SACK THE LOT!
Page 9
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By "The Inspector."
EVERYONE should be allowed a self-complacent chortle at intervals. Even if it be against the canons of good taste to indulge in public announcements of the "I told you so l " order, no one who has the couran to voice his own convictions should be denied the encouragement accruing from contemplation of the fact that " What I eaid yesterday a lot of other people -think to-day." So I permit myself a properly accentuated chortle after having read of the details of some of the principal cuts that the Government is stated to be contemplating as a result of the pressure to which they have been subjected to abandon further squanderma•nia projects.
To-day I read with pleasure that it is the intention to carve lumps off the magnificent edifice erected by Sir. Erie Geddes. The Ministry of Transport, we learn, is to be deprived of some of its recently contrived Departments complete. For propaganda purposes, it is the intention to dispense—or at any rate to appear to dispense—with the. so-called Development Branch of the Ministry and the wholly unneces, sary Area Transport Commissioners. Further developments, of the magnificent schemes for establiFhing vast central electric power stations in selected areas all over this country are to cease—for the time being at any rate—inelusling that little scheme of damming the Severn, presumably. And, lastly, there are definite signs that the Government is not to throw more good money after bad in costly attempts to pursue the development of aerial "traffic " before the world is ready for it. All of which gives me great satisfaction—if it be not too good to be true.
. Of the Development Branch of the. Ministry of Transport I know little or nothing, nor can I find anyone who does but, knowing at first hand, the capacity for waste that is an inherent part of the or ganization of all bureaucratic governmental departmentsboasting such indefinite titles as this,' I am satisfied that we shall be spared the costly trouble of dipping our hands into our pockets to provide the means to try out a great deal of silly scheming, for which the times are rankly unsuita.ble. I remember a good many similar stunts during the war, including a caterpillar-tracked four-ton lorry with hydraulic steering and other cheap little "gadgets," which must have cost sixo or eight thousand pounds to build and was not completed tillmonths. after the Armistice. The intention was to order large numbers so that they could carry road material for new roadmaking over country where there were not any--a most interesting and: useful " development" from ordinary practice. But that was in times when we all of us thought in millions—if we, thought anything about money at all.
Then we are to lose, so the rumour goes, the inestimable services of the Area Transport Commissioners! But, before they go We, who have had the pleasure of paying their wages all these many months, might properly be furnished with a short account of what they have been doing for the money. Some of us remember they were to co-ordinate local transport, to cut out waste mileage, to pool tonnage, and all that sort of thing. I seem to remember that the Commissioners in the early days achieved some public fame by the announcement of their success in get
ting two or three local firms to promise to help each with their wagons. My information is that so far as the road transport of the country was concerned, at any rate, the Commissioners have achieved nothing of value whatever. Was not another part of their activities to ensure that lorries did no long distance work, and that railways were to leave the Ideal work to them ? Did not get very far, did they? Well, the sooner they are gone the better. The industry can look after itself well enough in such matters_ • Was it these same Area Commissioners who devised that wonderful scheme of mathematical formuhe to be inscribed on all vehicles, horsed or homeless, and of which. everyone very soon took no notice? It was called tabulating the country's transport, I think, and was intendecla to permit the country to carry on without the railways, if need be. In any case, whether they were the culprits or not, we can do very nicely without those foolish classifications., but we should like to know how much it cost the country to card-index all the milk carts and bakers' vans.
Lang ago, I questioned the advisability, in these days of practical aircraft attack by an enemy and of Bolshevistic tendencies towards " direct action" of all kinds, of over-developing the idea of centralization of power productiOn, even if it did result in" considerable ultimate economies. We have no Niagara, in this country which we can harness ; the best VITP have been able to suggest in two years has, apparently, been the scheme for damming the Severn. However, .these majestic schemes are to be postponed, if all goes well, until we can afford them, and by that time we may have thought the whole thing
out a little more carefully. The electric vehicle people will be sorry., but now that :the war-boom in the battery chassis is over, battery cars are making little progress in the haulage fields proper.
Finally, the decision is, it is stated, about to be taken to spend very little money on pioneer work in so-called commercial aircraft development for the present. -11:34's untimely end put paid to any further attempts to waste the country's money in this way for a while. We shall have to remember that, thanks to millions of expenditure during the war, we developed aircraft, without regard to risk or cost, it is true, out of all proportion to its normal evolution, and we are still well ahead of time on it. Commercial aviation still remains the. sport of the Clerk of the Weather. With all the millions we have spent in the air, we have made no impression whatever on the elements-we cannot even pour oil on them! It still blows when. it wants to—at it did at floviden a few days ago. 'All we can do towards stopping it raining is to put up an umbrella and to tap the aneroid!
National need for economy seems likely to rid us of several unwieldy chunks of bureaucratic orgsnization which would, in the long run, have been detrimental to our heavy-vehicle industry. We shall manage without those Area Commissioners, we shall continue to do without those super-power stations, we seem to have " developed " enough to go on with since 1914, and, if a tithe of what was, atosneitime, to. be. spent -in the air is likely to be spent on the roads, the country's bid for bankruptcy will at least. haves yielded the
commercial vehicle industry some benefit.