Russian spoilsports grass on drivers
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WHAT, I WONDER, would happen to British lorry drivers who told a newspaper that many of their colleagues were drunk for much of the day, wasted their time searching for spare parts that they knew did not exist, and hired out the state's vehicles for private jobs, took their wives and girl friends shopping in them or merely slept the day away in them?
This is the burden of a letter written by senior Moscow lorry drivers to Pravda, asking for stern measures to be taken against the backsliders. But what are the managers doing while these nefarious practices are going on? Are they taking the rouble out of trouble?
Drivers and managers are not wholly to blame for Russia's chaotic road haulage service. Because of the appalling rural roads, writes Anthony Robinson, of the Financial Times, "a significant proportion of Soviet agricultural produce never leaves the fields and as much grain falls off the side of a lorry as is imported from abroad." I see behind this the sinister hand of America's CIA.
Robinson adds: "These tricks also help to ensure that four times as many Soviet workers are employed repairing lorries as are employed making them and that the life of a Soviet tractor is less than five years." This, of course, is the secret of full employment.