BIRD'S EYE VIEW
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BY THE HAWK
• Warm-hearted is not an expression I can recall using in these columns to describe any politician. To the best of this old bird's recollection, it has never yet been applied to a Transport Minister.
Peter Bottomley has made us think again.
At the recent opening of
MIRA's excellent, but very exposed, new wet-grip test track, he displayed the ability to keep smiling in the face of driving rain and high winds during a very lengthy demonstration of the track's capabilities.
While many journalists and test engineers were grimacing uncomfortably in the biting cold and others took the earliest opportunity to run for the coffee urn, Bottomley maintained a genuine interest in the detail of the test Like everybody else at MIRA he must have been greatly relieved to see the last pirouetting vehicle of the day, but before joining the dash for any warm corner of the marquee, he remembered to thank publicly all the track marshalls who by then must have lost count of the number of cones they had replaced and the number of fingers which felt as if they were about to fall off.
We do not know if Margaret Thatcher would describe her new Junior Transport Minister as a wet or a dry. In our book he is wet and warmhearted.
• West Sussex trans' manager John Ashmore wi the main guest at a recepl given recently by tempora driver agency Overdrive.. . was there because last yc he won the title of Trans' Manager of the Year in a c< petition jointly sponsored I Overdrive and Motor Trar, port.
Ashmore did not feel pressurised by Overdrive's sponsorship, nor its hospital Addressing the small gathei of fellow municipal transpc managers, he said that if t. used temporary driving ag cies they should "screw th into the ground." That is re why he is Transport Mana of the Year.
• When two internatic corporations like Fiat and Fi join forces it is hardly surpri: ing that they make a meal it. In the case of last wec Iveco Ford Truck announc ment, it was a lunch precer much talk, heavy theatricals considerable travel. ;ontinental journalists were ed into Ileathrow and Gatk, bussed to a Piccadilly el, shepherded into a kened televised room and l that the merger made no erence to the way the two lpanies would trade in their ntries.
iimultaneous translation was on cordless headphones ch fired static electricity the ears of wearers close photographers' flashguns would have worked better the principal speakers, .cl's Sam Toy and Iveco's rgi Garuzzo, worn them. a one point as fellow lveco ictors performed a sterling irt in translating German stions into English exasperated German -islator huffed into the idphones: "If Meester Gazo vould year ze
idvones he vould get ze fect translation." Then all were lunched and bussed back to their planes without anyone having dared ask, in the week the world drew its breath over Mediterranean events, just what Ford's American chiefs think of a deal with a company whose parent counts Colonel Gadaffi as a shareholder.
/1 As we have reported elsewhere in these pages, Junior Transport Minister Peter Bottomley is pledged to get major road schemes under construction more quickly. This promise came last week in a response to a report submitted to the Government.
Said Bottomley: One main area for improvement is in streamlining the Department of Transport's own internal procedures." It would appear that the speeding-up has got off to a slow start. The report was presented to the Government in December 1984.