The lemmings of transport
Page 26
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On page 17 of his lecture, where Peter talks about thousands queueing up seeking entry to an already overcrowded road haulage industry, my imagination again runs riot.
I thought of lemmings, a huge colony of them, thousands upon thousands working away, eating and, naturally, multiplying. Then one day for no apparent reason apart from the overcrowding aspect they got up and began their sightless, headless march in a great mass. With each mile their pace quickened, breaking into a trot, then a run and finally a stampede, charging headlong over a cliff, into the seas of the Arctic. The lemmings have been committing this kind of suicide for centuries, thus controlling their population growth and balancing nature. PT's paper suggested to me that transport men have the same in-built population correction instinct.
1 wonder, is there any connection? The lemmings do their thing every seven years; can it be coincidence that an 0 licence has a seven-year currency period?
Footnote: My thanks to Peter Thompson for such a supply of usable material. We would like to think hat CM was one of his information sources.