Kinnock driven to take car

Date: 30/05/1996

Transport Commissioner Neil Kinnock was in Paris the other day talking to the SNCF people about rail travel, extolling its virtues as a vehicle for easing the worsening congestion on Europe's roads by getting people out of their cars and on to trains. Message delivered, the Commissioner returned to Brussels - by car.

But Entre Nous can reveal that Kinnock had every intention of practising what he preached. He learned his lesson after coming in for some predictable flak a few months ago when he unveiled plans for reducing dependency on cars.

Naturally he was asked how he came to work that morning and, being an honest chap, Kinnock said he had travelled in a form of four-wheeled conveyance which could be described in general terms, if anyone was so minded, as a car.

The British tabloid newspaper headline writers made the most of it and, no doubt with that in mind, the Commissioner let the train take the strain for the Paris trip.

But SNCF, in common with much of the French public service sector, had gone on strike by the time he was due to head for home.

After a few organisational telephone calls, the Kinnock party concluded there was no alternative but to deploy an automobile and risk clogging up at least one of Europe's roads, bringing the Commissioner's own predictions of impending gridlock a step closer.