Municipal Staff Not Civil Servants
Page 58
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DOLITICS are the greatest curse of
the technician's life, according to a comment made by Mr. W. M, Little, general manager of Edinburgh Transport Department, when he was a guest at a dinner of the Traders' Road Transport Association in Wolverhampton last week. He added that he wished to correct the public impression that there was a connection between municipal staff and civil servants.
The tragedy of local authorities was to-day the necessity of submitting every detail of work to London or to the Scottish Office. Such restrictions must be removed if normal progress were to be continued.. Mr. Little agreed with an earlier statement by Col. A. Jerrett, president of the Association, that local authorities were large users of C-licence vehicles and that the interests of the T.R.T.A. and municipal operators were -similar in many ways.
Col. Jerrett reiterated his warning that the present Government •had inherited liabilities from its predecessor and might seek to restrict C-licence operation.in the interests of the railways.
ClIr. L. R. Guy, Deputy Mayor of Wolverhampton, said that the complexity of modern production demanded exactitude in the transport of material, so that goods would be in the right place at the right time. The public did not generally realize its dependence on C-licence operators.
Cfir. Guy urged the Association to take a more active interest in the supply of new vehicles to home users. Many of the present machines should' go on the scrap heap. Referring to privateenterprise concerns, he commented on Mr. Attlee's employment of a free remover to move his furniture, • The C-licence operator might become the shuttlecock between the free haulier and the Road Haulage Executive, said Mr. A. W. Nash, chairman of the Wolverhampton sub-area. He spoke of the possibility of a marriage between free enterprise and British Road Services; both disliked the C-licence operator.
Cllr. H. Fullwood painted out that it was not easy for traders to pass on to the consumer any extra cost of operating vehicles. Other opeptors invariably did so.