Categories: general
Date: 18 December 2008 20:55:26
I think that the time has come to ban Christmas. Oliver Cromwell and his puritan friends may have had things right after all.
I have done all my shopping but have had so much trouble with work that I'm getting stressed. I'm still working now trying to get an aircraft engine into Paris for 06:00hrs tomorrow. At present the engine is on a truck in a motorway in North Kent. The driver has run out of hours and can't move until the early hours of tomorrow morning.
The customer has an aircraft on the ground at Paris waiting to fit the engine and the airline want it in use for Saturday. Short of divine intervention or a passing Timelord we are currently up **** creek without a paddle.
Everything is made worse because all the hauliers are rushing home for Christmas and there is no spare capacity in the system to recover from problems such as these. Christmas falling on a Thursday doesn't help as now one will be moving on Continental haulage after tomorrow - they're afraid of not getting home for Christmas.
I hope that you feel sorry for the drivers of Willi Betz. They're mainly East Europeans who are having to work away from home for 3-6 months at a stretch for meagre wages (compared to W. European drivers). You'll see them parked up in motorway service areas over Christmas eating baked beans and hanging out their washing.