Human too
Page 29
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
Suggestions that our civil servants are not really human are very common and nowhere is this more true than in the bus industry. So it was refreshing to hear George Moseley, UnderSecretary at the DoE, addressing the last APPT conference dinner in Bournemouth, make some good cracks, and I liked his remark about out-going president Ronnie Cox, for example. Mr Cox has had a stormy relationship with the Scottish Bus Group during his years in public transport in Edinburgh and Glasgow.
Mr Moseley said he was surprised, therefore, to have seen a letter recently offering Mr Cox free travel for life on SBG services. It was only when he read the small print that he saw a condition about Mr Cox's immediate retirement!
Mr Moseley apologised for the frequent switches among departments which 'civil servants were prone to make. He had come from planning sewage treatment operations to the bus industry. Mr Moseley said that he had picked up the busmen's lingo fairly quickly: "I now realise that Leyland National is not a local football team, and that B15 is not a small lady's bust measurement," he quipped.