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NO RIGHT TO RESPECT?
Page 9
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"If you can read this, thank a teacher" the slogan went.. well if you have a book to read or school supplies to teach with you should thank a trucker, Brian Lee reminds us...
"If you use it, a truck brought it" is an excellent reminder to the general public that, love or loathe us, you need us. However a subtle improvement to that excellent sticker might be: "If you use it, a truck driver brought it". According to a recent article in the Sunday Times, M15, which took an active role in bringing the 2000 fuel protest to an end, has informed the powers that be that we are "four meals away from anarchy". On a bad week at some of the larger RDCs with their major bottlenecks, that four-meal warning looms closer than the public might realise.
Thankfully however, there's a bunch of people called HGV drivers: men and women who have an uncomplicated view on life and justice. In spite of political ineptitude, bureaucratic incompetents and jobsworths they simply go out and get the job done. OK driving a truck isn't rocket science. But it involves long hours, isolation, skill, infinite patience and being treated like a pariah by all and sundry.
The British government has long adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states that all human beings are "born free and equal in dignity and rights". Try telling that to the RDC clerk when you've battled through flood and tempest and arrived a micro-second outside your booking time. Or to the VOSA off i6alat a roadside check when you worked out 197381-196783 as 597 instead of 598.
Our credo seems to be to humiliate the decent and banish them from any semi-decent spot where they can enjoy a deserved rest. Drivers are looking for decent truck parks, not a beach berth at St Tropez. Odd really when you consider that St Tropez, which you'd expect to be firmly up its own fundament, allows trucks to park. You'd almost think those wily Continentals valued their drivers for the vital work they do.
"Odd when you consider that St Tropez allows trucks to park. Almost like they value their drivers..."