BIRD'S EYE VIEW
Page 28
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BY THE HAWK
• Emma Nicholson, Tory MP for Torridge and West Devon, must have thought she was very popular when her phone just didn't stop ringing — "every half-minute, seemingly day and night," she says. Had people at last recognised her potential as a future Prime Minister? Not quite.
About 22,500 bus company pensioners had been issued, very helpfully, with letters from their old employers in London. These explained changes to their pension scheme and, even more helpfully, provided a telephone number to ring for further information — yes, thanks to the slip of a digit, it was Emma's.
But there's more. Hoping to prevent the remaining three or four bus pensioners who hadn't already given her a ring from doing so, she called in BT to intercept the calls. All fine and grand until the MP, stuck at Westminster in the middle of the night, attempted to phone home to tell her husband (Michael Caine, the Booker chairman) that she was on her way. Couldn't get through, could she?
• Geoff Byford, owner of East Anglian haulage firm Byfords Cargo Express decided he wanted to raise money for Great Ormond Street. He hit upon the idea of selling giant-sized posters of his famous truck "The Lady Louise". Now, two years later, 13y-ford has raised the grand total of 5;6,000. Here he is handing over his cheque to TV personality Noel Edmonds, who accepted the money on behalf of the hospital. • Ssssh . . . Top Secret . . Did you know that the Daf Strongest Man competition was held two weeks ago in San Sebastian in Spain? And guess who won it?
Unfortunately because of a TV deal with the BBC, Leyland Daf says no-one is officially allowed to know the name of the winner.
But does Leyland Daf know news of the event may have already been broadcast to the nation's millions on Radio Four?
• Hot weather can be dangerous — especially if you're a passenger on a Strathclyde bus. On a very fine day recently Martin Riley, a driver from Pollockshields in Glasgow, took two buses back to the depot because the temperature in his cab rose to 105°F. Then, in desperation, he discarded his heavy grey trousers and tie in favour of shorts, claiming he would otherwise be risking the safety of his passengers.
The Strathclyde Bus Company did not agree and immediately suspended him for breach of company uniform regulations.
He'd obviously have done better to don the kilt.
• Not everyone is thrilled with President Bush's plea for alternative fuels, such as methanol, to clean up the air. The American Petroleum Institute, a powerful oil industry lobby group, is publishing leaflets which claim methanol can be a deadly poison — as opposed to a slow poison? Cl Perhaps the staff at Tankfreight's Manchester depot should have considered putting in an entry to the Daf competition. A 120-strong team is pulling .a 13.5-tonne tanker this weekend to raise money for charity. So far the men have got around £7,500 in sponsorship and parent company NEC says it will match all the money raised — pound for pound. So those charitable lads could raise as much as 15,000.
• Dick Smith, a director of Birmingham-based Seabourne Forwarding, recently reached a new peak in his career. He led a party of people to the summit of Snowdon and raised £850 for Guide Dogs for the Blind. A breathtaking, if worthy, experience no doubt. • Amazing, when you think about it, that the results of the Transport and Road Research Laboratory's latest driver attitude survey reveals that "people" were thought to be the most frequent cause of road accidents. Really? But what about those trees that jump out in front of you, bollards that veer into the road and traffic lights that turn red?
Another great revelation of the survey was that "inattention" was considered an important factor in "people" causing accidents.
Obviously, we all need to perfect our "defensive driving" technique (see page 34).
• Motorway driving will soon be out of control — our control, that is — if predictions 1:13 a leading UK municipal engineer come to pass. Brian Oldridge, chairman of the 10,000-strong Association of Municipal Engineers, believes decisions on speed and lane changing in heavy motorway traffic will, within 10 years, be controlled by a computer.
He contrasts the roads with control of the railway network and of air space.
For maximum efficiency on motorways he would like to see a move towards electronic control, on a lane-by-lane basis, so that all decisionmaking on lane change, speed and headway, is taken over by .,,mputer.