Potholes

[Barman]

Every Councillor needs to be on top of the pothole issue and pointing out how the council needs to act and act now to do something (specifically fill in the pothole being pointed out). We are assiduous in performing this vital task, keeping highways maintenance folk busy filling in said holes.

Then we troop into the council chamber and vote for budgets that cut spending on that vital task of highways maintenance. Local council's spend less than 5% of their revenue budget on looking after roads, pavements and footpaths. Which is down from 11% (and in actual cash terms more) in 2008.

This reflects the priority of government - national and local. The idea that looking after roads is an important function of government has long passed - even in the transport field the focus (and the spending) has been directed to railways. While we subsidise heavy rail to the tune of over £13 billion, national revenue spending on roads languishes at a mere £9 billion. And this priority - as ever - is reflected in the choices of local councils.

The odd thing is that most people, most of the time simply don't use trains. Even in London. Yet we all - whether we're drivers, bus users, cyclists or pedestrians - use the roads. Perhaps we have (in our obsession with hating the motor car and disliking the lorry) simply forgotten that it is roads that carry the lion's share of freight, that allow us to get from our front door to where wish wish to go and that are the real lifeline of our economy.

That our roads - suburban, urban, trunk and rural - are riddled with potholes represents a colossal failure in government priority. We've allowed ourselves to be lulled by those green dressed sirens into accepting the wholly false premise that railways present any kind of solution to the transport needs of a modern economy. Railways merely take us from one place we don't want to be to another place we don;t want to be - it's the roads that complete the journey.

Potholes are a symptom of misplaced priority not a failing of any system. We simply stopped spending money on roads. New schemes are evaluated on the basis of unwarranted environmental impact assessments meaning that, in almost every case, new roads don't meet criteria. And councils faced with tight budget settlements choose to spend on social services for the minority of residents rather than roads for everyone. And there's a reason for this of course.

Those social services carry an enormous risk - whether we're speaking of the terrible child death or the dreadful story of elderly neglect this always trumps you or I getting a broken car as a result of a pothole. So we pour money into social services - as it happens nearly all of the grant we get from central government (education aside) ends up being spent on social services. And the result of this is that we spend less and less money on looking after the roads we all use.

With the result being potholes that us councillors can point at, take action about, get sorted!

 

Clicky...

[Just One More]

 

I'm off to work now, funnily enough looking at potholes etc on the M3, M27 and A3. I shall come back to this later 

[Barman]

I'm off to work now, funnily enough looking at potholes etc on the M3, M27 and A3. I shall come back to this later 

 

[Steve]

First party to promise me a referendum on properly sorting potholes and highway maintenance gets my vote.  Local authority budgetting is a mess though.  Central government creates unemployment but guess who has to provide social housing etc   [/serious mode]

[GROWLER]

Roads around here are at their worst ever now.
Cars are swerving around all over the place trying to avoid these bastard craters that have rapidly developed over the last couple of months in particular.

Like being back in the piggin' dark ages now.

[Steve]

anyone wonder how many potholes there are on Boris's regular cycle route?  Almost one perchance.  Only when someone famous is killed by one of these symptoms of failure will anything happen

Just filling potholes is no good, they just reappear in greater numbers and size.

[Barman]

anyone wonder how many potholes there are on Boris's regular cycle route?  Almost one perchance.  Only when someone famous is killed by one of these symptoms of failure will anything happen

Just filling potholes is no good, they just reappear in greater numbers and size.

Exactly!

[GROWLER]

anyone wonder how many potholes there are on Boris's regular cycle route?  Almost one perchance.  Only when someone famous is killed by one of these symptoms of failure will anything happen

Just filling potholes is no good, they just reappear in greater numbers and size.

Almost comical witnessing the 'man with a barra' filling them and then using the wagon tyres to flatten them down.
Why the hell do they actually bother?

[Snoopy]

anyone wonder how many potholes there are on Boris's regular cycle route?  Almost one perchance.  Only when someone famous is killed by one of these symptoms of failure will anything happen

Just filling potholes is no good, they just reappear in greater numbers and size.

Almost comical witnessing the 'man with a barra' filling them and then using the wagon tyres to flatten them down.
Why the hell do they actually bother?

They bother because although they know it to be fruitless, and they know we know, it's all their budget will run to and at least they are seen to be doing something. The answer is simple: Use the Road Tax income to pay for highway maintenance instead of just adding it to the purse that also pays out Foreign Aid, NHS, MPs' Expenses, State pensions, etc etc etc.

[Barman]

Same with that 'tar 'n' chip' malarkey - do they still do that?

They either do it when it is too cold and the chips won't stick to the bitumen (and you get paint chips all over your car) or when it is too hot and the chips sink into the bitumen (and you get bitumen all over your car)...

What a farcical waste of time and munny.... 

[Snoopy]

Yep!

BUT it stops the local council being sued for knowing about and failing to rectify a pothole. They have taken demonstrable, if useless, action and when the pothole comes back, as we and they know it will, they can say "we fixed it when it was reported and this is therefore a "new" pothole" and they have the paperwork to prove it.

[The Moan Ranger]

Fucking great big hole in the A217 - a main road - where it passes Gatwick has done something very nasty to the O/S/R rear suspension of the Audi...my mate Iain took it into his garage this morning...

[The Moan Ranger]

He's just sent me this...

[Barman]

He's just sent me this...

Kerrrchiiing! 

[The Moan Ranger]

He's just sent me this...

Kerrrchiiing! 

£140.40 all in.