Our Ernest
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FEW of Her Majesty's Ministers eau have had such a mixed reception as an after-meal speaker as Mr. Ernest Marplesour own Minister of Transport. Some like him, some don't. I like him as a speaker. His offering at the British School of Motoring's fiftieth anniversary lunch was typical. And in the middle of his somewhat forthright humour, there were some very interesting pearls of wisdom. He came down strongly on the side of scientific road planning, via origin and destination studies; named as his priorities (a) moving traffic; (b) catering for the temporary parker; and (c) providing offstreet parking; and urged a quick start on rebuilding cities to cope with modern traffic.
Some say good old Ernest . . . and so do I.
Not So Easy A R. MARPLES was emPhatic, too, about the fact that he 1V1 was going as fast as he could. Or, at least, not as fast as he could but as fast as Parliament (catering for the rights of individuals) could let him go. He made a point about underpasses and flyovers which went home. The Post Office, he pointed out, charged the Ministry of Transport £100,000 for moving underground telephone services to make room for London's Elephant and Castle traffic scheme. To build London on the quadruple-depth flyover pattern of Los Angeles would stretch The Smoke from Leeds to Dieppe. Then. 1 suppose, we would be treated to the sight of "Mr. Traffic" Alex Samuels doing his best to regulate "Mr. Continent" J. H. Bustard and his Transport Ferry Service down a one-way English Channel.
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