What the Associations Are Doing
Page 42
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BURNLEY PROTESTS AGAINST STATISTICAL RETURNS.
The Burnley Division of the C.M.U.A. has sent a letter to the local Chamber of Commerce stating its objections to the proposal by the Minister of Transport that road hauliers should be required to keep accounts and records, and to make statistical returns, as the Minister might require, in relation to the carriage of goods for hire or reward.
Representatives of the road-transport industry said there were objections to publishing the information while nothing had yet been done in regard to the proposals to regulate hours and wages, and fix rates of carriage for the industry as a whole. They felt that no useful purpose would be served by the Ministry in collecting statistics and rates of wages, until such time as the recommendations of the Baillie report on wages and conditions were brought into force.
A resolution was adopted, protesting against the publication of statistics by the Ministry. It was also decided to form a transport subcommittee of the Chamber to be composed of representatives of the transport industry, the cotton trade, and the retail and distributive trades.
£23 Millian.s in Claims.
." It is entirely foreign to all English Ideas of fairplav that a man should not be able to open, to operate, to extend or even maintain his business, except at the mercy of his competitors, but that is the position of the roadhaulage industry." This was one of the passages in a speech delivered by Mr. C. Boyd Bowman, BA., at a meeting held at the Cheltenham Chamber of Commerce, on Tuesday last, under the auspices of the B.R.F.
Dealing with the road problem, Mr. Bowman asked, "Can we afford not to build new roads? It is impossible to evaluate human life and injury in cash, he said, " but it is worthy of note that every year the insurance companies pay out £25,000,000 in claims arising from road accidents."
Roads an Election Issue.
At the annual dinner of the North East Scotland Division of the Motor Agents' Association, Mr. John S. Yule, secretary of Aberdeen Chamber of Commerce. proposing the toast of " The Motor Industry," said that the motor trade, the third largest in the land, had received a raw deal from the Government. The Ministry of Transport, under its five years plan to spend £100,000,000 on roads, had so far expended only a tenth of that sum. flail the deaths due to motor accidents could be attributed to bad roads, Mr. F. H. Beer, vice-president of the Association, responding, said that at the next General Election the question st8 of the roads should be a main issue. In a short time they might find their whole activities and expansion curbed because the roads could not take any More vehicles. Great Britain carried more vehicles per mile of road than any other country. The figures were 14.5, as against 8.2, 4.4, 4, and 3.6 for the United States, Germany, France, and Italy respectively. They suffered from repressive legislation in every direction, and nothing would be done until every member of the industry became a propagandist. MINISTER RECEIVES GERMAN ROADS DELEGATION.
On Tuesday last. March 8, the Minister of Transport received a deputation from the German Roads Delegation (1937).
The deputation consisted of 29 representatives of no fewer than 26 organizations which took part in the tour of the autobahnen last autumn.
A general discussion took place, and the Minister indicated that he would give careful consideration to the views put forward.