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IN THE NEWS
Page 17
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Stuart Thomas gives us his regular round-up of the way the newspapers have covered the transport industry this week.
Scralchwood Services. Perhaps not the first place you would think of when asked to pick the site an invading army might use as an HQ in Blighty, but clearly we're not as canny as those Ministry of Defence mandarins.
Fearful of the lure the Ml's Welcome Break services potentially has on marauding invaders, they've ensured that HMS Belfast, berthed 12 miles away at London Bridge, has its guns trained directly on tired and peckish visitors to London Gateway services.
According to the Daily Mall, an MoD source said: "All this may sound utterly ridiculous, but we have worked out that given the angle of elevation of the guns, several salvos from HMS Belfast would obliterate Scratchwood and any enemy close by...
"This service station has a layout that means it could be easily defended, so it could be somewhere that an invading force could turn into its first base."
The Daily Mail, naturally perplexed as to why the nation's ever-vigilant guardians at the MoD felt duty bound to protect a motorway toilet stop, went on to quote its source as saying: "There are lots of contingency plans for all sorts of things, and this is just one of a number of worst-case scenarios."
If taking over a haunt made famous through exposure in an episode of Eastenders and a book entitled Boring Postcards is deemed "worst-case", you can only wonder at the MoD's classification process.
More importantly, judging by the food that most motorway services appear to offer to motorists, a lean, mean army machine, which was desperate for country-invading stomach fuel, would be marginally better served at the nation's McDonalds restaurants.
The food there is cheaper and the staff would be far easier to hoodwink.
What is more, the ubiquitous chain would double as strategically positioned sentry boxes and, if the invaders get a move on and invade now, they'll probably get two burgers for the price of one.