxi activity in London, says their operation is not fit to hold the licence, breaking a number of rules and regulations. Not reporting serious criminal offences involving Uber cabs, being one of them.

Black Cabs have been feeling the heat from Uber competition since 2012 and have let Uber undercut them and provide a service that they should - i.e take a passenger that asks where he wants to go, but that could be out to the suburbs and would be frequently refused.

They have the right of appeal so the estimated 40,000 Uber drivers won't be flooding the ranks of the unemployed for some time and maybe Uber will now get their act together and remain a force in London, if they are allowed to.

This would appear to be an ideal opportunity for black cabs to come back fighting but being fragmented as individual businesses, that might be difficult. Attempts to unite them under one brand have failed, most recently by Hailo that merged with and is now known as MyTaxi with its HQ in Germany and they had black cabbie drivers as founders.