bird's eye view by the Hawk • David and Goliath
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This year's Scottish Show attracted almost 136,000 visitors and according to CM staffmen present the new layout met with the approval of the public generally. However, not all of the exhibitors were too impressed although one who was highly delighted is Bill Moffatt, md of Argyle, who had only one vehicle on show and sold it in the first day to W. H. Malcolm.
Bill also appreciated the visit to the stand by Lord Stokes. 1 hear that the British Leyland chief offered encouragement to the smallest commercial motor manufacturer in the country.
III Bird trouble
In recent years pest controllers have been using a variety of methods to rid buildings of birds (the feathered variety). Powder, explosions, sirens, nets and bells have all played their part but it seems that even these very sophisticated methods lose their repellent properties in time.
Charles King, a Ford truck specialist at Milton Earnest in Beds, believes his firm has found the solution. Up in the joists of the paint shop they have a stuffed owl and since installing it their bird trouble has disappeared. I wonder if it also works with mice?
• Common Market garden
Peter Winston, of Freeman Fox and Associates, recently outlined the transport planning behind the New Covent Garden market due to open around December 1973. The Nine Elms site should cut down the lengthy delays to vehicles using the market. Night delivery vehicles of 15m length should have no access difficulties and all hauliers and market traders should be delighted to be able to plan palletized deliveries —plenty of fork-lift trucks at long last!
A 23-storey "admin" building to house the market authority does not mean a massive growth in bureaucracy — the authority offices will only occupy one or two floors. Many market traders and indeed some road hauliers are expected to take office space, either in the tall block or in warehouses on site. The market authority will have the same powers as a road authority and will be responsible for road safety. "Boozing", it seems, will be severely frowned upon if it prejudices road safety.
Not many people realize that more than 100 countries supply produce to Covent Garden. As much of this comes by road it might be appropriate for the GLC to think about some foreign language signs down Vauxhall way. The Vauxhall Cross intersection, it appears, is being phased for corn
pletion to coincide with the opening of New Covent Garden.
On average vehicles using the present market carry less than one ton. Vehicle loading delays are on average 3 hours though they can be three times this. New Covent Garden should cut delays down by half.
Although most arrival vehicles should easily miss the early morning peak traffic there may be problems with fruit traders' vehicles aiming to be back at their shops by 9 am.
The whole project is costing £30m and this sum is to be amortized over a 40-60 year period. London Transport is being asked to change the name of its present Underground station to "Opera" — the market authority is well used to porters' tantrums but does not anticipate the arrival of any Italian prima donnas!
• Losing weight?
If you're having trouble with your weight it may possibly be caused by the scales. I came to this conclusion after hearing of an unusual situation in the report of the chief inspector of weights and measures for Cumberland. It appears that someone in the North didn't take too kindly to the activities of the weights and measures men at the weighbridge on A6 between Penrith and Carlisle. And that on at least two occasions their disapproval was demonstrated when drivers used their lorries to move the weighbridge hut from its foundations.
With the opening of M6 which bypasses the old weighbridge site the equipment has now been installed north of Carlisle. There
have been no further attempts made on its “life". • Overhauling time
If you've been dialling the speaking clock recently the chances are that you were being answered from the Liverpool installation. After eight years' day and night service the speaking clocks around Great Britain are being overhauled. This piece of information landed on my desk recently from the Post Office press office. It was posted 48 hours earlier, first class, at a point only 15 minutes distant. Looks as if there's more than the timepiece needing overhauling.
• Japan's LOoY champ
A delegation representing Japanese road transport interests have been visiting Britain during the past two weeks and were in attendance at the Scottish Show. My colleague Bob Holliday met four of them, just before they took off for a Continental tour, at the RHA headquarters in London.
Though only one, Mr S. Hashimoto, overseas division director of the Japan Trucking Association, spoke English, they all took great interest in our transport laws and the Association's Eric Russell and Eddie Barber spent a whole afternoon answering questions about insurance and explaining such things as roadside spotchecks, which appear not to be practised in Nippon.
But just as much interest was shown in our Lorry Driver of the Year competition, for it transpired that one of the visitors, 24-year-old Kunihiro Sugawara, is the 1971 Champion of Japan's own LDoY. He drove a Nissan diesel for his employers, Tokyo-based heavy haulage operators.