BIRD'S EYE VIEW
Page 30
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BY THE HAWK
• With all the furore about ministers getting backhanders for jobs on the side, spare a thought for Transport Minister Michael Portillo, who seems to have resorted to piloting a bus to eke out his wages. Nothing like a good photo opportunity, eh Minister?
• As the old saying goes, you don't get many hippos in Hampshire. But, as drivers on the A303 near Thruxton found last week, someone forgot to tell that to a three-tonne hippo called Hilda. She escaped when
rier lorry jacknifed and overurned her trailer, and she enoyed an hour or so of freedom before being tranquillised and winched into another semi.
Sadly, it all proved too much or her, according to her owners at Longleat Safari Park, and she succumbed soon after.
• And here is the story of Little Beth's bunny. Are you sitting comfortably? Then the Hawk will begin. Little Beth Winfield and her mummy and daddy were picked up by the AA when their car broke down in Wakefield. But three-year-old Beth left her favourite cuddly bunny behind in the AA van and when it was time for Beth to go to bed, she was so upset that bunny was missing that she cried and cried. But clever daddy rang the AA men, and guess what they did? Yes. They brought Beth's bunny all the way home in their yellow van and Beth tucked him up straight away in his nice warm bed.
The moral of the story is that sometimes even TV advert copy writers stumble upon the truth; AA men really are very, very nice men. • Spotted recently high in the islands of Scotland this sad, rusting hulk of a once formidable truck has been discarded, and left to rot in the salty winds. The vehicle resembles a Scarnmell, and from the body • A convoy of 90 trucks reached Romania last week with more than 1,000 tonnes of food donated by the Netherlands.
Daf helped to organise the run and provided 22 of the trucks.
Much of the food was unloaded by hand into school buildings at Hunedoara, 250km inside Romania. work (or what's left of it) it looks like it was used as a snowplough. A worthy rebuild project for those fine folk at the Historic Commerical Vehicle Society? Does anybody out there know what it is?
• Southport MP Ronnie Feam has some unusual views on the Channel Tunnel. A local paper quotes him as saying: "For instance, strong regional government would have helped in our battle to get the land bridge from USA to the Channel Tunnel through Liverpool. '' Not literally, I trust.