Conference Formula
Page 57
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WiTH the opening of the conference season, I give my formula for preparing a paper. First, dictate what you want to say and get it out of your system. Then take the neatly typed sheets and divide thein into two 'equal piles. Without reading it, throw away the first half of the paper.
This process should remove most of the worst platitudes.
There will then be a sporting chance that the paper will open on a bright note that will discourage the audience from falling asleep. Indeed, they may afterwards remember what you were talking about.
Illogical Limits
ROAD users will agree with Lord Mancroft, Minister Without Portfolio, in the House of Lords last week, that' "there will certainly have to be modifications" to the application of the experimental 40 m.p.h, speed limit on many of the roads around London. Their Lordships showed a strong dislike for the administration of the experiment, which I heartily endorse.
Some of the roads, formerly derestricted but now limited to 40 m.p.h., 'mist have been selected with a pin. I know of one which is apparently restricted to 40 m.p.h. for northbound traffic but is unlimited in the southbound direction,
Friend at Court
BUS operators found an ally in Mr. Hugh Delargy, Socialist M.P. for the rural constituency of Thurrock, Essex, in the B.B.C. programme "Any Questions?" last Friday. In a discussion on the Budget he criticized Mr. Heatheoat Amory's failure to reduce the tax on oil fuel.
But later, when the panel indulged in a welter of sentimentality over the railways, he blotted his copybook by demanding a subsidy for the railways to increase their
efficiency. Who ever heard of a permanent guarantee against loss as a spur to greater effort? Even the British Transport Commission have rejected the idea.
A Lost "Life"
APPARENTLY because of an unintentional leakage through the Ministry of Transport, Mr. Alex Samuels, chairman of the .London and Home Counties Traffic Advisory Committee, discovered that he was to have been the subject of " This is Your Life" ill B.B.C. television on Monday. As surprise is an essential element of the programme, it had to be cancelled. It is a pity that an unguarded word should have destroyed what would have been a fascinating story.
Skates On
THE supervisor of what is claimed to be the world's largest warehouse—American, of course—travels round it on a scooter and the foreman wears roller skates. It houses 32,000 items of hardware, all on pallets.
Mr. E. G. Whitaker, transport adviser to Unilever, Ltd., who has visited the warehouse, shrewdly suggests that by mechanization the owner may well have lowered the handling cost of half the items and broken even on another quarter, only to lose all his gains in higher costs on the remainder. Moral: mechanize with discretion,
Lorriana
TISMNG Covent Garden Opera House, I was reminded V of the controversy about whether Verdi was commissioned to write "A'ida " to mark the official opening of the Suez Canal Has Mr. Harold Watkinson asked Mr. Benjamin Britten to compose an opera called " Lorriana " to celebrate the inauguration of the London-Birrnineham motorway?