Because - if I'm remembering it correctly -
BRS (as they were called when I was
little) were the national, tax-payer owned transport organisation? I think they
were being privatised while I was still little, as I don't remember any great
'sell-off' under Thatcher, so it was probably sold piecemeal to regional
independents and gradually scaled-down to nothing?
Presumably some leftover from WWII, I think
their wagons were blue but a little (a lot?) darker than the shade chosen by The Lucky Toys for this model, although
I equally remember tarp's of exactly this colour among all the greasy,
charcoal, navy and turd-brown ones!
Under the corona virus pandemic we have
seen how both private railways and bus operators cannot survive, giving full-light
to the lies of 41 years of outsourced, downsized, privatisation and sell-off.
Lies which were identified as such at the time, but sadly, the Tories have had
the newspaper editors on their side!
Quite apart from the selling-off of all our
war-store depots and all our laboratories and the obvious failure of rail and
bus networks, all the other obvious failings of our nation in this crisis can be laid at
the feet of the Tories, and while 'New Blair' is hardly an innocent party, it
is the people in charge - right now - who are responsible for that fact that
while we (a developed, '1st World' country) have no face-masks to speak of,
Turkey (regarded as a 2nd World developing nation) has a compulsory face-mask
policy and enough face-marks to adhere to such a dictate?
A national haulier or the mechanism to
create one at short notice is something we should have had, or had ready. That
we had no such organisation, no national lab's, no face-masks, is all you need
to know about the Thatcherite-Reganomic desire to protect the citizens they
want to vote for them and their Trumpundbrwreakshit.
We were offered a part in a pan-European
respirator procurement program last the other week, and turned down the opportunity, now
we're taking 200 off the Yanks . . . who need them just as badly? Capitalism
has been failing us since before the crash of 2008, now democracy itself is
failing.
Enough politics for now, although there
will be more . . . it's my Blog!
Look! The treasure-chest from the Dinky Spectrum Maximum Security Car, cleverly copied to make a lorry load! And
many thanks to Adrian Little for letting me shoot this.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Th above obviously written while I was off line, it's all here;
And I wouldn't recognize one of it went past the window as I type! They were ours and if they'd been retained, we'd have had them when we need them! Sweden (who own BRS!) haven't gone into lockdown, because they are a high-tax/high-welfare society with spare capacity in their health services, New Zealand have a low death rate because they moved sharpish and hard (instead of watching and waiting like Boris!), we aren't 'great' anymore, we're just breaking Britain, struggling with the dichotomy between true democracy and big business' interests.
As a lady I know who works in Tesco said: "Right now I'm a front line 'essential' worker, when this is over I'll go back to being low-paid scum".
ReplyDeleteBRS had three major components. The red painted vehicles were the long distance haulers for large loads that delivered directly to one destination. The dark blue, much darker than the model shown were marked Pickfords and were the really heavy loads, steam locomotives, ships anchors or propellers etc. The one seen most often in towns were BRS Parcels which were a light green.
ReplyDeleteIn the 50's and 60's BRS Parcels picked up small loads from manufacturers, carried them to a sorting center near the destination where the cargo was transfered to a van for local delivery. Essentially a similar service as the Post Office. The rival carrier was British Railways. Customers such as Woolworths or Tescos would switch between BR and BRS Parcels when loss and damage rates increased. There was a lot of pilfering of loads.
BRS originally used a mixed bag of vehicles from the companies that were nationalised before replacing them with a more standard fleet. The Austin 'Noddy' van was to be seen all over London for decades making local deliveries.
We'll see Harry, I think there may be an appetite for great change, coupled with a lack of excuses for tardiness on the part of the rulers, when this is all over. And to be fair to Boris; he had talked of 'Leveling' so he has a mandate to challenge the old guard, but he's a toothless bluffer and relies on too many of the old guards to keep him where he is?
ReplyDeleteCheers for that Brian, I worked for United Carriers (long gone now) when I first got out of the army (between tractor driving and slurry-pumps! Oh I've had 'em all) and Reg' (charge-hand, who had been my PTI in depot) used to let me back the artics onto the bank occasionally!
Yes, it's the dark, almost navy-blue ones I remember!
H