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We’ll soon start paying 3,000L.L for a service taxi?

By on February 14, 2012 in Lebanon

As per this article in The Daily Star today, minivan drivers decided to raise their fares from 1,000 to 1,500L.L yesterday.

“The drivers are no longer capable of keeping the fares at a low level. At LL1,000, they can barely make ends meet,” he said. “They [drivers] do not benefit from the [recent] wage increase decision but will suffer from the consequences of the measure in terms of increases in prices and rent.”

And although it is stated at the end of the article that service taxi and bus fares will remain unchanged at 2,000 and 1,000 L.L, I highly doubt they will. Even since 2006, we got used to one of the three (Taxis, buses, or minivans) increasing their fares with the other two following shortly after. Which means that we might soon start paying 2,500 or 3,000 L.L for a taxi ride.

Photo via Note Connection

Update:

Buses already increased their fares to 1,250L.L, and some taxi drivers started charging 3,000L.L as per some people on Twitter.

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Taking things into your own hands!

By on February 10, 2010 in Lebanon

What to do when you’re just fed up waiting for something to happen? Best thing is to take matters into your own hands! And that’s what fellow blogger Mustapha did while waiting for the Daily Star IT people to renovate their website.

Few days ago Mustapha launched the Better Daily Star Project (BDSP), a website that he built on his own using the WordPress CMS and a theme to fit the content (newspaper style). The new version created a buzz on twitter the day it was published, and while a lot of people welcomed what he did and admitted it is way better than the current DS website, others just accused him of doing an illegal work (copying the articles) and to which he replied by writing this FAQ page inside the project’s blog.

But isn’t this Illegal?
Probably. But I’m not making any money out of it (in fact, I’m paying some in effort and hosting fees), and I promise that as soon as they do something about their site, I’ll gladly bow out. Besides, it will cost them more to sue me than to actually fix their site and let me off their back.
And in the same page, he stated that it isn’t hard at all for the DS staff to upgrade their existing website, at least the new version didn’t take a lot of his time.
Why am I doing it. What’s the point?
Well, I am trying to say this: If one guy (yours humbly) can use freely available opensource software (wordpress if you must know) to create this alternative, arguably better website in two weeks, why can’t a newspaper with an actual IT department do it? In other words, I’m shooting down the argument that it would be too expensive to do. Listen to me well: They’re just being lazy.
Finally, here’s how Mustapha’s version of his favorite newpaper looks like, let’s see how much time will it take until the Daily Star website gets a real upgrade!

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