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SPEAK FOR YOURSELF
Page 9
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Barry Proctor rounds on the public, who want goods on demand, but don't want to meet the cost of delivery or share the roads with trucks
When you're on the road as much as I am you find you listen to an awful lot of radio. Of course one of the most popular types of programme these days is the phone-in. They allow listeners to "interact" with the radio station (something that we should all be doing in this high-tech, multi-media age apparently). Unfortunately the downside of the wall-to-wall phone-in shows is that a lot of very, very strange people with some incredibly illinformed opinions get the chance of some air-time. No matter that what they are saying is complete tripe or that a studio-based presenter or pundit may
correct them, once that hare's running there's no catching it.
Take a phone-in I caught on Radio Black Country or West Bromwich FM or some such, about the potential widening of the M6 and traffic congestion and so on. Fine and dandy you might think, a chance for some informed debate on the subject. Inevitably, one caller came on and began ranting on about how all freight should be moved at night, which would free up vast areas of road space, there'd be no-more jams ever and the sun would shine forever — or thereabouts.
However, what really irritated me was the lack of counterarguments from the industry. Had the phone-in been on Radio Stoke I would have been straight on the phone putting our side of the story. But during the time that I was listening not one single haulier phoned up to correct Joe Public's lunatic argument. You have to wonder sometimes whether this industry will ever get off its backside and do something.
We are the first to complain when a piece of legislation comes in that we don't like, but where is the lobbying of local MPs when the laws are being debated. Hauliers complain about how the decision-makers know nothing about the industry and, while there's truth in that, am I the only one who thinks it's obvious that unless you go out of your way to tell them, there's no way they'll understand?
Barry Proctor owns Barry Proctor Services, which is based in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire.