It wasn’t the vast campaigns by local & national newspapers or the millions of pothole rants on social media that persuaded our MP Chancellor Jeremy to act. As he mentioned during his Budget Speech at Westminster yesterday, an appeal from his SW Surrey Tory mate Waverley Cllr Peter Martin persuaded him to lob £200 million into the country’s potholes.
Perhaps Godalming’s Cllr Martin also told the Chancellor that most of the sticky black stuff being lobbed into the holes in Surrey’s roads also goes AWOL after a few weeks? Unless more permanent measures are employed in dealing with the parlous state of the country’s roads – like re-surfacing, not tar and chipping, that £200m is going into yet more of the Tory Government’s Big Black Holes!
£200m sounds great, but with 24 Councils and 58 Unitary Councils (excluding the Greater London Authority) that’s only £2.4m per council.
But I wonder what the Highways Departments within these Councils actually pay for each pothole that is “repaired”. There is usually a complex tier of contractors and sub-contractors involved, all taking a piece of the action.
With luck and a bucket of the black stuff, they might complete a couple of hundred yards of the A281! But at least Cllr Peter Martin was mentioned in despatches, and Jeremy has to doff his cap at his old Tory faithful Godalming mates now he has dumped Farnham and is standing in Godalming at the next election.
Oh Dear! No matter what Jeremy does to try and tackle problems some keyboard warriors seem unable to accept that he genuinely has the best interests of his community at heart.
And there were we thinking that he had the interests of the country at heart.Silly old us.