SELF INFLICTED • A few observations on the self employment of lorry drivers.
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The majority of employees are perfectly happy at being securely employed and contributing to PAYE though less thrilled by the amount of deductions they incur.
Employers like Mr Munt are seeking a workforce from a minority and should be careful to examine the motives of this workforce. Are they looking for the crock of gold at the end of the rainbow to solve short term financial problems? It has been my experience with people wishing to be self employed that they are already behind with tax and national insurance.
Considering this PAYE is deducted from earnings at source, if self employed one has at least 12 months credit. To allow self employment with the above conditions would only compound the problems of all parties.
Employers using this arrangement should be very wary of their motives and should not enter into an employment contract of this nature in order to reduce costs in order to further reduce rates at the expense of the respect and commitment of the workforce. It is this respect coupled with payment which makes a contented workforce. Never forget that your workforce constitutes the ambassadors of your company.
Remember when you have pushed the workforce into self employment a further push coupled with a CPC could turn them into an owner operator and who better knows your customer's requirements than the person who serves them daily. Where will your business go then?
C R Walton MIRTE, MIMI Nelson Lanes • A reader in Nigeria tells me of a problem we are happily spared over here. Long stretches of steel dividers on central reservations are regularly stolen. The problem has reached a stage where the authorities blame the gaps for a high proportion of last year's 9,500 casualties. Apparently the steel bars are curved in a way which makes it easy to turn them into spoons. Nigerian DIY enthusiasts have been furnishing their tables from this source on a large scale.
But not for much longer. The authorities know when they are beaten. So steel is giving way to concrete.
• Italian truckers have baffled their foreign colleagues eating at the long-distance lorry drivers' cafe at the Modena North motorway exit, as different dishes and drinks appear as if by magic and are served to the customers with out their having to wait to place an order.
The key to this impossibly rapid service lies in the hooter signals given by truckers as they approach the restaurant — a different sequence of hoots corresponds to a particular order.
A fiver to the first reader who can teach me how to hoot in Italian.
IN An AA patrolman and his £8,000 Escort van were recently subjected to the fury of a stampede of horses in Cardiff city centre. Unsuspecting Steve Jones was turning the van into Pentwyn Road when 24 horses came galloping towards him. A few cleared the van with a single leap but most either landed on top or crashed into the vehicle crushing it and shattering the windscreen. The driver is recovering from his injuries.
You may not know how this phenomenon occurred but I know a man who does.