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12th November 1983
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Which of the following most accurately describes the problem?

I a matter of ntages

,o market share this year cent higher than last is Alan B. Fox, chief 'e. The company has he five per cent threshold ust's registrations

.6 per cent of the market. ;ales this year are 20 per ater than last year and three months have been )nt higher than last year, ■ ti with me? No? Neither

do understand is that iting loss of rim in the ) months of last year will 3rted into an operating £2m this year, giving a iround on a turnover of hat's what comes of do these 3s mean?

TAGES in profusion are mly causes of confusion. avoluted combinations ,ers to identify vehicle equally baffling. At a nference a colleague put ;than of their need to 'ox, who explained the de. British model names °thing to foreigners, he ereas numerical

.es did.

have to memorise all r makers' codes because ever taken prisoner by .ians I would have great in swallowing the code benefit of my far-flung I shall in future be lot as The Hawk but as N62LN. Now work that bounds. Devon County Council now proposes to hand over road maintenance in Tiverton and Ottery St Mary to a contractor.

Holes in the road may no longer be free public entertainment. Private enterprise could be seen at its entrepreneurial best with the erection of tiered seats around tented road excavations, with graded charges of admission for dedicated hole-watchers (special terms, of course, for pensioners).

This would be a splendid opportunity for the liberated women of Greenham Common to create a diversion by setting up a Devon branch to protest against encroachment on civil liberty.

Equity could be expected to move in quickly to enrol the performers, filling a vacuum left by Nalgo, which has instructed members not to co-operate in Devon's plans.

Meanwhile, good weather may enable the M27 between Southampton and Portsmouth to be completed next spring instead of in the summer. The section around Rownhams is already pretty rough and may be under repair by the time the new adjoining stretch is opened, thus preserving the continuous frustration without which no motorway is replete.

Haulamatics that became Aquamatics

IN AN AGE of built-in obsolescence it says much for the quality of Haulamatic 615 dump trucks that six of them should be worth shipping 8,00Q miles back to Britain for reconditioning after spending a fortnight on the bottom of Port Stanley Harbour in the Falklands. They were dunked when a barge capsized in bad weather.

Many parts had to be replaced and, not surprisingly, the Perkins V8.540 engines had to be stripped and overhauled. But the expense and effort were worth while. Now the dumpers are back on relatively dry land in the Falklands where the Ministry of Defence has about 30 of its fleet of 100 or so.

Is 17 too young for the CPC?

IS THE examination for the certificate of professional competence too easy if a 17year-old can qualify as a transport manager? Greg Frost, who has been working for a year in his father's 30-vehicle haulage business of W. Richardson, of Forest Hall, near Newcastle upon Tyne, is hardly likely to think so because he has recently achieved that distinction.

I am sure he would agree, however, that without practical experience the certificate is purely academic. One of the most important attributes of a successful manager is the ability to handle staff, which cannot be expected at 17.

Is "Juggernaut" losing its venom?

"IT IS UNFORTUNATE that the word 'juggernaut' has come to be used by many people as a term of abuse for the heavy lorry, especially maximum-size articulated lorries," says London Needs Lorries, a report sponsored by 73 trade bodies.

It was first coined as an expression of opprobrium by The Sunday Times in a weekly campaign of vilification of heavy lorries. Although its derivation was inept, its brutal sound and appearance gave the word a loutish appeal and it has stuck.

But as the 1982 edition of The Con scise Oxford Dictionary acknowledges, it has now passed into the language to mean "a very large and heavy motor vehicle" and I suspect it has lost much of the venom that originally inspired it. Nevertheless, its use is still to be discouraged.


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