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Bird's Eye
Page 80
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\I iew BY THE HAWK
Occidentally orientated?
HAND ON HEART. I swear what follows is coincidence: In last week's column I asked half-jokingly how long it would be before the Hope device was made in Japan.
Fred Hope has just rung me to say that as he put down CM after reading that paragraph, his secretary handed him a telegram. It read:—
TOKYO, DESIRE FOLLOWING INFORMATION REGARDING HOPE ANTIJACKKNIFE DEVICE, TWO-LINE AIR SYSTEM. GUARANTEED PERIOD. AVERAGE LIFE. NOMENCLATURE ALL PARTS AND UNIT PRICE. LIST F.O.B. YOUR PORT. CONSEQUENT PATENT SITUATION IN JAPAN. YOUR ATTITUDE TOWARDS GRANTING OF LICENCE AGREEMENT FOR DOMESTIC MANUFACTURE. IF FAVOURABLE, YOUR CONDITIONS. SAKINITTSU.
My crystal ball is now available to others—at a reasonable fee.
Accidentally disorientated?
BEFORE the flood of letters reaches Texan proportions, may I say that we know—better than anyone—that last week's issue
of CM was not devoted to "Imported Vehicles" despite the cover announcement to this effect. This was wished on us by the cover printer, who apparently misread his instructions. Sorry. You had "Imported Vehicles" on July 7, you may recall.
Any answers?
NORMAN INGRAM, past national chairman RHA in his reply to a toast, "The RHA" by my colleague lain Sherriff at the Exeter sub-area dinner last week posed the question: "If Mrs. Castle is so convinced of the success of Freightliners why does she propose to restrict road haulage to 100 miles?" I fear I am unable to print the replies!
Mushroom soup?
I HEAR that the AA is considering the replacement of its 2,000 roadside telephones. A mushroomed-shaped glass-fibre structure is likely to be favoured—satisfactory, perhaps, when skies are blue but draughty, to say the least of it, in rough weather.
No doubt Alec Dune's image builders have considered this rather costly venture carefully. Traffic noise on many trunk roads could make telephone calls—at the receiver's end—a doubtful pleasure. It would be infuriating if traffic managers could not identify precisely where their drivers had broken down. (At latest count there were 23,578 commercial vehicles registered with the AA.)
Beaten by the clock
EYEBROWS were raised, I hear, by Felix Wentworth's assertion in his Fleet Management Conference paper last week that BR and BRS were not really interested in parcels and were losing money on them.
This might not be challenged by the railways but I do know that a THC gentleman was bursting to leap to his feet and refute these comments so far as BRS was concerned. But he was beaten by the clock.
The programme was running beyond the timetable and the chairman had no option but to call "next business".
Letter follows?
£420,000—plus after thought
THIS WEEK BR applied for 58 antics for collection and delivery work at Willesden Freighter depot . . . and almost immediately withdrew its application: it decided that the work could be done with existing vehicles. Any applicant is entitled to change his—or its— mind, but why this fact was not known before the application was made is, to say the least, puzzling.
The withdrawal saved cost for the objectors—and a possible appeal—but it also saved around 1420,000 nearly spent on vehicles.
Your money—my money! What a way. . . .!
Master's voice . . •
THE MASTER of the Incorporated Guild of Hairdressers, Wigmakers, and Perfumers wants Barbara Castle to "glamourize" bus conductresses (and BR women station staff), in a bid to boost British tourism.
He is Leslie Ilott, and his appeal came at the guild's Autumn conference at Sheffield. He told delegates: "Every possible effort is made now to guarantee that the visitor will be impressed by the looks of our air hostesses and our stewardesses on the ocean-going liners and every airport is more full of attractive women than a film studio.
Unfathomable
"Yet for some unfathomable reason known only to the Ministry of Transport glamour stops there. Once away from the airport or the shipping terminal we find nothing but indifference for the appearance of the women running our transport here in this country. This just will not do.
"What is wrong with having their uniform designed by a couturier? What's wrong in giving them grooming courses and free hairdressing? Mrs. Castle herself owes much to her professional hairdresser for the high standard of her appearance. She should take up the cudgels on the behalf of her much-neglected sisters in the transport system everywhere so as to upgrade their image and to begin to treat them as women.