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Rallying cries
Page 3
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Unlike Pam Ewing, the curvaceous heroine of Dallas, we can't all wake up declaring: "Bobby... I've had the most awful dream." This isn't 1986, it's 2008. And for the next year at least this is the reality.
So, for 2009, the watchwords for all hauliers are likely to be 'cost control', 'asset management' and 'survival.. And may the Good Lord bless all your endeavours in this most trying of times. Flow nice it would be to find that the current nuclear winter all just a ghastly mistake that could somehow be rectified by a rapid U-turn...
Yet, earlier this month, that unlikely scenario came to pass fat least in part) for the whisky industry. After his pre-Budget report which included a planned 8% increase in duty that could have put 29p on the price of the bottle of whisky, despite a 2.5% cut in VAT created howls of protest among Scottish MPs and distillers, Chancellor Alistair Darling was forced to admit he'd made a mistake.
In double-quick-time the duty rise was cut to just 4%, prompting the Scotch Whisky Association to declare: "We welcome the Government's quick and positive action to ensure the overall duty burden faced by Scotch whisky remains broadly unchanged..." How is it the Chancellor is prepared to do an about-turn on whisky and not on diesel? Is whisky more important? Admittedly, you can't drink diesel, but it's no less the 'Water of Life' to thousands of UK truck operators having to pay for the stuff in the middle of the worst recession on record land the latest toll hikes on the Severn Crossing and M6 Toll only pile on the agony). So what might this say about the lobbying power of Scottish distillers compared with the road transport industry? Perhaps the cry for 2009 from the RHA and FTA to the Chancellor should be: "You did it on Scotch, now do it on diesel." Cheers... Brian Weatherley