Transport: Plugge's Plug

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International Broadcasting Co. of London annoys the augustly uncommercial B. B. C. by spraying Britain, from stations on the Continent, with frankly commercial plugs for British products. Go-getting head of I. B. C. is Leonard Frank Plugge, a sleek and portly gentleman who got himself elected to Parliament from Chatham in 1935. Captain Plugge (he was a Naval Reserve and R. A. F. man during the War) not long ago bought one of London's best addresses, the Leopold de Rothschild house in Park Lane, and equipped it with radio and television in every room. Another house of his in Park Lane has a telephone switchboard and 37 telephones, more than any other private house in the city.

Motoring is a Plugge passion; he once drove every foot of the way from New York to Los Angeles and back. Captain Plugge greatly admires U. S. mechanical ingenuity. Last week, while driving over Connecticut's Merritt Parkway, a highspeed, four-lane artery paralleling the cluttered old Post Road, Captain Plugge greatly admired the glass curb reflectors which outline the road at night. He stopped, got out, examined the reflectors minutely with a flashlight. Later he asked the Connecticut Highway Department for samples and manufacturing details, saying he intended to urge installation of the reflectors on English highways. The Connecticut officials, somewhat embarrassed, informed Captain Plugge that the Merritt Parkway reflectors were copies of those in use on the road from Evesham to Worcester, England.