Pot holing

George Osborne wants us to be grateful again. He has allocated £50 million towards the squillions of pot holes on British roads, most of which I seem to drive into every single day. “Good old George. Despite cutting £1 billion from council funding, he’s giving us some money back. Have a pay rise!”

But wait. The news is not quite as good as I thought it would be. It never is with this particular chancer of the exchequer. It turns out our roads require £12 billion of repairs and this highly generous investment will deal with one in every 230 pot holes across our land. Yes, you read that right: One in every 230. You might think to yourself that it’s hardly bothering at all.

I do know that road tax, insurance tax, fuel duty (+ the VAT that goes with it) is just tax and is not collected specifically to maintain our roads, but the totals collected already come to a pretty penny. Anyone else agree that the motorist is getting ripped off again?

For my sins, I spend a lot of time driving through rural areas and I can assure you there is little difference between town roads and roads outside of the Burbs. I am not only having to watch my speed for fear of a police cash collection camera hiding round the corner (another stealth tax if you ask me), I am having to constantly avoid potential terminal damage to the suspension in my car.

There seems to be plenty of money, at least around our local area, for digging things up. You can barely drive up the road without having to stop at temporary lights. Im Midsomer Norton today, I managed to get stuck twice, each time for an age, at two separate and unconnected roadworks, one of which was quite literally at the exit of one of the busiest roundabouts in the town. Lots of men seemed to be standing around, tut-tutting and cursing, but none of them seemed to be doing anything. Yet the cost of the ‘work’, not to mention the cost of the lost and wasted time to business must have come to a few bob in itself.

This is yet another consequence of austerity, where the government has slashed spending on something important and we’re now beginning to see the effects, with knobs on.

Anyone with half a brain can see that if there is a minor problem with a road and you leave it, it will turn into a major problem, which will in turn cost a shed load more money than a simple, early repair would have done.

We’re not fooled, Osborne, but as ever we seem to be meekly accepting it with barely a whimper.