Xmas-Voting Turkey Of The Week

The idea of repairing roads with the help of the public came from a man who described the state of the road outside his Marston house as like “the surface of the moon”.

Anthony Baker, of Raymund Road, has appealed for people and businesses to come forward to help the council, which is responsible for repairing the city’s side roads.

He said signs could be put up at the roadside to recognise those who had contributed towards the repairs.

Oxford City Council, who taxpayers (and the government, via taxpayers) pay to fix the roads in Oxford, say they have no money to actually do so. Yet Anthony wants to lob them some more?

I've never been to Oxford, but I'd be willing to bet a pretty penny that they have, in the past year, installed pillows, platforms, humps, bumps, lumps, chicanes, throttlers, bottlers, red tarmac, yellow tarmac, green tarmac, purple people-eating tarmac, skid risk signs, flashing signs, 'your speed is' signs, 20mph zone signs, go as fast as you like signs, surface dressing, bus stop dressing, french dressing, controlled zones, no car zones, low emission zones, no-alcohol zones, no fly zones, yellow lines, red lines, white lines (don't don't do it), posts, rumble strips, parking restrictions, width restrictions, traffic wardens, dog wardens and litter wardens** ... but they can't find the cash to fix a fucking pothole.

I'd also wager that the glut of gashes in the tarmac is something to do with a lax salting of the roads during cold weather. And you want to give them more money to reward them for poor allocation of resources?

Don't encourage them, Anthony, for chrissakes. Oxford will only send some highly-paid policy officer to a seminar to instruct other local authorities on how best to hold out the begging bowl when they have wasted their funds on unnecessary nonsense.

** It's odd that councils never run out of money for tobacco control advisers, is it not?