• "Ask an American household remover how to estimate a
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job and he'll tell you — by weight, of course. But what about volume? you ask — and you're likely to get the raspberry in return. For the Britisher, going by weight is a bit like skipping church on Sundays — it's just not something you do."
This is extracted from GET! World (the journal of the Co-operative d'Enterprises de Transports). It introduces an article highlighting the differences to be encountered when estimating and costing international household removals.
The Americans, apparently, have a cube sheet which lists most household items and provides cube and weight based on average densities. But in the UK each piece has to be individually measured and calculated.
The main difference between the UK and the US is that we (Brits) give a firm price on which we stand or fall. In other words, a UK remover stands by his price and tape measure, while his American colleague has more room to manoeuvre; but with a slight snag — he has to get a weight certificate for the consignment, otherwise he cannot present his invoice.
CETI, headquartered in Geneva, held its recent convention in New York with an estimating contest as part of the programme (or should I have spelled it "program").
• Our mention about the sheep hazard on Faroe Islands roads (CM, May 24) and the love-lorne bull on the M4 was bound to cause us to be inundated with similar stories. The one that we liked best, however, was the cutting from the Birmingham Post about the two pink elephants which "made it a day to remember for motorway police as they stampeded down the M5".
Apparently, police officers manning the West Mercia control room thought it was a joke when a report of pink ele phants on the motorway near Junction 4 at Lydiate Ash was radioed in.
Their doubts were resolved — the paper says — when the elephants lurched into view on police closed-circuit television.
The 3.7m (12ft) beasts turned out to be model elephants strapped to the back of an open lorry on their way to a Bank Holiday show. Making good use of a trunk route, no doubt.
• "Suppose I pay you £100 this year, and next year you ask for £150. If I give you £120, it is a cut of £30. That is what the media calls a cut." So said the worthy MP for Cirencester and Tewkesbury Nicholas Ridley in one of his last after-dinner speeches as Secretary for State for Transport, before moving over to the Department of the Environment in Mrs T's latest shuffle.
"Take the 'cuts' in my Department," he continued. "I fully admit that I have made cuts. 'Ah,' you will say, 'so you have cut the roads programme!' "But the truth is, he said, that overall his department had cut its budget by 12% in real terms since 1979/80 and by 8% since 1982/83. Yet capital spending had risen. And he went on, as one would expect every good politician to, to show that spending on the roads programme had risen by 25%, railway investment by 30%; investment in LRT by 32%, and so on.
Those, he told his audience, were his capital 'cuts'; and he went on to state that there had been real cuts — cuts in wasteful revenue subsidies to public transport, and so on. He also came out with this puzzling statement: "We have better ways to encourage people to go by public transport — more competition, and better quality as priority number one." (Whatever that means — perhaps that's why she moved him!) Joking apart, though, he has a point about the use of the word "cuts" which, some
would say, is akin to the way the headlines read when big business is crippled by a strike. "Industry loses millions." As 1 once heard a little old lady ask: "How can you lose something you haven't got in the first place?" She's right, of course, though such headlines are more dramatic than if they read "BL will not reach its budget," for instance.
• Marks and Spencer has published a book of household hints and tips. In the section on moving house, M and S advises readers to haggle for the best price with the removals company.
Immediate past president of the British Association of Removers, Joe Luxford, took exception to this. He wrote to the retail chain pointing out that he and his family have been buying St Michael clothes and food for many years — "and not once have we haggled about the price!"
• Bass UK distribution dire tor Roger Denniss has been researching the existence of 1RTE counterparts in Europe (see 1RTE conference report on page 26). His contact in tt Netherlands had to report du there is no Dutch IRTE, but gave some useful(?) information about the country, which Denniss relayed to the learned engineers. This included the fact that if you drive East-West across the Netherlands for three hours you will get wet feet — you will be in the North Sea.
But wait, there's more. If Dutchman can attract a mole into his garden, he will be a rich man — he can open a sk centre!