WASTE RECYCLING
JOHN CRAWFORD
JOHN trained at Saltcoats Burgh in the late 60s. After a decade he moved to PD Beatwaste Ltd/ Wimpey Waste Management Ltd. He then joined the Civil Engineering Dept at Strathclyde University before posts at Renfrew, Hamilton, Inverness and East Ayrshire Councils. A Fellow of CIWM, he served on their Scottish Centre Council from 1988-2009. He is a Fellow of the Royal Environmental Health Institute of Scotland and was their President between 1991-92.
Getting caught out!
SOME readers may recognise the following conversation:
“Good afternoon, Sir. Do you know the speed limit on this section of road?”
“Is it 50mph, Officer?” “Try again, Sir.” “Is it 40mph?” “Keep going.” “What about 30mph?”
“Exactly, and what speed do you think you were doing, Sir?”
“Well, as I thought it was 50mph I’d probably be doing something in that direction.”
“Actually Sir, we were touching 70 to overtake you. Why all the rush?”
“Well, I’m due to meet the senior buyer at Babcock’s. I’m running late and he’s a stickler for punctuality.”
“Well Sir, you’ll have a genuine reason for being late today. All you’ll need to do is show him this ticket…!”
There’s not a lot you can do when you’re caught red-handed whether it be speeding or being somewhere you shouldn’t have been. We used to have a shop steward at Saltcoats who was on manual sweeping duties and I lost count of the times I found his barrow parked in a remote cul-de-sac in one of our housing estates with him nowhere to be seen.
I used to attend the council’s Licensing Board and at one meeting, a ‘country hotel’ (actually the local boozer) was the subject of a formal police objection to having its licence renewed. The senior cop read out a litany of: several 999 calls one night; affray and fighting in the car park when police officers attended; an adult male having to be recovered after being found floating face downwards in the nearby River Doon, etc.
The licensee was asked to respond. “I can explain,” he began. “The bloke who made the second 999 call was the same guy who’d made the first one and he was only trying to cancel his first emergency call. He thought he’d been shot with a rifle but his mate said it was only an
air-gun…” I wished the licensee had taken our earlier advice and brought his lawyer along to advise him when to stop digging! The police objection was upheld.
Getting back to speeding, several decades ago one of our eight-wheelers was stopped by the police on the (40mph) Carmunnock expressway in Glasgow late one afternoon trying to get to the nearest landfill before it closed. The cops hauled our driver out of the truck after clocking him at 67mph (quite surprising to me given the age of the truck and that the driver was always telling me it needed replacing). After receiving a sweary tirade from the police, he was formally charged and then asked if he had anything to say. He held out both fists with his thumbs upwards and replied: “keys, I’m caught” (one of the standard phrases we used as kids when playing ‘tag’ in the school playground). Both cops then burst out laughing saying: “we haven’t heard that one since we left primary school.” Then they tore up the ticket and let him go! (He made it to the landfill in time, by the way.)
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