BIRD'S EYE VIEW
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BY THE HAWK
• Harry Blundred's Docklands minibus launch served as a platform for Blundred to issue a scathing attack on "left wing academics who don't understand deregulation and try to force their centralised planning views on everyone else".
To add to the drama, the throng of assembled hacks appeared to have been infil trated by an agent of one of the London borough councils which opposed the minibus plan. Harry and his cohorts saw off the fifth-columnist after a brief skirmish and ushered the Hawk and fellow observers into the safety of the bar.
• The motor industry has taken the lead in responding to an appeal to fit out "The Reading Concorde" — a singledecker express coach which will be rebuilt by Plaxtons — into a specialist vehicle to provide holidays for Berkshire's handicapped children.
Alison Associates, suppliers of financial data to the industry, have presented the Mayor of Reading with a cheque for 21,250 to kick off the £50,000 appeal.
• Wincanton is expanding its interests in wheeled transport by sponsoring "The Wincanton Classic" in which 200 of the world's top cyclists will hare around Newcastle upon Tyne on 30 July as one of the 12 rounds in the 1989 Perrier World Cup.
There could be some pretty weary shaven legs pumping for the 216,000 of prize money and Ford Escort XR3i star prize because the 238km race takes place only a week after the Tour de France. Still, Pedro Delgado should be all right.
• Caterpillar has won a $4 million contract from the US Department of Energy to help develop a commercially viable coal-fuelled diesel engine. The engine, which will be developed for railway locomotives, will have a compact fuel processor producing clean, ashfree gas from coal.
Trials will take place at Caterpillar's Mossville technical centre in Peoria, Illinois, which has already conducted research into alternative fuels.
• A trio of seven-tonne JCB excavators stolen from building sites in Oxfordshire and Warwickshire have been spirited across the Atlantic. Detective Sergeant Mick Brown of the Thames Valley police had given the vehicles up for lost until he got a call saying that one of them was in Newark, New Jersey, in the US of A.
"I was expecting a quick trip up the M1 to Newark in Nottinghamshire, then I was told it was in Newark, New Jersey," he said.
It was obviously a highly organised caper. To dismantle each digger by removing front and rear hydraulic arms would have taken experts half a day, with another half day required to crate them up. Shipping costs would have been around £1,750 per machine. • Three-year-old Mark Bingham from Yorkshire had a very lucky escape when he locked himself into his parents' brand new £17,000 Isuzu Trooper and released the handbrake.
The vehicle trundled hundreds of metres down a steep, rocky hill towards a deep ravine.
At the last moment the vehicle swerved into a fence of old
railway sleepers and came to a halt
Mark's parents ran up to the vehicle, which had a smashed windscreen, a buckled bonnet and a scratched wing, and were amazed to find a slightly bruised Mark sitting in the back of the Trooper laughing. Mark's Mum Christine says: "Mark is a little terror. . . he takes some watching."
• The first Tautliner body, built by Boalloy back in 1969, has become a museum piece. It will go on show at the Science Museum's permanent static display at Wroughton, near Swindon.
The original trailer and body were bought by Tony Pomeroy for the then Louis Reece organisation, now part of Glass Glover. For Boalloy's stand at the 1984 NEC
Motor Show, one half of the refurbished body was left in 1969 vintage, the other half brought up to state-of-the-art condition. The display prompted the museum to take on the vehicle when it came to the end of its working life. Shortfast of Chester supplied replicas of the original straps and buckles; Crane Fruehauf and Jost came up with other authentic parts.
• Britain may officially be part of Europe, but our island mentality lingers on, not least in our insistence on driving on the left.
The Hawk of course believes this is the only sensible side of the road to drive on and that the foreigners have got it wrong, but we are obviously out of step with our EC partners. To help them, pamphlets compiled by the DTp and General Accident Insurance and covering the bewildering intricacies of driving in the UK will be given to foreign drivers as they disembark.
In 1987 some 840,000 foreign cars travelled to Britain. About 1,320 of them were involved in accidents, resulting in 57 deaths and 476 serious injuries.