radio: 9ack6a4t Mote
Page 57
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
I notice that your sympathies with the tachograph manufacturers ^nake you hasten into print 3in the subject of the least ittle whim but to print a otally untrue letter from Mr 3. P. Dupree amazes me!
As PR advisor to a tachograph manufacturer he juite obviously will say anything in the hopes of jetting tachographs accepted, but to suggest that France of all countries Is tough on tachographs is Dna of the biggest loads of codswallop even to come out from a manufacturer.
A representative of the Employers Association in France indeed asked the question why the British were so concerned about the tachograph as they had tachograph regulations but did not bother to concern themselves whether tachographs were used or not.
In Belgium, France and Holland, the three places mentioned, their enforcement is tantamount to being non-existent.
They do not even comply with the hours regulations which are enforced by the EEC Regulations and actually state that these regulations are the Utopia to be aimed for in their estimations and that they did not regard them as regulations to be complied with as is the case in this country.
Whether the manufacturers like it or not and whether the Eurocrats in Brussels like it or not, we are not operating tachographs on domestic journeys and the sooner they appreciate that the better.
JACKSON MOORE, General Secretary, United Road Transport Union.
Iftema ban the
ClitiMehgt • • • This is a copy of a letter I have sent to the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Dear Mr Healey, In reply to your message on television last night in regard to the professional heavy goods vehicle driver, you say you wish to help the lower paid income group. Sir, what I wduld like to know is how, by placing more tax on these vehicles, are you going to help these men.
My husband has just been forced to leave home and seek work elsewhere after being in the industry for more than 1 5 years; he came home just three weeks ago and he had only £30 take-home pay, and being a proud man, sat down and cried like a baby because he could no longer support his family.
His former employer is hanging on to his business by the skin of his teeth, but with rising taxes and fuel, instead of handing the business on to his sons, he is considering closing down. That will mean another 20 or so men, most of whom have families, on the dole.
Those men work hard, as my husband did; he stayed with this man for 81/2 years and was very guilty at leaving because he was such a good employer to his men Do you realise, I wonder, what conditions those men endure, up early loading and unloading, not knowing where they are going to spend the night, or what those dreadful roads you speak of will be like.
Oh! Yes. They get subsistence for beds, but it costs them every penny and more, sometimes, because often nowadays meals are not included.
Now as for the noise and the damage they do to the roads, I wonder if you realise that every single item we possess, even the motor car, has to come by lorry at some stage or another and you or I could not do without them.
Instead of penalising our boys, clamp do-wn on the Continental cowboys and those
vehicles that come from Ireland. They are heavier and longer.
Our men are hampered every inch of the journey by Licensing Authorities with their silent checks, etc, and the 10 hours just make a mockery of these men's wages. Do you know that the majority of these men get £1 per hour; in fact they are forced to work overtime spending long hours away from their families in order to just scrape by. You may say, take the rent rebate, etc, but if you have a proud husband as I have, he preferred to go without his pint and cigarettes and £2 pocket money. You may not believe this, but it's true.
Well, Sir, I have said my piece, I am not disrespectful, and I love my country and am a faithful royalist unlike our MP, but sometimes the people have to be heard.
PS: I am sure British Rail would prove more efficient if the cranes at the Freightliner depots were not always breaking down and keeping the lorry drivers waiting for up to four hours, and so missing trains. The drivers proved this country would be brought to a halt without them.
SCOTTISH LORRY DRIVER'S WIFE, Name and address supplied
Bump Ws a wilt ga
Coming to terms with impending change has always been a difficult exercise for most of us, but major change has to be accepted from time to time as technology and social patterns develop. Now that the railways' turn has come to fade from the picture there is the normal outcry and organised resistance, but this can do no more than delay the inevitable.
In the mid-1950s a massive £1,660 million operation was mounted to restore the already declining railways. The scheme was launched in a spirit of great confidence.
Now, 20 years and approaching £5,000 million of public money later, the railways have shrunk to a minor factor in Britain's inland transport, accounting for only some 16 per cent of passenger and freight movement. Meanwhile the rail route network has diminished from around 19,000 to 11,500 miles, with further big cuts in prospect.
The right course now before us is to turn over the unique, segregated rail network for road construction, thus providing a new, supplementary system of safe, high quality, high capacity, segregated traffic routes, covering the whole country and drawing away a high proportion of the present traffic which is causing danger, damage and congestion on the existing all-purpose toads which were built for the age of horse-drawn land transport.
The latent capacity of the converted system would safely and comfortably absorb 30 times the present traffic carried on the railways.
Mr J. C. Hooper (CM March 11) cites supposed technical difficulties in the conversion of a particular route and no doubt such objections will be multiplied ad lib in the forthcoming publication "Railways into Busways Won't Go," to which he refers. However, busways into railways certainly will go, as is proved by numerous existing conversions.
There are no technical difficulties which engineers cannot now take in their stride. As for financial objections, these are irrelevant, since the cost of converting the entire system could be covered in as little as five years by diverting to it the present public expenditure on railways. M. J. DOUGLASS, Railway Conversion League