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Bird's Eye

7th October 1966, Page 57
7th October 1966
Page 57
Page 57, 7th October 1966 — Bird's Eye
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ViewBY THE HAWK

All Things To All Men

THE older brethren at this year's MPTA dinner in Dublin were perhaps in the best position to appreciate the subtlety when Mr. A. F. Neal, adviser on public transport to the Minister of Transport and former Manchester general manager, told how after first arriving in the northern metropolis in the early '30s, he presently discovered that to all and sundry in the department he was known as "Peggy".

Not everybody in the audience will have cottoned on to the fact that a little before the period when the somewhat dour Mr. Neal turned up in the northern city, a song on everybody's lips brought in the words "If she's smiling all the while, that's Peggy O'Neil" which, if nothing else, is a good example of the Mancunian sense of humour. Actually, of course, Mr. Neal's name is particularly adaptable. Scots sometimes think of him as a MacNeal, the Irish as O'Neil and the English—he came from Lincolnshire and not Lancashire—as plain Mr. Neal.

Navigator Needed

MY colleague John Darker believes that he has located the habitat of the legendary Ouslem bird. Some of the Mendip tipper operators who groped their way to the open meeting at Coleford, Somerset, last week told amusing and rather harrowing stories of their circuitous journeys to a highly inaccessible village. From Bristol, I gather, it is fairly straightforward but from other parts of Somerset the imagination boggles at the problem of getting within miles of the elusive village.

It is rare for professional road hauliers to experience navigational difficulties in their own county. Perhaps the Mendip tipper militants should press the authorities for better signposting on Somerset lanes!

The 18-year Stretch

"THERE are all sorts of things one can celebrate. One can cele brate birthdays—so long as one hasn't had too many of them —or wedding anniversaries, but it wasn't until now that I realized one could celebrate coming out of gaol." So said THC's managing director, Sir Reginald Wilson, last week at a charmingly informal dinner in London. He was not speaking of some dread personal experience, but about the emergence of Bristol Commercial Vehicles and Eastern Coach Works on to the open market again for the first time since .. . let me see, was it 1948?

With the coming of freedom, said Sir Reginald, BCV and ECW had a new spring in their step and a new light in their eye—a new self-confidence that seemed well justified to judge from events at Earls Court. And in the next breath I'll swear he tossed away the phrase "half a million in orders" as almost an aside.

The occasion was Bristol and ECW's way of marking their new situation for guests drawn mainly from the Tilling Association and the manufacturing industry. Sir Reginald rose to make known the apologies of Sir Donald Stokes for his absence: "Apparently he is busy selling vehicles—which is that much harder now that Bristol are on the market."

Interesting speculation: if they repeat the dinner at the next Show, in 1968, what proportion of the guests will come from BET and the municipalities?

Hawk-eyed Reader's Reward!

ONE of my favourite personalities at the Show was yo; Trevor John Dyer who got his job because he complai that the firm now employing him had made a mistake.

He was reading one of those Taskers "strip cartoon" in COMMERCIAL MOTOR when he spotted that the haulier was being supplied with two fifth-wheel semi-trailers off the s had got tractive units with DS automatic couplings.

A letter to Taskers gained Trevor an invitation to Andovei and the offer of a job as a sales trainee. So there he was at E; Court competently managing the literature cabinet on the Task stand.

There is no substitute for keenness, thank goodness, for the has just renewed his subscription to CM for a further three ye;

Fearless—but Unfair

AC EPTING an invitation to a demonstration of the called hazards of the articulated killer-vehicle, I arrived the RAF Station, Hendon, last week and witnessed a brilli display of artic driving with which, in my opinion, Fred H( (the anti-jack-knife specialist) finally secured for all time the ri to his nickname Fearless Fred.

The effectiveness of the demonstration was enhanced by a I made in America during Fred Hope's visit there in which escapades can be described in no other terms than spectacu (I have described the event before.) The speech given to a large number of spectators by Mr. Jar Tye, controller of the British Safety Council, failed, I thoui to put a fair picture of the hazards caused by articulated vehic in general and could of course have applied to any other class vehicle had Mr. Tye not been obsessed with the completely n taken impression that artics are the only dangerous vehicles th are.

A vehicle is, of course, as safe as the man behind the wI and Mr. Tye should remember this before he spreads alarm E despondency among members of the general public.


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