P.W ill this week from the transTerintendent of Harlow Council,
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Mr Isles, who cornhat it was nice of the DoE to half-page advertisement in .eial Motor (January 10) to -ators that new vehicle-test on forms would be availm all Money Order Post rom early January, and that o use one of the new "L" rms could delay the test date. mble is, he tells me, that the fice apparently has no conof the quantity required. His Lin Post Office has only 50 of forms of all types (vehicles, etc) for the whole of Harlow Aria, and the Harlow DC ne needs seven of these.
as offered one by the local lice, which wouldn't really go , and discovered that the local ion had only 20 copies. They Ring to send him one or two standing instructions are that Ly not send them through the 11" being a relative term it lat our friend was welcome to fairly lengthy journey to pick applications forms in person would still not have had .Come on, DoE: tell the poor st Office what the industry eeds if its test applications are suffer bureaucratic blight.
ig and spending
d to see that some Govern)epartments are taking the /'s economic plight to heart. ye just received an envelope .ed to the editors of three s in IPC Transport Press (including CA/nand containing three identical press releases. Not only are they conscious of the need to economise on postage, but the senders — the Ministry of Overseas Development have printed on the label: "Open carefully — Re-use with label."
We are taking their economical suggestion to heart, using the envelope to send back to the Department of Employment three of the four copies of most press releases which DE seems to send to this journal alone!
A little inter-departmental liaison might help.
Buttons and bows
The Christmas rush lasted a little longer for BRS Parcels Ltd than for some express carriers this year — they offered to provide free transport for the BBC's Blue Peter charity appeal, and the consignments which they started accepting from December 9 ran on well into January.
If you have a teenybopper between the ages of five and 75 in your household you will not need telling that this year Blue Peter appealed for old buttons and badges and buckles, which they are selling to pay for a puppy kennel and walking centre for the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association.
Nice gesture, BRSP.
Right for whom?
Returning for a moment to the labour relations theme with which I opened, I must applaud the timely outspokeness of Sir Len Neal at the Midlands C1T's industrial relations seminar. He rightly claimed that 99 per cent of employees are far removed from the hotheaded minority, and want peace and a fair day's pay. But he also hammered home the fact that strikes today had somehow acquired their own morality, justifying any interruption of work regardless of its purpose or method.
Indeed, he said, the "right" to strike had sometimes been elevated to such a status; any strike became "right" merely because it was a strike Attempts by others to exercise their rights in relation to any particular dispute were unpardonable, according to this new morality.
A warning that should not go unheeded.
Moment of truth
I think you can take it from me that the clutches on the new Saviem Club of Four vehicles will be wholly above reproach on production models.
Enjoying a working visit to the Cote d'Azur in gloomy January to drive the new vehicles last week, CM Tech Ed Graham Montgomerie had just finished his first test drive and was waiting for vehicle nuinero trente-et-un to arrive when he was told that it had regrettably suffered a mechanical derangement, and would he please take another vehicle.
He did, but not before discovering that it was the clutch which had packed up and that the driver at that crucial moment had been Paul Berliet, boss of the Berliet empire which has just been linked with Saviern?
Scabby
The Teamsters' Union in the United States is understandably cock-ahoop at a recent Supreme Court decision which says in effect that it's legal to call a scab a scab — even if he works for Uncle Sam in a non-union establishment and has never crossed a picketline. It is also in order to define the word in the phrase of famous novelist Jack London: "... a scab is a traitor to his God, his country, his family and his class."
By six votes to three the Supreme Court reversed a Virginia jury verdict -upheld by a higher court — which awarded $165,000 in damages to three non-unionists who were described as scabs in a local union newsletter.