I can’t have been the only person whose first thought, on hearing about the deadly explosion at the West Fertilizer Company plant in Texas in April, was: “ammonium nitrate”.
British people are curious creatures. It is hard to square their cherished belief of being free-born and independent – “an Englishman’s home is his castle” sort of thing – with their delight in having rules to live by.
We all know things have been pretty bad lately. The global economy tanked big time back in 2008 and has struggled to get a grip on things ever since. The high streets are hurting, retailers are closing down, and companies all over the place are in trouble.
Thirty years can suddenly seem a long time. Back in 1983, for instance, I was not even a father, let alone a grandfather. And some of HCB’s coverage of the emergency response sector seems positively antique.
Back in the mid-1990s, British Telecom, the UK’s telephone company (and, for younger readers, in those days there was only one) ran a very successful advertising campaign with the slogan: ‘It’s good to talk’.
Was the March issue always a storage terminal number? It was in 1983, but where now are those optimistic operators listed as investing in new capacity?
Now here’s a tale. A 55-year-old Austrian man ended up in hospital last December after taking an angle grinder to a safe he had inherited from his late brother.
The February 1983 issue of HCB concerned itself largely with packaging issue. The timing was significant, since the UN Committee of Experts had two months earlier approved a major change in the provisions for package design
It is traditional at this time of year to use editorial space such as this page to look ahead to what we might be able to expect for the rest of the year. Traditional, but dull. And probably a waste of space.
