Barrie Tozer:
Honked:
Back in 2005 you met with the Transport Director Alex Laffey, from Tesco. You were worried about the conditions that the drivers were forced to endure while delivering to their sites. Can you expand on how you improved the situation for drivers with Tesco RDC’s over the past ten years?
In August 2006, you met with the leaders of the Motorway service areas along with the then Transport Minister Stephen Ladyman, the Home Secretary John Reid and other Cabinet members. These are extremely high profile members and to get your cause in front of them was a good achievement in itself. Your issues were the poor state of facilities and lack of security for HGV drivers using MSA’s, can you provide any evidence of improvement resulting from your involvement within the past ten years? Reading the topics on Trucknet, this problem has not only continued, but alas has gotten worse. This followed on from a campaign in 2004 where you stated that there were 246,000 drivers and only six (6) had made representation of support with your complaints.
It is very clear that you have been a staunch campaigner to better the conditions for drivers over many years. You have had some success in getting your message across to the relevant people, however that success can only be measured by the long term improvements that you have called for. As we are still discussing the very same issues over ten years down the line can only suggest that the high profile meetings you attended were nothing short of a PR exercise for those involved. Now it may be that if you had the backing of a large membership of like minded folk, things could well have been different today. We will never know. What is clear however, you have not managed to gather any kind of support from the very people that you want to help.
Now I am not saying that what you are trying to do wrong, in fact I think you have some extremely valid points. But I feel that your past performance and results, your obvious lack of leadership qualities, your erratic mood swings and lack of openness and accountability have pushed many people to hold you in a position of suspicion. You are in a catch 22 situation, you need members to support you in your cause and you need to prove to members that your cause can work.
In some aspects you have answered your own postings.
I managed to open the doors to these high profile meetings (and yes I did get some improvements)
What I lacked in to continue with these meetings to get those improvements was any support from Drivers who wanted them.
Am I to blame for failing or are Drivers for not helping?
I have had to answer my own postings as you have neglected to provide a qualified answer to many questions, not just mine. I asked you for your previous experience and background but had to find it for myself. It threw up some interesting results.
Opening the doors was a good deed but as you failed to provide anything other than anecdotal musings, the people you met with paid you only lip service to appear to understand your cause. Nothing of any merit has progressed from the past ten years that I can find. If you’re intent on moving things forward, and there is a real case for doing so, what can you do to improve the take up rate and retention of members? A discount on tat isn’t going to cut it, purpose, action and results may just get things moving.
There is a reason that you fail to get support from drivers, and it is the same reason that some will vote for one party and some vote for another, they need to feel that the leadership and the policies are relevant to their own ideals, it stands up to scrutiny and it can be trusted to deliver its aims.
I would say that yes, you are to blame for the failure. You had a great idea, a true belief that change was needed and even managed to get to talk to the people who could make those changes happen. Your biggest failure was to think you could do it alone, a single voice without the support needed to make it heard. Even after all these years of shouting, and although your reasons for change are valid, you have failed to gather the support required. What you must ask yourself is this:
Is it the cause that people are unwilling to follow, or the leader?
This Q&A session has provided that answer, but I don’t think you have fully grasped it.
PS, I love the resemblance of you to your old CB handle 
, so maybe he should not be knocked for attempting things that others either could never be arsed to do, nor have the initiative or balls to do themselves. 
chocolate fireguards 
Len mccluskey £120,000? A year 
