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Faux pas to cherish
Page 13
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Peter Lamer isn't writing from the Mermaid Tavern this month;
6 instead, he and the chaps have been riding the Spearmint Rhino in that den of iniquity, Harrogate.
My colleagues from the haulage industry swapped the Mermaio Tavern for the Spearmint Rhino Club in Harrogate this week, which I must admit was a bit of a shock for the old boys.
I'd invited them to Harrogate for the Federation of Petroleum Suppliers' Annual Exhibition. They don't really have a specific interest in tanker haulage but there was a lot at the exhibition that was relevant to all forms of road transport. They particularly enjoyed the Formula One Competition on the Artegy stand. The theme was the classic quotes of Murray Walker, such as "with half the race gone, there is half the race still to go".
This sort of faux pas was adopted as their theme for our weekly chat. They are a pretty unforgiving bunch. Politicians can serve their country for a lifetime but say something stupid and Pork Chop and the lads will lambast them until closing time.
Mush was convinced that prime ministers and presidents deliberately selected the dumbest deputies to make themselves look good and came to the conclusion that George Bush senior had probably contributed most towards the assassination of global politics by appointing Dan Quayle. Who could forget "a low voter turnout is an indication of fewer people going to the polls"?
It's always heart-warming when someone in authority finds the banana skin, so as we took a pit-stop after a circuit of the petroleum suppliers' exhibition we all enjoyed a good laugh at the latest Vosa newsletter, Moving On, which contained a classic: "Vosa will adopt a light-touch approach to the enforcement of drivers' hours rules on digital tachograph-equipped vehicles until June, provided that drivers and operators are recording driving time effectively and there is no evidence of them breaking the rules."
"Mush was convinced that world leaders deliberately selected the dumbest deputies to make themselves look good"
"Excuse me." said Hampstead, "but if there is no evidence of drivers breaking the rules, lt doesn't matter what sort of touch they adopt."