Okay, so I’ve been letting this one slowly cook in my mind for a little while, and normally I don’t like to go all political or serial debater in my posts. But seeing as the Hall of Information is my corner of the internet, I thought I would, because let’s face it, there isn’t one driver in the UK who doesn’t face the daily dodge of potholes.

I’ve tried to make this less of a generic poke at what is the main problem with Britain’s roads, apart from the overcrowding, HGV’s, sneaky speed camera placements, road rage, BMW’s and of course the recent snow shit-uation. And I point those problems out with the least amount of hostility, apart from the damn snow (shakes fist at clouds).

There is a particularly relevant to me case study that will hopefully enlighten those within the borders of ‘Great’ Britain and even those looking from afar. Because everyone loves a good old fashioned story of complaining.

Note: This SAGA has been going on for over a year!

Exhibit 1: Early 2017 

The above picture is marked in two different colours via some wonderful work by yours truly in MS Paint, which isn’t as good as those XP days..

The green represents the private property in which I reside. If the camera panned up a little you would see me pecking away at my latest novel or even putting up a finger depending on your approach. As you can see there is some dirt and upon closer inspection water damage below the window which is caused by the shit-uation in Red.. 

This particular patch of road in Watlington Oxfordshire, (I wont do street names, people might find me…) is riddled with pot holes like the one you see. And you might be thinking, that isn’t so bad… No car is going to fall down that…

Wrong, because the deal shown in Red, is severe deterioration of the road so much so, water cannot actually flow into the drain pictured. Actually the water just sits there by the kerb. This means when a driver of the speeding persuasion (another problem with UK’s roads) or not so fast persuasion (again a problem) passes said spot it splashes and damages private property. A grade 2 listed building!

Exhibit 1B

The above picture shows the first initial repair, the date 27th of March 2017. That’s a year ago folks, and look at the miniscule effort. It’s as if somebody just painted over the hole with thick black paint and its worth noting the dirt and damage beneath the window of my house, a grade 2 listed building…

Now what can one do in such a situation, well there is a handy website known as Fix my Street.  Which you can report potholes and indeed attach pictures, lots of pictures, which I have done, lots of times. They even pass it on to local councils. Sounds good right, well..

And so we must move on, to exhibit B… 26th of March ’18

This is a current in door view of the recent ‘fix’ that some men in a flatbed did one late morning for a couple of minutes. Now this one doesn’t show the smaller scale repair they did, with even less scraps of tarmac. This time they made the effort to drill that and fill most of the hole, stopping a majority of the rain water, but there is still a lot of splash-age going on. Please excuse the miniature tea set simply put in for scale…  And water still seems to sit there destined to cover private property yet again, and damaging private property yet again.

Now disappointingly the rough patch is in desperate need of a resurface was ignored again. Referring to exhibit 1 the area marked in Red is the total problem hence Exhibit 3 below…

Now that’s a much better expression of how inadequate the repairs have been over the course of, well a long time. My thinking here is logical to the point where I think one proper pothole repair would save the cost of multiple shoddy ones… that’s just basic maths right? You can see the water still sitting there waiting to wash over the house with its all too familiar colour of oily grey with a hint of precipitation. 

And so here is my latest entry to Fix my street. I even attached a photo with pretty colours pointing out the obvious problem…

Of course I went into full condescending sarcasm mode, and why shouldn’t I, this is just an example of what is happening on a daily basis in Britain’s Roads. I say screw the economy for a while especially if we cant even get to work in the first place because I fell down a hole, or splashed some good looking writer’s house.

The council or whatever their real name is have replied saying this problem has been actioned to be repaired, but it still hasn’t and may have even been forgotten…

All joking aside, this situation is no joke, people face serious damage and serious threats to life from roads that need a look at properly. Motorways, A roads, B roads and every other driving surface are riddled in this country. Something must be done…

Got any pothole stories, don’t just tell me, hit up Fix my street and then share this post so we can shame Oxfordshire County Council who will be tagged on the Tweet machine, so waves to those peeps, and do something about it… seriously before someone gets hurt, badly.