SUMMER OF DISCONTENT?
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The summer of discontent is coming, or so I read in last week's CM. Well, about time, as opinion polls show New Labour's popularity is falling as the number of unfulfilled promises escalates. The haulage industry can now hit back at a government that has declared war on it with a transport policy which was designed to kill off the haulier and persecute the motorist.
I hope all the days of protest will be supported by anyone who has something with wheels on. The government is still so out of touch with the haulage industry and the importance it plays in a modern industrial country, it's high time they were really made to sit up and listen.
The industry must be positive in its actions and hauliers must also be positive. Big or small, fuel tax is completely unacceptable. No other country accepts fuel tax and neither should the British. If any British haulier thinks that his business can't go down the pan, think again—how many could lose their biggest customer to a foreign haulier or someone bigger and still be financially stable themselves?
The British road haulage industry could be destroyed quicker than any other industry because not only has it got selfdestruct buttons all over it; at the moment it has also got its own government against it.
Even in the seventies British Leyland Truck and Bus Division made a profit but it was robbed of its profits to prop up a failing car industry. Now the entire haulage industry will he taxed to destruction to put money into rail programs which will fail.
This summer all hauliers will have an opportunity to save themselves and no-one on British roads will be safe until the man who boasts of more people and freight going on the railways gets rid of his two Jags and is put out of ajob himself. This letter may seem hard hitting, but the truth always is hard to swallow.
Paul Fox,
Fair play on fuel campaigner, Manea, Cambs.