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BIRD'S EYE VIEW
Page 28
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BY THE HAWK
• TNT chairman Peter Allsebrook was generous in his praise of Trade and Industry Secretary Lord Young at the official opening of the company's new base last week — so generous that some pundits in the audience wondered if TNT had just clinched a Government deal, or had heard that the Post Office monopoly on letters was about to end.
As Lord Young prepared to unveil the plaque that commemorated the opening, Allsebrook dubbed him: "The most photographed and talkedabout person in the United Kingdom," and a "great British statesman to whom we owe a great deal" The Secretary of State smiled graciously, said nothing and listened to the reading of a personal letter to TNT from Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who wrote that she is "delighted" with TNT's remarkable growth record. Allesbrook drew the ultimate parallel: "Ten years of TNT in this country has mirrored ten years of Mrs Thatcher's Government."
Wow. Surely some big announcement was coming, but straight-talking company founder Sir Peter Abeles cleared the air. "No, we will have to wait for a decision from the politicians. Our function is only to react to what is available," he said. "It is not our function to create markets." Take the opportunities when they arise, says Abeles, and "never do anything that has no profit potential."
Sound advice from a man whose British operation has grown from an annual turnover of 85 million ten years ago to a daily turnover today of more than E1 million.
• The motorcycle courier who lost 50,000 hypodermic needles from his motorcycle (CM 9-15 March), causing more than 140 tyres to burst and bringing the M5 and M6 to a standstill, has been fined 2250 with £35 costs and banned from driving for six months. Rather more fortunate was van driver Terry Neal of Poplar, East London, who won his appeal at the Old Bailey last week, quashing fines for using a vehicle with a bald tyre iiI defective lights.
In fact Neal's "offences' occurred when he was aw holiday: somebody else hz borrowed the vehicle.