BIRD'S EYE VIEW
Page 28
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BY THE HAWK
• Just when you thought the Hawk had exhausted his supply of Lada stories, another came trundling to his notice. Poor James Greenwood, of Blackdyke Lane, Thornton, Bradford was caught by police speeding in his 1)-registered Lada 1200 up a 20 hill with a 30mph limit. They said he was travelling at 104.5kirCh (65mph). But he told them: -It can't do more than 60."
Greenwod was fined £100 with 212 costs, given a 12month conditional discharge, and ordered to pay a further 212 costs after admitting to driving the wrong way down a one-way street.
It seems, to misquote a popular bath salts advert, that things happen after you buy a Lath.
• A British truck manufacturer, which wishes to remain anonymous, has sent me some correspondence it received recently from a picture researcher at a book publishers. "The picture we are looking for is a juggernaut im a scenic position," said the researcher.
Concerned by the emotive word 'juggernaut', the company asked to see a copy of the text.
The text duly arrived, from a book aimed at 11-14-year olds. Readers were told to imagine they were farm labourers with young children between one and seven, who had lived in a village for years in a row of thatched cottages on the High Street. A dramatic in crease in traffic had been experienced in the village following the opening of a nearby container port.
"Now there is a heavy stream of heavy lorries which go right past your houses along the High Street. When they pass they make the whole cottage shake," read the text. "Apart from the noise which makes it hard to sleep at night you have noticed that cracks are appearing in the walls and you are afraid that the lorries are beginning to damage the foundations."
The truck manufacturer decided, with regret, that it was unable to help.
• Businesswoman Lucy Holes was so upset at failing her driving test for the third time that she told her husband that she had passed.
That was 16 years ago. Since then Holes, of Bramshott Lane, Hook in Hampshire has been illegally covering up to 20,000km a year as a party plan organiser — until being stopped by police for speeding. She appeared at Winchester Crown Court last week charged with making a false declaration to an insurance company. She was acquitted and has finally passed her test. Well, with 16 years to practice in, she would, wouldn't she?
• Hauliers in the South-East are often envious of their counterparts in Scotland, where the term "congestion" is more often used to describe a heavy cold than a traffic delay.
The Hawk had always assumed that the superior condition of Scotland's roads was due to the relatively sparse population density, but a job advert in the Glasgow Herald last week prompts a different interpretation.
Could it be that Scottish regional councils are luring roads directors from the South to highly lucrative posts north of the border? Strathclyde Regional Council, for instance, is offering an annual salary of up to .255,224 (plus relocation expenses, assisted car purchase, non-contributory life assurance and contributory superannuation) for the post of director of roads.
Gissa job . . . I could do that. Go on, gissa job .
• Congratulations to the Brewery Transport Advisory Committee, which has just enrolled its first overseas committee member in the form of the mighty German Lowenbrau brewery company.
BTAC secretary Bill Montague says there are now 32 members of the committee, and he hopes to enrol a further three or four foreign breweries over the next few years.