Passing Comments A FTER d recent visit to i — VIran, Iraq,
Page 18
Page 19
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
Syria, Egypt and Palestine, Capt. H. C. Longhurst gave an address to a meeting of members of the London Chamber of Commerce. The subject was present and future conditions in the Middle East from the business aspect. He said that there had never been greater potential good will towards Great Britain in the Arab world than there is to-day, and if we take the trouble to study the customers' needs and give them what they want at a price they are prepared to Pay, our opportunities of trade in the Middle East are tremendous. Our commercial vehicles are accepteeas the bet in the world, and, with a despeta:te shortage of transport in that part of the globe, the prospects Of a good trade in these should be excellent. We must, :however, be wellrepresented. It will be no good sending " second-raters." Capt. Longhurst was .critical of the fact that our high officials are even now employing foreign vehicles.
Arab Friendship With Britain Will Promote Trade
Results Achieved by A PEW weeks .ago a conferEfficient Personnel 1—kence of representatives of .Marragernent. industrial concerns operating within a 30-mile. radius of . Oxford was held for the purpose of establishing.a group et those engaged in personnel management. The 'conference was • presided over by Sir .. Miles Thomas, Vice-chairman of the Nuffield Organization, Who said' that 'the need for this form of management as a specialized function had been .generally accepted by enlightened employers for a number of years, but its practice had become truly widespread only during the war.It was an asset which did not appear on the balance-sheet, but, nevertheless, -produced' .concrete and often irnmediate results. As an example of what good management. can achieve,-Sir Miles referred. to an important .branch of the Nuffield Organization at Cowley. Here the 'personnel technique has been developed 'to a high degree; and, in consequence, unexplained absenteeism had consistently been kept to the low figure of 0.8 per cent. The Peace in Europe q0NIE members of the I.A.E. Ha s Not Yet '—'must " have been a little
Broken puzzled when reading the first two lines of the foreword to the 'Institute's July-September Journal. . Et reads: " As an Institution we certainly need be in no doubt that peace has given place to war in Europe." We have ascertained that this is -merely a typcigraphical error. Apparently the words " peace " and. " war" were transposed.
London Bus Driver .IN "A Cockney -on Main Appreciates American IStreet,''' just published by
Oil Engine . . . Michael Joseph, Ltd., Herbert Hodges, a London bus driver who was sent to America to lecture on Britain in war-time, refers to oil-engined buses in Omaha. He says that -what struck him most, as he sat in the driver's seat of one, was the absence of vibration • Alien the engine was idling. The power unit seemed .•
to be a great improvement ,in this respect on some .British bus engines, and he thought the secret of this smoothness lay in. its using a two-stroke cycle. The -engine was also housed at the rear of the bus, so that the driver would be the last person to be troubled by any vibration. This was the first time he had seen a two-stroke oiler, and he was surprised not to have ..heard of such units on our.. buses, until it was explained that they had come out only in 1940.
M ould ing No to r A WELL-KNOWN authority Bodies and Parts in. 1-1 on plastics and rubber, Dr.
Plastics. . . . . Harry Barron, r eferred . recently to the pessibility of making motor bodies in plastics. He suggested that the most likely, means to use would be an inflatable rubber bag as an inner die, expanding into an outer shape-giving ,monk]. This method is economically possible for much smaller number's than are necessary to justify the provision of expensive steel dies.