{"id":8586,"date":"2012-03-19T15:33:51","date_gmt":"2012-03-19T15:33:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.diaryofanadi.co.uk\/?p=8586"},"modified":"2012-03-19T15:33:51","modified_gmt":"2012-03-19T15:33:51","slug":"thatcher-ii-the-return-of-the-nightmare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/?p=8586","title":{"rendered":"Thatcher II: The Return Of The Nightmare"},"content":{"rendered":"

I saw this in today\u2019s newspapers<\/font><\/a>. David Cameron \u2013 leader of this Mickey Mouse coalition we have to endure \u2013 is considering privatising the road network and introducing tolls.<\/p>\n

Somehow, he believes that charging people more money in taxes (that\u2019s what it would be) will kick-start the economy.<\/p>\n

Amusingly, he says:<\/p>\n

\n

There’s nothing green about a traffic jam – and gridlock holds the economy back.<\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Yes. Well perhaps he should aim to cut back on the chaos caused by roadworks \u2013 specifically, the fact that even repairing a single cracked paving stone can involve advanced warnings of delays, three-way temporary lights, and total nightmare journey times for the month the work continues.<\/p>\n

Or maybe the local councils\u2019 unending quest to create the perfect bus stop or pedestrian crossing, putting in chicanes, taking out chicanes, speed bumps, light-controlled crossings, and so on. And let\u2019s not forget trams in cities too small to accommodate them, so that tens of thousands of motorists can be held up to let trams carrying up to a hundred people at a time pass through.<\/p>\n

If he considered those things, then maybe it wouldn\u2019t be so painfully obvious he is clueless with this<\/strong> sort of nonsense:<\/p>\n

\n

Mr Cameron claimed that congestion on roads costs the UK economy \u00a37bn a year.<\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Cameron says that the solution was to shift more people and goods on to the rail network. As I\u2019ve said before, the man is not of this world.<\/p>\n

The problem isn\u2019t specifically congestion \u2013 it\u2019s what causes<\/strong> that congestion.<\/p>\n

Apart from roadworks, it is broken down cars, accidents, and the school runs. Those cause untold delays every single day \u2013 and all you have to do is consider how easy it can be in rush hour in many cities when it is half-term to figure that last one out.<\/p>\n

And you can wave bye-bye to any greenbelt if this version is anything to go by<\/font><\/a>:<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

New roads constructed from scratch by private investors, meanwhile, could become French-style toll roads.<\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Anyone who voted for these clowns only has themselves to blame.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I saw this in today\u2019s newspapers. David Cameron \u2013 leader of this Mickey Mouse coalition we have to endure \u2013 is considering privatising the road network and introducing tolls. Somehow, he believes that charging people more money in taxes (that\u2019s what it would be) will kick-start the economy. Amusingly, he says: There’s nothing green about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[80,87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adi-related","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8586"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8586\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}