BIRD'S EYE VIEW
Page 46
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BY THE HAWK
• As an often bemused observer of the road transport scene, I have a harmless little hobby of visualising the people behind the press releases that litter my desk.
Some, no doubt, are the salt of the earth while others should be taken with a pinch.
Take the two that are next to me right now. From the Motor Agents Association comes a tidy little poster headed 'Our Christmas & New Year hours of business'. It simply lists every day of the holiday period with a space for the relevant opening hours. At the bottom it bears the legend 'Member Motor Agents Association' with the familiar MAA symbol. A no-nonsense bit of public relations that performs a useful job.
Probably designed by a sensible sort of chap who knows his onions and is generally the backbone of the industry.
Then there's the latest leaflet from the DVLC touting old registration numbers (you remember, the trade the DTp al
ways disapproved of until someone showed it the full page ads in Exchange & Mart and our Cecil was forced in front of the camera trying not to look too embarrassed at joining the Arthur Daly set).
The DVLC has obviously booked a first-division designer for this one; it's all glossy card, modern type faces and ever so up-market: "A personalised or attractive registration mark has long been regarded as an individual and inventive way to make your vehicle stand out from the crowd", it gushes, introducing the DVLC Classic Collection of extremely expensive plates for the very pretentious, and the DVLC Select Registrations which are notquite-so-extremely-expensive for all you lovers of bumper stickers, saying 'Truckers do it within their hours limits'.
An example, I fear, of the scratchy entrepreneurism which so blighted the Eighties.
I'm left with a mental image of someone smoother than a squirt of EP grease who is possibly very well suited to flogging used-car numbers.