POTHOLING UK

In a Street Near You:

Happy motoring folks. Or, NOT!

When our friends at New Labour decided in 1998 to hand 40% of trunk road responsibility  to Local Authorities it was a disaster waiting to happen. Cash strapped Councils were not going to spend money on roads when a final salary pension and excessive wage bills had to be accounted for. 

The legacy of this neglect is plain for all road users to see. POTHOLES!

The authorities will tell you that the main cause of this highway pockmark is excessive rainfall over the past two years, coupled with two unseasonably severe winters. Believe that if you must but I put it down to neglect by Local Councils and Government. Labour's obsession with trying to push everyone onto filthy, often unreliable, Public Transport and their subsequent directive to Councils to install costly traffic calming zones and the hated speed cameras, all diverted money away from road maintenance.

Labour wasted more money, when in 2004 they introduced proposals for a new funding source for traansport schemes. They called this the Transport Innovation Fund. I call it a waste of money. Most of the schemes proposed by Labour were held up by lengthy disputes with local pressure groups and the courts. So much so that in 2007 they introduced a new Planning Bill which, they said, would speed up the approval of new roads and transport infrastructure. Unsurprisingly, this caused an outcry . Many people were calling it a "Developers Charter" whilst others went further by saying that it would erode Democracy. What, New Labour eroding Democracy?

The fact is, during the twenty year period between 1985 and 2005, road traffic increased by 80% whilst road capacity only rose by 10%.

The Coalition are no better than New Labour. They to prefer to ignore the problem and instead blame the weather and the lack of response from Local Authorities.

However, in 2009 they allotted £200 million to Local Authorities for road repair and maintenance. What you might call a mere 'drop in the pothole'!

Especially when you consider a Which report that found that the back log of  road repairs per Local Authority in England is getting bigger. Rising from over £53 million in 2009 to over £61 million in 2012, Local Authorities estimate that it would cost nearly £13 billion to clear the backlog. Add to that the £20 million that Local Authorities had to pay out in compensation last year to drivers whose vehicles were damaged by potholes.

To put this into perspective, Oxford CC have 8000 more road defects during this financial year than in an average financial year. A source says that by the end of March it expects to have repaired a total of 32000 defects since April 2012 an increase of 33% over an average year.

So, Mr Beeching, was it a good idea to axe nearly two thirds of the railway system in this country? Not forgetting John Prescott who idly sat back and watched the the roads being destroyed by more and more heavy goods vehicles from the continent. The only legislation he allowed was for bigger juggernauts to be allowed on our already inadequate roads.

Could it have all been a New Labour plot to get this country ever deeper into the clutches of the EU by making us reliant on subsidies for road and transport infrastructure?

 HAPPY MOTORING