Roll out the barrel — from coal
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DESPITE the present glut of oil, conservation is still vital and the relative merits of road and rail in saving liquid fuel continue to be argued, often with emotion rather than hard facts.
Angus Dalgleish, a chartered engineer whose independent report on the conversion of railways to motorways has been issued by the Prime Minister's "think tank," maintains that trains are far more extravagant than buses in the use of energy. He says that whereas the £775 million to be spent on electrifying the railways has been estimated to save 9,600 barrels of oil a day, that sum devoted to the construction of plants to produce oil from coal would yield 38,000 barrels a day.
As this is a political hot potato, I suggest that Mrs Thatcher lets Ray Buckton and Arthur Scargill decide the priority in a fraternal contest to the death at Wembley Stadium. Gate money should pay for both the electrification and the coal plants.