Consuming Interest
Homework for Hirers
By LESLIE ADRIAN A FEW weeks ago, when Meriting about car hire in this country, I'mentioned So, first buy your computer : you will need it to sort out a confusion of motoring statistics, kilometre charges and unconverted foreign cur- rency. (Why on earth do French Railways 'quote their hire charges in £ s. d. and the kilometre prices in heavy francs?) Competition in the car- hire business is still very imperfect; charges vary immensely from country to country; the home- work you do beforehand can save as much as El a day in hire charges.
In Italy, for instance, you probably could not do better than make use of the BEA car-hire service. providing, of course, that you are also making use of one of BEA's aeroplanes. The daily cost of driving 100 kilts. in a four-seater Fiat 000, hired through BEA, is £2 10s. This is 15s. a day cheaper than four other leading car- hire agencies which I chose at random for pur- poses of comparison.
In Spain, on the other hand, the tables are turned and a car hired through i3EA would be one of the most costly. Of the. English agents, Maxwell Williams, European Car Hire Ltd. (26 North End Road, NWI I; SPEedwell 1141), seem to oiler good value for a car hired in Spain. And though it is cheaper still to hire a car on the spot from one of the many ATESA garages in 'Spain (details from the Spanish Tourist Office, 70 Jermyn Street, SW1), a local hiring involves the vexation of pitying the de- posit in local currency, not to mention (if the deposit is not repaid in full) the possibility of an embarrassing dispute in a foreign language over the deductions for damage.
Most firms like to hold between ..£25 and £35 of their client's money while he is driving one of their cars on the Continent, but BEA are an exception to this rule. They require no deposit. Apart from the convenience of not having to tie up a sum equivalent to the bill for two weeks in a good hotel it is pleasant to be relieved of the nagging anxiety about how much of the deposit will be returned, to you at the end of the hiring.
Insurance cover, to protect the deposit, can add several shillings to an apparently low hiring charge. Full third-party cover is always included in the basic fee, but it is common practice to expose the hirer to the possible penalty of paying up to the first £35 worth of damage in the event of an accident—the amount of the hirer's liability being usually limited to the amount of the de- posit he is required to put down. Sometimes the hirer gets complete protection against fire and theft; but sometimes his liability, in the event of such a disaster, is the same as if there had been an accident. Herz Rent-A-Car, amongst others, charge between 5s. and 7s. a day for what they call 'collision insurance' (insurance against fire and theft is included in their basic hire charge), a sum which, in effect, guarantees the return of the deposit untouched.
Kilometre charges need careful scrutiny, and may determine which firm you patronise. If the purpose of hiring a car is merely to provide a shuttle service for the family between the beach and the hotel, obviously a firm making a high basic charge which includes limitless free kilo- metres is not the one for you. It would be equally uneconomic to be committed to paying for 100 kms. a day, which some firms set as a compulsory minimum charge. On the other hand, for an 'American'-style holiday in Italy, 'doing' the country in a fortnight, it would pay to rent a car through the Sadem Car Rental. Service whose rather high daily charge includes unlimited mileage. (Contact their English agents, Fiat (England) Ltd., Water Road, Wembley; PERi- vale 5651.) The kilometre charges also provide a revealing picture of the state of the roads in certain countries. In Spain and Greece, for example, every shaky kilometre covered costs between 41d. and 6d. Spain may be cheap to live in. but the cost of hiring a small car and driving it 100 kms, seems to be more than anywhere else in Europe. A word about petrol concessions. Italy is one of the countries which offer cheaper petrol to foreign tourists, but the driver of a car hired in „Italy is not a foreigner for the purpose of this concession. One friend of mine kept his status as a foreigner by hiring his car in Nice and driving it in northern Italy.
The French do permit foreigners driving hired cars to enjoy the benefit of tourist-price petrol. But, as I learnt to my cost, the administrative onus of arranging this falls on the hiring garage and some small garages just cannot be bothered to do the work involved even when the agent for the hiring is French Railways.
Unfortunately French Railways (whose car- hire service otherwise is most efficient and cheap) do not warn their customers that the choice of one of the smaller centres to collect his car will mean that the full price must be paid for every litre of petrol he uses, so it is wise to ask them about this when booking the car.
Now just imagine how it feels When first your toes and then your heels, And then by gradual degrees, Your shins and ankles, calves and knees, Are slowly eaten bit by bit. No wonder Jim detested it!
You may or may not think that The Caution- ary Tale of Jim, Who ran away from his Nurse and was eaten by a Lion, is suitable for children : we are all used to it, and it never, we feel, did us any harm. And with films like Ben Hur getting a harmless 'A' certificate, so that any accompanied five-year-old can see a man kicked to death by horses, it may seem prissy to worry about mere books. But it is still necessary to be fussy about what children read. A parent has sent me two attractively printed little books published by James Nisbet and Co.— The Story of Little Black Quibba and The Story of Little Black Bobtail. In the first tale a little black boy, whose mother is dying for lack of mangoes, sets out to find some. He is deceived first by a lying elephant, then by a snake which wants to eat him. The snake eats three frogs who try to warn the boy; it later attacks the boy and is in turn attacked by the elephant, who then tries to throw little Black Quibba over a cliff. The climax, well illustrated in colour, shows the elephant dashed on the rocks and the snake pulled into pieces, with the frogs hopping out of his insides. Little Black Quibba then collects his mangoes from among the bloody stumps of snake. The mother who read this story to her eli was quick enough to see the dangers in it a change it materially. Nevertheless, the thr year-old was moved to tears. This particul picture story seems to me unnecessarily 80P and certainly introduces 'moral confusion' who the animals are shown to be deceitful and et It is worth taking an extremely thorough 10 before frightening a child with this sort of sto I will never be flippant about serious sub again. I am told there are thirty-seven ev ing courses in shoe repairing put on by LCC; and anyone who wants to try repairld their own shoes may enrol there next auttlell with my blessing.
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