Who Wants Them ?
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Bird's Eye View By The Hawk
I WONDER whether the manufacturers who are tumbling over one another to produce 12-seat public service vehicles have sounded operators' opinions on them? The major operators are completely hostile to the use of these buses, because they know that they are uneconomic as stage carriages and represent a threat to the private-hire activities of established concerns. . Apparently the makers hope to find a steady market among local authorities for small school buses, but here, again, there is a possibility that licensed operators may lose traffic on which they rely to make ends meet. Whether operators like it or not, however, they will find Earls Court packed with 12-seaters.
Legacy of Safety
IN an intimate little ceremony, eight drivers of the South Eastern Division of British Road Services last week received from Maj.-Gen, G. N. Russell, chairman of B.R.S., safe-driving awards for periods ranging from 25 to 36 years. in looking through their records, 1 noticed such items as " 1913—Royal Mail contract driver," and " 1922—Bank of England contract driver "—both, of course, with old-established hauliers in pre-nationalization days. B.R.S. have inherited a great legacy from private enterprise.
Aerial Artist
THE helicopter came to the rescue of Mr, Claude Muncaster
when he was commissioned by the directors of Hepworth and Grandage, Ltd., to paint a landscape of Bradford and the distant Yorkshire dales. There was no vantage point from which he could secure the view he wanted, so he hovered in a helicopter for an hour while he made rapid sketches in pencil and water colour, and wrote .notes.
Then, with the aid of aerial photographs and memory, the laborious process of producing a panorama began. It involved serious mechanical difficulties, not the least of which was to get near enough to the canvas to paint in the fine detail. But the problems were surmounted and the result is Mr. Muncaster's most important work. He handed it over last week to Mr. G. Collin Hepworth, joint managing director, and it now hangs in the company's new offices. Both the painting and the offices mark Hepworth and Grandage's golden jubilee.
Twin Bereavements
FEW companies can have been so unfortunate as Lancashire United Transport, Ltd., in losing two chairmen in four months, Mr. H. M. Alderson Smith, whose death was reported last week, had held the position only since May, when he assumed it on the death of Sir Joseph Nall. These sad losses come at a time when L.U.T. and South Lancashire Transport Co., Ltd., are amalgamating and reorganization is in process.
Paying Game
H0P-PICKING began on Monday at the Stilsted farm of Whitbread and Co., Ltd., and at Beltring on Wednesday. For the first time no special trains were arranged to convey the 1,500 hop-pickers and their baggage from London to Paddock Wood. Most families now travel in their own cars.
Easy Money
H0P-P1CKERS are, however, merely representative of the mass of the public who, according to the Treasury's Bulletin for Industry, increased their expenditure on cars and motorcycles by 277 per cent. between 1950 and 1957. This rising trend appears to continue and must be a source of• great satisfaction to the Treasury, who have 'probably taken in tax about half the money spent.