In deep water
Page 44
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Dr Foster, you may recall, went to Gloucester in a shower of rain. Because of a cut in public spending and consequent neglect of footpaths, he stepped in a puddle right up to his middle and the shock of icy water swirling around his loins was such that he never went there again.
Not to be outdone, his namesake, Prof Christopher Foster, who headed the latest licensing inquiry, took a header into 91 fathoms of the road haulage industry's troubled waters to join Lord Geddes, who took a similar plunge in 1965. They reached some of the same conclusions, one of the most important being that ownaccount operators should be allowed to carry for hire or reward.
This principle, enshrined in the Transport Act, has only recently been partially modified by distinguishing between restricted licences for wholly own-account operators and national licences for professional hauliers, Without waiting to see how the compromise system works, the Foster committee recommends return to a complete free-forall, thus encouraging subsid ised competition from ownaccount operators with professional hauliers.
How is this suggestion to be reconciled with the finding that "after providing for replacement of assets, no profits are available to remunerate the capital employed" by hauliers? As Prof Foster is one of the Government's managemern consultants (which you mav or may not think is a recommendation) and a visiting professor of tranfpori economics at the London School of Economics, this question should be right up his street.