ow to make friends id be positive
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RICH bus company will be the st to follow British Airways' Id with instructions on portment "to encourage staff give a positive impression d pay the maximum possible :ention to civility and good pearance"?
Receptionists at check-in sks have, I hear, been told to in an attitude which in my my days was called sitting to :ention. Every passenger must greeted with the words: iood morning, may I help u?" This sounds pretty silly in a evening, but it gives a isitive impression.
I look forward to being greeted • a London bus conductor: iood morning, sir. Welcome !card. Where do you wish to ght? Would you like an early II? Change for a fiver? No oblem, sir; that's the inimum fare. Oh dear, you've ine quite pale, sir. Are you all ;lit? Would you like a drop of andy?"
Meanwhile, the rest of the issengers, acting positively, II have got off the bus without lying.
)LUNTEERS for three years' Drk in Siberia on the new tikal-Amur Mainline railway Bre promised priority in the Irchase of cars. Anything, in A, to get away from trains.
ttempt at equality tat doesn't work
.FERENCE tariffs are one of the Immon Market's attempts at uality in international road ulage competition in which actice does not live up to 3ory. The Road Haulage .sociation, burdened with the prk of establishing British ales, was originally less than amoured of the idea but has Ice changed its mind. The eight Transport Association, .1dded to an entirely free 3rket, still regards the system
as wasteful, purposeless, ineffective and bureaucratic.
European hauliers want to increase the current UK reference tariffs by 21 per cent, which the RHA heartily supports. The FTA replies that no amendments are needed because market rates are still below the current tariffs. That, I would have thought, was all the more reason for raising the guide figures.
But is the system worth powder and shot? Hauliers who know the business — and there is no room for those who don't — will charge adequate rates without benefit of the collected wisdom of Brussels.
Road or air — it's all the same to them
THERE IS no place for demarcation disputes in Goodyear airship operation. The three-man crew has to be able to drive a ground-crew bus, a 22ton mast truck and a 16-tonner for electronic equipment, all with left-hand drive, as well as fly the dirigible.
Midlands BRS has been training Goodyear pilots and crewmen as heavy goods vehicle drivers for 11 years and nearly 60 have passed the test. The latest to qualify as HGV2 drivers after a 10-day course are Eddie Christensen, the Danish pilot, and John Williams, a Welshman, and Henri Buts, a Belgian, the two crewmen.
Henri presented a slight communication problem because he could not speak English, but he had no trouble in passing the test. All the aviators found lorry driving rather different from traffic-free cruising at 37mph at 1,000ft.
They lived to drive another day
COACHING has been having a bad Press, often through sheer bad luck. Ellerman Beeline, of Middlesbrough, became embroiled in controversy after about '100 football hoodlums, who had hired two coaches ostensibly to attend an engagement party at Beverley, threatened violence unless the drivers took them another eight miles or so to Hull City football ground to see a match against Middlesbrough.
The drivers prudently left the ground and Don Robinson, Hull City's chairman, had to hire two vehicles to return the louts to their home town under heavy police escort. He is reported to have said: "If there had been trouble on the coach they (the drivers) should have returned immediately to Middlesbrough and not just dumped them (the hooligans) in Hull without any means of getting home. It was idiotic."
It is, of course, just possible that the drivers did not relish the prospect of being kicked, stabbed and disfigured with broken bottles. This lily-livered attitude is not the stuff that made Britain and football-club chairmen great, but, never having fancied myself as Errol Flynn, I have a sneaking sympathy with it.
The grass is bluer on video film
THE BRITISH countryside is among the world's most beautiful, yet many coach passengers would rather watch video-film rubbish than look at it. Those who prefer to enjoy the passing scene complain that they cannot exclude the infuriating noise because the headsets that would enable them to do so have been removed because of the high incidence of theft.
A passenger described an American comedy film as an unimaginative round of theft, robbery, sabotage, destruction of public property, negligent and drunken driving, abuse of animals, frequent crude language, blasphemy, caricatures of religion and family life, alcoholism, drug abuse, drunkenness, promiscuity, prostitution and adultery!
Otherwise it was all good clean fun. When video film palls, jaded coach passengers can now play a kind of bingo with cards listing vehicle numbers which the player strikes off when he or she sees them on the road. The game, which has been protected, is called Carno (without apologies to Fred of that ilk) and was invented by a seven-year-old boy, Need I say more?