Restrictive Practice
Page 25
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VALUE is a simple word. Housewives know its meaning when V shrewdly, if intuitively, buying the goods and services which keep the wheels of industry and trade turning—to the tune of over £5,000 m. a, year on food alone.
Not so the experts—or at least some of them. Their training encourages them to break everything down into little bits for closer scrutiny. Too often, however, the bits remain bits. The whole never sees the light of day again, and main objectives can be lost to view.
Do we detect something of the sort. in 'the address given to the Institute of Transport in London on Monday? In a paper entitled "Management and Transport" Mr. P. H. Shirley, vice-chairman, British Railways Board, said: " I start from the point of view that transport, of itself, adds nothing to the value of the goods or people who use it, except that it positions them where they are required or where they can fulfil' their objective."
Ignoring the self-contradictory qualification, the statement that transport adds nothing to the value of goods is not new. Economics textbooks have copied one another for years now with similar claims. But repetition at whatever level does not make nonsense any less nonsensical.
Authoritative opinion concludes that the major factor in Britain's economic revolution and worldwide power in the past century was the emergence of a new transport system—the railways, Mr. Shirley!
Road transport has now taken over in this century as the major agent in widening the horizon and prospects for all. It will continue . to make its vital contribution to an expanding economy.
So away with this no-value concept of transport and the restrictive life it implies!