• There are not many laughs in the current 40-tonnes
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argument. But my spy in Brussels tells me of a jocular exchange he overheard.
Civil servants were clearing the ground before the recent meeting of EEC Transport Ministers. As usual the DIp man was pressed to come into line on lorry weights. Again as usual, he trotted out the stuff about weak bridges, and how it would take years to survey them all before we could even consider 40 tonnes.
But the normal routine was shattered by the German official. NATO had surveyed bridges in all its member countries to see which of them could take tanks. Why. he asked, did not the British save time and effort by using this information?
This was obviously news to "our Man". But he recovered quickly and said that the information was so highly classified that mere DTp officials did not have access to it. At which point a stage whisper in a strong Irish (ie non-NATO) accent was heard to suggest that perhaps they should ask the KGB.
• From my lofty perch, my sharp eye detects an unprecedented flurry of activity amongst British lorry manufacturers. In the next couple of months we are going to see a host of new models breaking cover. They include a new range of tractor units, a new export vehicle, a new cab series and a new range of 6 x 4s all from different manufacturers. I must not tell you too much — or my colleagues won't have anything to write about — but it does rather demolish the myth of a dying industry, doesn't it?
• IN the nicest possible way — referring to the authoritative British transport journal, Commercial Motor — the "Flat Chat" page in Australia's Truck and Bus Transportation magazine has been having fun at my expense for having, tongue in cheek, used the word sesquipedalian, meaning multisyllabled when referring to words. T&BT has added it to a list of obtruse words that sound impressive when dropped into polite conversation, such as abecedarian, not forgetting futtock and waysgooze.
Futtock? I thought I would have to approach Australian Cultural AttacheSir Les Paterson for the meanimg of that one, but my Concise Oxford Dictionaty defines it as "one of a ship's middle timbers between floor and top
timbers".
The Australian Bureau of Transport Economics has sent out a press release on the social audit concept and its role in decision making. This sent T&BT to the Concise Oxford, too, and after delving into the matter concluded: "Now you know as much about social audit as we do, which is exactly three-eighths of .00005 per cent of Sweet Fanny Adams."
• Oh dear, I am going to miss the Greater London Council and its eccentric public relations service. In one of its myriad Parthian shots, this august body informs me that "Road signs kill". The traditional rather cheerful, colourful signs near Hawk Towers have never shown such homicidal tendencies, though there are some nasty new ones forbidding me to take a lorry up my otherwise attractive lane at certain times, which are certainly aggressive in their impact on the scenery. Perhaps it is visually intrusive signs such as these to which the GLC was referring?
• Folk who regularly cross the England/Scotland border via the A68 over Carter Bar will not be at all impressed by the fact that both British and EEC Summer Time officially began last weekend. As these pictures, taken on Carter Bar during our work on next week's Roadtrain test clearly illustrate they are still having to cope with distinctly wintry road conditions, while their local authorities appear to have put their road gritting programmes on to a summer schedule.
The pictures were taken at about 8am, on the Scottish side of the border, a couple of hundred metres from the summit. Borders Regional Council says the decision on whether and when to send out its Jedburgh-based, 6 x 6 Magirus Deutz gritter is based on information provided by Glasgow weather centre, and that morning the gritter had been over Carter Bar at 6am.
The driver of the car which came over the summit northbound and skidded into the Roadtrain sending it, 38 tonnes and all, almost off the road, might find that difficult to believe. We are relieved to be able to report that nobody was hurt, but that owes everything to luck, and nothing to an effective road treatment programme by Northumberland County Council and Borders Regional Council.
• If I were Bob Hancock, who drives for Cave Wood of High Wycombe, I'd be in two minds about this little gift from ferry operator Townsend Thoresen. Bob got his gift for being the first in the queue for TT's 20th anniversary crossing from Dover to Zeebrugge. He got there by virtue of missing his planned, earlier, sailing, which makes the gift of an elegant and expensive clock more than usually pertinent!