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Bird's Eye
Page 56
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View BY THE HAWK
Off beat
TT'S not easy to lose a double-decker. Especially when it is
taken off beat. as last week's news from Wolverhampton revealed (when a driver lost his job for taking one home at night).
But it can be done, even when lynx-eyed directors are around. Disused quarries have been known to house the fag-end of a depot's fleet until such personages were seen safely off the premises for yet another year after making their annual inspection.
Cupboard Love
TALKING of deckers, funny how circumstances change things.
There is nothing so humdrum as riding on a double-decker proceeding on its lawful occasion. I can reveal that the reverse is true, however, though few have the opportunity to put it to the test.
A relief clerk was being met each morning at Manchester Piccadilly Station by the service van, to be taken to the bus depot on the outskirts. But the morning came when the van was out at a breakdown. Nothing daunted, the foreman sent a double-decker and, amidst hoards of Manchester's commuters, the clerk, only too conscious of his splendid isolation, tried hard to make it look like just another routine trip.
And why was a depot foreman so thoughtful and resourceful? Simple. It was wages morning. No clerk—no wages!
Off-White
these words are penned the happy (?) event has not actually happened. The much-heralded White Paper on Transport is not yet on my desk.
But I can reveal that according to an uninformed leak that most urbane of gentlemen, a senior civil servant, was this month overheard to exclaim: "What again ? I've rewritten it four times already! And anyway you can scrub the title for a start. White Paper, indeed! It's positively grubby already."
So let's hope—with the tipper boys—that where there's muck there's money. Off-white maybe. But the 64,000-dollar question is the one that matters: "Is it off-centre?"
The Whipper In
yis fascinating to speculate on the ultimate line-up of TGWU is
and MPs in the pay freeze battle. Almost all the prominent personalities among the union's leaders—Frank Cousins, Harry Nicholas and Jack Jones—oppose the freeze. Needless to say. so does Alan Law at "Brum".
A key figure is John Silkin, MP, who has been a member of the TGWU parliamentary group since 1963. Recently appointed chief whip. he would not have been given this post had the Prime Minister had any doubt as to his loyalty. Behind the scenes. I would guess that TGWU MPs inclined to follow the Cousins line will be in for some ear pulling.
Recruiting Enterprise!
WELCOMING the entry of the British Railways Board to the hovercraft sphere, the TSSA Journal reports that discussions are pending with the Board to determine pay and conditions of the crews of the 38-seater SR-N6. The larger SR-N4, designed to carry over 700 passengers and 32 cars, would certainly involve more trade union organization.
Anticipating that hovercraft vehicles "could be equally at home over land as they are over water", the journal says this is another field in which the Board must be prepared to explore.
Other transport unions and the Transport Holding Company must look to their laurels!