The UK Haulage Industry in a Nutshell?

[bluey_circles]

Rjan:

Carryfast:

Bluey Circles:
When there has been big reductions in the cost of diesel, such as last years price collapse; What was the most common outcome.
a) wages went up
b) rates for transporting goods went down (usually set by the company sending the goods)

The cost of diesel have very little impact on drivers wage packets.

To be fair going from silly price down to a bit less but still silly price,which certainly couldn’t be called a price ‘collapse’,was never going to provide the scope for wage increases which allowing trucks to use red diesel would.

Utter rubbish. Haulage prices are not too high. They are too low! Customers are paying too little, relative to the cost of providing a proper, lawful haulage service with adequate wages.

For me this comment sums up the problems within the industry “Customers are paying too little” and bizarrely the customers too often set the price they are paying. I used to sometimes have to take on work where the prices were out of my control and I would rarely make anything out of it, the only work that I used to do well out of is where I set the prices - but from what I gather now the former is becoming too often the norm. Too many people willing to work for very little.

[carryfast]

Bluey Circles:
For me this comment sums up the problems within the industry “Customers are paying too little” and bizarrely the customers too often set the price they are paying. I used to sometimes have to take on work where the prices were out of my control and I would rarely make anything out of it, the only work that I used to do well out of is where I set the prices - but from what I gather now the former is becoming too often the norm. Too many people willing to work for very little.

More like customer resistance to paying for the artificial costs and inefficiencies being imposed on the industry by deliberate government policy.As I said taking your ideas to their logical conclusion would mean going back to 32t gross max and re instating the fuel duty escalator retrospectively.Then increasing drivers’ wages and terms and conditions to train driver levels.Then trying to pass on the resulting financial unvialibilty of the operation in the form of increased rates to customers.On the basis of an offer they can’t refuse because it’s supposedly a captive market.

[rjan]

Carryfast:
How does piggy backing truck trailers and hauling containers,which previously went ‘regularly’ by road,fit the description of ‘regular’ ‘train sized’ loads.

If you have 50 containers regularly travelling from one end of the country to the other, that is a train sized load. The main obstacle to containerized loads in the past was the height of Victorian bridges, which are steadily being improved.

Or for that matter we obviously wouldn’t be dealing with any issue of any deliberate stated government policy of large scale ‘shift’ in freight volumes ‘from’ road ‘to’ rail.Which we obviously are.

I haven’t said any such policy does not exist, although I’m not familiar with it. It just seems to me a perfectly natural result of rail’s efficiencies, which is why every decent economy in the world has a rail freight system.

On that note if rail is as efficient as it says it is then it has nothing to fear by allowing trucks better access to those same markets in the form of a leveller playing field regarding fuel costs and efficient vehicle specifications ( LHV’s ).Nor would that issue of stated government transport policy exist.

I have no personal objection to LHVs - all I’ve pointed out to you is that they’ve looked at the current market and decided that amongst other things: a) it will require infrastructure improvements (such as for parking), b) it will require route constraints, c) certain designs of vehicles are more demanding on drivers (which will require more constraints on hours and scheduling). All this will require capital investment and therefore an increase in taxation.

As for the poaching of loads from rail through so-called “modal shift”, they have basically concluded that this will not just cause marginal losses to rail (which of course would be perfectly justified if trucks were more competitive for those loads), but will potentially undermine the economics of the rail system and investment plans which depend on high utilisation. That is the official position.

My position goes further to point out that the so-called competitiveness of trucking is primarily as a result of its inferior terms and conditions, and that once these are equalised, once trucking’s “unfair advantage” over rail is removed, it will not even come close to competing with rail.

I also simply don’t accept your point about red diesel being unfair - road fuel duty is the price operators pay for the infrastructure, which rail pays for in other ways (typically today in terms of track access charges I presume, whereas under British Rail it was simply all paid for and accounted for internally by the same firm).

I would happily have a more detailed discussion about the fairness of red diesel, if you have more detailed figures or sources to refer to, but as I’ve said I suspect the defect in your thinking is in assuming that the unfairness is self-evident (presumably based on a paranoid perception that even right-wing Tory politicians have some sort of grudge against trucking with its supposedly supreme efficiencies over rail).

While so long as it does exist why would anyone with any sense choose to enter the road transport industry given the choice of entering the rail transport industry instead.While road transport will obviously increasingly be seen as the second class,second choice with drivers treated and paid in line with that situation.

I’m happy for rail to be seen as the more attractive career, because in fact it is so. You’d need your head examining if you told some school-leaver to turn down a secure job in the rail industry to come and do the average truck driver’s job. Even our very best and most responsible jobs like fuel tankers or some of the specialist chemicals (which don’t even begin to represent the majority of trucking jobs), no longer have final salary pensions for new members, and you’d need a letter from the pope to get straight onto fuel without spending 10 years crawling through the industry’s sewer entrance.

As for road transport having “second class pay”, that is not because of poor productivity, it is because of a simple class war between workers and employers which the employers are winning. You’re being so obtuse about this that I can’t make sense of why you’d overlook the obvious answer about why pay and conditions are ■■■■■■ to try and make some ridiculous argument that the failure to adopt LHVs are the reason why driver’s pay has fallen over 20 years (let alone failed to grow).

Given a situation of equal unionisation between rail and road,in which wage levels are removed from the competitive process for both,that doesn’t fit the definition of ‘under cutting’.

I agree, but we’re not in that situation! Trucking is only as competitive as it is with rail, because it has such dramatically poorer pay and conditions, and even then rail still manages to outcompete trucking.

While imposition of unfair taxation and ‘unrealistic’ vehicle dimensions and weights,together with a stated government aim of removing road transport’s access to the transport market,certainly does fit the definition of ‘rigging’ the market.Those dimensions and weights being no less unrealistic now than the 32 t gross limit was before the pathetic move to 38 and 44t operation.While the difference in fuel costs regards the two modes speaks for itself.

There is no difference in fuel costs. There is a perfectly fair difference in fuel taxation, because that is how road haulage pays for infrastructure, whereas rail pays for infrastructure with track access charges and similar (the equivalent in trucking would be for the government to charge truckers for every road journey they booked).

As for the lost tax revenues from trucks’ use of red diesel yes they will need to be made up from an increase in central taxation like income tax.Rather than regressive VAT and Duty which hits the road transport industry and those employed in it disproportionately.Or for that matter the customers of everything moved by road.On that note I thought Labour was all about taxation based on the ability to pay.Not hitting poor pensioners’ etc grocery bills in the form of passed on road fuel duty.

Again, the answer to “poor pensioners” is better pensions in the first place, not constantly trying to battle for exceptional tax breaks to everything.

[rjan]

Carryfast:
If there’s no ‘shortage’ of any so called ‘pie’ you obviously wouldn’t be moaning about truck drivers supposedly taking the livelihoods from train drivers,given a leveller playing field in the form of LHV’s and equalisation of fuel costs.IE you say one thing when it suits you and the opposite when it doesn’t.

Of course I’d be against you stealing other workers’ fair piece of the pie! You seem to have gone back to thinking that workers all around the globe are suffering because train drivers are paid too much.

I’m also quite in favour of a level playing field, so before we introduce LHVs, truckers need to be paid £45k a year and final salary pensions introduced, so that there is a level playing field with rail. You accept this, surely?

[rjan]

Carryfast:
The inflationary ‘cycle’ that I’m referring to is the one where you try to provide drivers with a massive wage increase without at least countering that,in the form of reduced costs ( in this case extortionate fuel taxation ) and increased productivety for the operator.

Wages don’t have to be paid for by increased prices overall. They can be paid for purely by a reduction in profits, not just the profit of the haulier, but the profits of indirect employers like Tesco. Obviously, the price of “haulage services” to the indirect employer increases, but it doesn’t trigger an inflationary cycle in the economy, because the increase in wages is countered by a reduction in the ‘cost of profit’ in the supply chain. That’s the whole point of it, to redistribute economic income from profiteers to earners.

Also, we are actually in the midst of deflation (i.e. wages and prices are falling in a cycle) - the government has been actively supporting the inflation rate since 2008 with quantitative easing, but the beneficiaries have been the banks and the rich in general. That is why they are starting to talk about so-called “helicopter drops” of money into the accounts of ordinary people.

[rjan]

Bluey Circles:

Rjan:
Utter rubbish. Haulage prices are not too high. They are too low! Customers are paying too little, relative to the cost of providing a proper, lawful haulage service with adequate wages.

For me this comment sums up the problems within the industry “Customers are paying too little” and bizarrely the customers too often set the price they are paying. I used to sometimes have to take on work where the prices were out of my control and I would rarely make anything out of it, the only work that I used to do well out of is where I set the prices - but from what I gather now the former is becoming too often the norm. Too many people willing to work for very little.

It’s because haulage “customers” are not real customers in the traditional sense of “end users”. They are employers, who engage their workers at arms length and have rebranded themselves as “customers” because it manipulate’s workers’ intuitions and understandings about the situation.

After all, if you said “the employer demand you take a 10% pay cut”, most workers would be outraged, but when they say “the customer demands you take a 10% pay cut”, somehow it seems less provocative (even though it’s an identical situation here).

When Tesco outsources to Stobarts, it does not cease to be the employer. It still needs to employ labour, but Stobarts takes on the role of a kind of gangmaster. This model was traditionally (i.e. historically) found in agriculture, where the actual employer (the landowner) did not contract with workers directly, but with a gangmaster who carried out the recruitment and organisation of the actual workforce.

Today, the function of this model is to encourage competition between workforces (who belong to different gangmasters), and allow workforces to be replaced quickly in the case of strikes, both of which improve the profits of the real employer (Tesco). So if Stobarts go on strike, Tesco punish the gangmaster (Stobarts) and are able to quickly find another gangmaster and workforce to take over (i.e. another haulage firm). In the mid-20th century, workers had more class consciousness to understand this trick and would also take secondary picket action against the real employer, but today they generally do not understand how employers manipulate them into competition with each other through contracting models like this.

[carryfast]

Rjan:
I’m also quite in favour of a level playing field, so before we introduce LHVs, truckers need to be paid £45k a year and final salary pensions introduced, so that there is a level playing field with rail. You accept this, surely?

No I don’t ‘accept it’.You’ve made it clear that you want to maintain the status quo of truck driving being seen as the second class poor relation v rail in terms of transport industry job opportunities.Together with the same contradictory hypocritical bs as the Guardian has said in that regard.

Obviously the issue of unfair fuel taxation ( costs ) and unwarranted vehicle size/weight limits ( productivety ) having to be sorted out at least at the same time as the wage issue.

Which leaves the obvious question that the idea of train driver type terms and conditions for truck drivers can by definition only mean C + E.While the red herring of LGV driver ‘shortages’ and low pay obviously needs to be seen the light of the contradiction of an ever increasing pressure to reduce the need for C + E vehicles and therefore job opportunities leaving just more of the dross available in the 7.5 and 18 tonner distribution sectors.IE as I said C + E needs to mean LHV’s and access to distance work sector without punitive fuel taxation.Bearing in mind that the Scandinavian drawbar solution at least certainly doesn’t mean any need for so called infrastructure ‘improvements’ and an unarguable definition of productivety based on tonne/miles hauled.While no one is going to pay a train driver type wage package to drive an artic around the local houses or a few miles up the road.At which point the logical conclusion is then downsizing to 7.5 or 18 tonner operations anyway.Nor do many/most drivers want to do that type of work regardless of vehicle type.

IE the catch 22 that shows your and the Guardian’s hypocritical bollox up for what it really is.Kicking the road transport industry when it’s down,regards job opportunities and productivety,having been brought to its knees by the unfair policies which you both support.

[rjan]

Carryfast:

Rjan:
I’m also quite in favour of a level playing field, so before we introduce LHVs, truckers need to be paid £45k a year and final salary pensions introduced, so that there is a level playing field with rail. You accept this, surely?

No I don’t ‘accept it’.You’ve made it clear that you want to maintain the status quo of truck driving being seen as the second class poor relation v rail in terms of transport industry job opportunities.Together with the same contradictory hypocritical bs as the Guardian has said in that regard.

I don’t in fact want the status quo in trucking. I’m just making myself perfectly clear that I don’t want any change on the backs of competing with railwaymen. I’m not being inconsistent in this regard at all. I’m being crystal clear at all times that bosses and ‘customers’ are our only ‘competitors’ who must pay for improvements to our pay and conditions. No war with other workers.

Obviously the issue of unfair fuel taxation and unwarranted vehicle size/weight limits having to be sorted out at least at the same time as the wage issue.

Yes, we’ll make a deal then, I will support the introduction of LHVs when there is a minimum wage for truckers of £45k per annum plus final salary pension scheme. For free I’ll even throw in my support for an end to road fuel duty (the additional payroll taxes paid by truck drivers, and the savings in social security payments and tax credits which subsidise trucking operators, which can go towards the road infrastructure, will more than compensate the loss of road fuel duty).

While no one is going to pay a train driver type wage package to drive an artic around the local houses or a few miles up the road.

No employer would pay a train driver wage to train drivers, if they had any choice about the matter.

You seem to keep misconceiving this problem as one in which we need to get employers to choose to pay more than they actually do. What we actually need to do is close off the choice to pay less, because that is how competition drives our wages to rock bottom - it only takes one employer in a market to choose to pay less (either because he’s struggling to survive against those with better productivity, efficiencies of scale, or even because he’s just a cut-throat ■■■■■■■■■ and if the rest do not follow suit, then the cheap employer will simply undercut them all and take all their work.

IE the catch 22 that shows your and the Guardian’s hypocritical bollox up for what it really is.Kicking the road transport industry when it’s down,regards job opportunities and productivety,having been brought to its knees by the unfair policies which you both support.

No, I’m not kicking the road transport industry when it’s down, I’m making it quite clear just how dangerous and wrongheaded your thinking is about trying to attack the livelihoods of other workers.

Really all you are arguing for is reproducing the competition within the industry which has driven all our wages to rock bottom, and saying that we now need to start competing externally with railwaymen and drive their wages down to rock bottom too.

No, what we need is an end to competition between workers. An end to competition with workers in other yards, an end to competition with workers in other firms, an end to competition with workers in other industries, and start looking at our real competitors who rain fire on our heads with impunity whilst we squabble amongst ourselves: the bosses, and the ‘customers’.

[carryfast]

Rjan:

Carryfast:

Rjan:
I’m also quite in favour of a level playing field, so before we introduce LHVs, truckers need to be paid £45k a year and final salary pensions introduced, so that there is a level playing field with rail. You accept this, surely?

No I don’t ‘accept it’.You’ve made it clear that you want to maintain the status quo of truck driving being seen as the second class poor relation v rail in terms of transport industry job opportunities.Together with the same contradictory hypocritical bs as the Guardian has said in that regard.

I don’t in fact want the status quo in trucking. I’m just making myself perfectly clear that I don’t want any change on the backs of competing with railwaymen. I’m not being inconsistent in this regard at all. I’m being crystal clear at all times that bosses and ‘customers’ are our only ‘competitors’ who must pay for improvements to our pay and conditions. No war with other workers.

Obviously the issue of unfair fuel taxation and unwarranted vehicle size/weight limits having to be sorted out at least at the same time as the wage issue.

Yes, we’ll make a deal then, I will support the introduction of LHVs when there is a minimum wage for truckers of £45k per annum plus final salary pension scheme. For free I’ll even throw in my support for an end to road fuel duty (the additional payroll taxes paid by truck drivers, and the savings in social security payments and tax credits which subsidise trucking operators, which can go towards the road infrastructure, will more than compensate the loss of road fuel duty).

While no one is going to pay a train driver type wage package to drive an artic around the local houses or a few miles up the road.

No employer would pay a train driver wage to train drivers, if they had any choice about the matter.

You seem to keep misconceiving this problem as one in which we need to get employers to choose to pay more than they actually do. What we actually need to do is close off the choice to pay less, because that is how competition drives our wages to rock bottom - it only takes one employer in a market to choose to pay less (either because he’s struggling to survive against those with better productivity, efficiencies of scale, or even because he’s just a cut-throat [zb]), and if the rest do not follow suit, then the cheap employer will simply undercut them all and take all their work.

IE the catch 22 that shows your and the Guardian’s hypocritical bollox up for what it really is.Kicking the road transport industry when it’s down,regards job opportunities and productivety,having been brought to its knees by the unfair policies which you both support.

No, I’m not kicking the road transport industry when it’s down, I’m making it quite clear just how dangerous and wrongheaded your thinking is about trying to attack the livelihoods of other workers.

Really all you are arguing for is reproducing the competition within the industry which has driven all our wages to rock bottom, and saying that we now need to start competing externally with railwaymen and drive their wages down to rock bottom too.

No, what we need is an end to competition between workers. An end to competition with workers in other yards, an end to competition with workers in other firms, an end to competition with workers in other industries, and start looking at our real competitors who rain fire on our heads with impunity whilst we squabble amongst ourselves: the bosses, and the ‘customers’.

Why is a level playing field between road v rail,which by definition puts one industry’s worker’s against the other,any different to the situation of ferry crews v channel tunnel operations.IE they are by definition competing with ‘each other’.However if they aren’t competing in terms of wages what are you moaning about.While on that note you obviously seem to be happy enough when the boot is on the other foot in this case rail workers taking work from road transport workers.On the basis of a stated government policy of rigging the transport market in favour of rail.Bearing in mind that it’s unusual for unions to be campaigning against any type of industrial activety that employs more workers to do the job as opposed to less.

The truth is what you’re actually calling for is a continuation of the double standards in which rail workers are considered more valuable to the union cause than truck drivers are.On that note yes that’s understandable in many cases in that we all know the bad history in which too many truck drivers have proved themselves to be scabs and strike breakers and the anti thesis of trade union solidarity .However that’s no reason to destroy the industry as opposed to winning hearts and minds within it in that regard and then treating it fairly.

[rjan]

Carryfast:
Why is a level playing field between road v rail,which by definition puts one industry’s worker’s against the other,any different to the situation of ferry crews v channel tunnel operations.IE they are by definition competing with ‘each other’.However if they aren’t competing in terms of wages what are you moaning about.

If they weren’t competing on wages, I wouldn’t have anything to moan about. The point is, trucking is already undercutting rail massively on wages.

While on that note you obviously seem to be happy enough when the boot is on the other foot in this case rail workers taking work from road transport workers.

I wouldn’t be happy if the railwaymen were slumming it on social security in order to buy work from road haulage.

On the basis of a stated government policy of rigging the transport market in favour of rail.

“Rigging” is such a morally loaded word, and I don’t accept that characterisation. LHVs have been looked at purely on their own merits and rejected.

The fact that you are openly declaring one of the benefits of LHVs to be so-called ‘modal shift’ from rail to road, has forced me to address that issue also.

It is true the government has a policy of not permitting road haulage to undermine rail freight, and that is not to “rig” jobs for railwaymen but simply to prevent road haulage destroying the economics of the rail system altogether and sabotaging the strategic investment that the government insist on achieving through the private sector.

My interest in the question is primarily to point out that road haulage with LHVs would not be competing with rail on “level ground” at all, but from a position where hourly rates in road haulage are a fifth or less of those in rail. As it stands, the unit cost differences between road and rail which customers see are quite negligible, so LHVs might well push it over the edge in favour of road (so long as truckers’ wages stay rock bottom).

But for obvious reasons I am quite keen to see that an army of tupenny ha’penny truckers are not whipped into a frenzy to destroy good jobs in a high-pay, high-productivity industry, in the belief somehow that their wages will increase as a result (when it is only the continued paucity of their wages that allow them to attract that work from rail in the first place).

If rail did come under sustained assault from road haulage which it was not able to defend itself against, most likely what would happen is that there would be a massive attack on railwaymen’s pay and conditions, to re-establish the competitiveness of rail against road haulage, and the work would then flow back to rail as quickly as it left, except at a fraction of the old price.

So truckers would not keep the work they had bought (because rail always has a technological advantage over road), and railwaymen would not win from having their pay and conditions smashed, but by god the bosses would win from destroying one of the strongest remaining examples in the country of workers standing together and the benefits to their pay and conditions which flow from it.

Bearing in mind that it’s unusual for unions to be campaigning against any type of industrial activety that employs more workers to do the job as opposed to less.

Unions do not in general argue for demechanisation, technological inferiority, and the intensification of labour power. That is completely the opposite to where we want to go as a society, which is to achieve an increase in rates and a reduction in hours (which need to be distributed evenly amongst workers), not buying an increase in hours with a reduction in rates!

The truth is what you’re actually calling for is a continuation of the double standards in which rail workers are considered more valuable to the union cause than truck drivers are.On that note yes that’s understandable in many cases in that we all know the bad history in which too many truck drivers have proved themselves to be scabs and strike breakers and the anti thesis of trade union solidarity .However that’s no reason to destroy the industry as opposed to winning hearts and minds within it in that regard and then treating it fairly.

I’m glad you know your history. If truckers want their interests strongly represented by a union, then maybe they should join a union like the RMT, who will be only too happy to organise road haulage as well as rail.

But that doesn’t detract from the rest of what I’ve said, which is that whilst truckers’ wages are lower than those of railwaymen, I’m not willing to support any measure designed to take work from the rail industry under the illusion that it is being done “on a level playing field” when such apparent competitiveness depends on truckers having already been forced onto utterly squalid pay and conditions.

[dipper_dave]

FFS you pair are gonna kill this forum, short replies will keep readers interested.
Also no need to rush let others get a post inbetween.

No offence intended as I’m sure your both very clever and eloquent individuals, just little and often is better than the hard to read smorgus board page filling posts.

Oh and learn to quote individual sentences rather than whole posts where fellow readers wear their thumbs out scrolling through quoted waffle. My own thumb has got more carpet burns than me knees.

Just my opinion.

[truckman020]

the job is what you make it,i have said a few times I would give up hgv driving if I could do something else as I don’t particularly enjoy it anymore,but having said that it has gone downhill in the last few years,the ones I feel sorry for are the drivers on European work having to face the gauntlet at Calais everytime they go through there,apparently one driver had a knife pulled on him because he confronted immigrants trying to get into his truck,sooner or later a british trucker will be murdered,lets face it these immigrants have nothing to lose, 3 meals a day and a roof over their heads in prison is probably a luxury to them,and in Iraq or Syria life is cheap and they have probably murdered before but never been caught,as I say I would not drive to Europe at all,respect to those who do

[robroy]

Dipper_Dave:
FFS you pair are gonna kill this forum, short replies will keep readers interested.
Also no need to rush let others get a post inbetween.

No offence intended as I’m sure your both very clever and eloquent individuals, just little and often is better than the hard to read smorgus board page filling posts.

Oh and learn to quote individual sentences rather than whole posts where fellow readers wear their thumbs out scrolling through quoted waffle. My own thumb has got more carpet burns than me knees.

Just my opinion.

Just do what I do Dave…don’t bother reading them, and just scroll through.
If being boring was an Olympic event, these two would be Gold medalists.

I bet these two could clear a pub faster than Stevie Wonder with a machine gun.

[ovlov_jay]

Dipper_Dave:
FFS you pair are gonna kill this forum, short replies will keep readers interested.
Also no need to rush let others get a post inbetween.

No offence intended as I’m sure your both very clever and eloquent individuals, just little and often is better than the hard to read smorgus board page filling posts.

Oh and learn to quote individual sentences rather than whole posts where fellow readers wear their thumbs out scrolling through quoted waffle. My own thumb has got more carpet burns than me knees.

Just my opinion.

Bang on, it’s getting boring now

[dipper_dave]

robroy:
Just do what I do Dave…don’t bother reading them, and just scroll through.
If being boring was an Olympic event, these two would be Gold medalists.

I bet these two could clear a pub faster than Stevie Wonder with a machine gun.

I wish I could but I feel I just need to show them the path and see if they will walk it. 50 words with 10 words of wisdom is better than 1000 with 100 wise words as the reader is put off from the get go.

Perhaps they could just communicate by PM but that is not what forums are for, where the feeling of audience participation helps get ones juices flowing. But your not playing to the crowd when all your readers are doing is giving you a good thumbing to seek out a shorter post.

Not wishing to be unkind but I’m reminded of truckstop chats where I’ll happily listen to a fellow truckers tales of that tricky blindside reverse or the daft actions of one’s planners till we get to the important more interesting non job stuff like holiday locations and adventurous glory hole encounters.

At the end of the day everyone has wisdom to share but no need to use a hundred words when ten will do.

[carryfast]

Dipper_Dave:
Not wishing to be unkind but I’m reminded of truckstop chats where I’ll happily listen to a fellow truckers tales of that tricky blindside reverse or the daft actions of one’s planners till we get to the important more interesting non job stuff like holiday locations and adventurous glory hole encounters.

At the end of the day everyone has wisdom to share but no need to use a hundred words when ten will do.

I could have just said the Guardian article is a load of hypocritical zb and not bothered to reply to Rjan’s obvious support of it leaving you and robroy to get on with your ‘other’ preferred ‘important’ stuff.Feel free to explain how that would have made an intelligent argument that at least puts a coherent case for the industry against the Guardian’s and Rjan’s position.

[dipper_dave]

Excellent CF, now your learning. Short and sweet and to the point works best.
Now I just hope you oppo follows suit.

Kudos for the partial quote also ■■

[rjan]

Carryfast:
Feel free to explain how that would have made an intelligent argument that at least puts a coherent case for the industry against the Guardian’s and Rjan’s position.

Agreed, my dear Carryfast.

If they think they can make our same arguments in significantly fewer words, then I’d like to see them try!

[peter_s]

Click the username then click foe and they are gone.

[dipper_dave]

Rjan:

Carryfast:
Feel free to explain how that would have made an intelligent argument that at least puts a coherent case for the industry against the Guardian’s and Rjan’s position.

Agreed, my dear Carryfast.

If they think they can make our same arguments in significantly fewer words, then I’d like to see them try!

That’s more like it, keep it up and youl find your having more interaction and what you’ve written will be read by more members.

Just keep remembering, less is more, quality over quantity, little and often and chock your wheels when on the bay.