Tres eye
Page 41
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
iew by the Hawk U Missing men
Fifteen hungry men walked the corridors of the House of Commons on Monday evening and if they showed little enthusiasm for the Bill they were passing, who can blame them? For was it not the Housing Finance Bill which was the cause of their plight?
Led by Peter Walker, they were due to have dined with the Freight Transport Association on seafood, soup, steak and sweet at the London Hilton. A mere two :tours before the reception and even as they ,vere preparing their digestive juices for the .reat that lay ahead, a three-line whip was aid on the Bill and the unlucky 15 had to :brgo the succulent spread.
Replacing Peter Walker's 15 there was 3ne man, the Reverend, the Right ionourable, Lord Sandford, who looks tfter the environment and transport inter!sts of the Tories in the Lords. To him fell he duty of representing the Lower House Ind replying to the president's address.
• am bound to say the titled cleric was not he least put out, and in fact it could be said hat he was quite immodest in his opening :emarks: "It takes seven men in the :ommons to do what I do alone in the _.ords", he said. That means on Monday Le was working double time plus one.
I Tartan Bitter vlore and more people, it seems, are using ruses as an advertising medium. Barclay:ard, Yellow Pages, Johnny Walker and iow Scottish and Newcastle Brewers. S and 4B have always been conscious of the value if using commercial vehicles as centrelieces in their promotional activities. This [.me they have turned to the bus. The man ,ehind the design and construction is )rumtnond Black of the Edinburgh SMT. Tonight his latest creation will leave the :cottish capital for London. It is a double.ecker bus painted all over in the Royal :tuart tartan which will go into service on [tree London routes taking in Regents treet, Trafalgar Square and The Strand. he time is coming when the rarest sight a London's streets will be the great red .ondon Transport omnibus.
I Speed and economy?
iming is vitally important, especially Then issuing press releases. This was well lustrated at the end of last week when I :arned that Gwynedd Quarries Ltd of )enbigh had opened a new £200,000 epot at Widnes and had opted for rail :ansport in preference to road. The general tanager of the company is reported to have lid that the decision to use rail transport mthe trunk haul was prompted by the
growing need for speed and economy. What a pity he chose to say it bang in the middle of a rail work-to-rule.
• Removal man
Alexander Blackwood, retiring managing director of John H. Lunn, the Edinburgh removal firm, was recalling the past last week. Inevitably, he reminisced on his strangest removals. The story that must get first prize is surely the one concerning a woman who had inherited £5m and wanted to transport £4.25m worth of art treasures to London to pay off death duties.
What with overnight allowances and goods in transit insurance, there'd be just about enough left to pay the transport costs.
• Test van If you happen to be one of those lucky persons with time to spare to attend test cricket this summer, you may spot one man who is even luckier than you — Tony Smith. A real cricketing enthusiast, Tony has got himself the job of driving the Australian team's gear around the country in a Bedford van loaned specially for the series by Vauxhall. I wonder how our athletes are getting their equipment to the Munich Olympics . . . If they're using a van and you wish to apply for the driver's job, form an orderly queue — behind me.
• Guilty men?
Taking the easy road can prove mighty expensive as a haulage contractor learned last week when he was summoned to a magistrates' court in Essex on 12 charges of using vehicles not specified on his operator's licence. He understood the charge to be a purely technical one, pleaded guilty and found himself signing a cheque for a £210 fine. Because of his guilty plea he was unable to say in court what he thought had really happened but he told yours truly.
Apparently, because he was short of work he and his drivers went off to work for another haulage contractor who was short of drivers and in accordance with the law they took their journey record sheets with them. The journey record sheets carried the operator's licence number of their own company but the vehicles they were driving were not specified on that operator's licence so that in effect they were driving vehicles for which they did not hold an operator's licence.
If you're still with me there is another part to the tale. In another Essex court earlier in the month the operator who supplied the vehicles was fined £90 for failing to keep records. What a pity they didn't get together.