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Melia watch
Page 12
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IN THE NEWS
Stuart Thomas gives us his regular round-up of the way the newspapers have covered the transport industry this week.
How many members of the Association of British Drivers (ABD) does it take to change a light bulb? If you're chairman of the ABD the answer is probably four.
The Guardian alleges that the ABD has "routinely allowed its membership numbers to be exaggerated". It pours scorn on the group's claim that it has 9,000 members, revealing that according to Companies House the ABD's bank balance was £14,700. Couple this with an annual subscription fee of £20 and it doesn't take a trade association's treasurer to tell you the true figure is perhaps a tad lower.
ABD chairman Brian Gregory swiftly reduced the figure to "2,256 paying subscribers and 3,775 affiliate members". Several of these "affiliate" organisations later denied their members had any links with the ABD.
Gregory was then quoted as saying: "It doesn't matter a fig to me whether we've got 1,500 members or 5,000 members." This seems a remarkably casual approach from an organisation whose motto is "voice of the driver". Perhaps it's more of a whisper.
Many of the regionals and nationals picked up on a BBC documentary's revelation that pigeons follow roads to find their way home rather than a built-in biological compass, simply because it's "easier." Cue some dreadful avian puns in the tabloids like "Pexposed"... "Go left at Peck'em"... "Grid-flock' and the Evening Standard's rib-tickling "Pigeons follow the motorway".
An AA spokeswoman told The Sun: "We devise 30 million routes for motorists every year but we didn't realise pigeons were among our customers!"
You can almost hear the cry of "Eureka1 in the Treasury department as civil servants expand road user charging legislation to tax any living creature using the road network.