Skip to main content

Give me my road back!

This isn't going to make me popular, but hey, what's a blog for if not to occasionally indulge in a good rant?

I was just driving home and the road I should have used was closed. Instead I had to take a diversion, which had resulted in long queues of traffic, much irritation and general unnecessary sitting around. Why was the road closed? Because there's a half marathon on it tomorrow.

First of all, why does it need to be closed this morning? What have they got to do that's so urgent it has to be closed 24 hours before the run takes place?

But that's just a minor gripe. I'm afraid I don't hold with roads being closed for runs. Sorry - I have good friends who run, but I'm not with you on this one. Imagine you were settling down in front of the TV to watch Strictly Come X Factor, and instead you had a blank screen with lots of peeps and whistles. A quick angry phone call to the broadcaster and you discover that the bandwidth has been given over to radio hams who have a marathon on this weekend. (No, really, radio hams do have marathons.) You would be a bit peeved. What's the difference?

Just so some people can do their hobby, the road that my road fund licence pays for has been closed. Why? There are plenty of parks/bridleways and other places they can run in without disrupting everyone else. Roads have a function - running races isn't it. End of.

Comments

  1. I agree and I can't see horseriders and walkers being too pleased about their rights of way being used for a marathon either. I used to be a rights of way officer and closing any routes for events such as cycle races caused so many complaints. Footpaths and bridleways are not the places for races either!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Quite agree. It's time for motorists to reclaim the streets.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I suppose it depends what you mean by 'your road' Henry - I don't live in it.

    Point taken, BooksPlease - walkers and riders should have their rights of way.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's recent gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some ex

Is 5x3 the same as 3x5?

The Internet has gone mildly bonkers over a child in America who was marked down in a test because when asked to work out 5x3 by repeated addition he/she used 5+5+5 instead of 3+3+3+3+3. Those who support the teacher say that 5x3 means 'five lots of 3' where the complainants say that 'times' is commutative (reversible) so the distinction is meaningless as 5x3 and 3x5 are indistinguishable. It's certainly true that not all mathematical operations are commutative. I think we are all comfortable that 5-3 is not the same as 3-5.  However. This not true of multiplication (of numbers). And so if there is to be any distinction, it has to be in the use of English to interpret the 'x' sign. Unfortunately, even here there is no logical way of coming up with a definitive answer. I suspect most primary school teachers would expands 'times' as 'lots of' as mentioned above. So we get 5 x 3 as '5 lots of 3'. Unfortunately that only wor

Which idiot came up with percentage-based gradient signs

Rant warning: the contents of this post could sound like something produced by UKIP. I wish to make it clear that I do not in any way support or endorse that political party. In fact it gives me the creeps. Once upon a time, the signs for a steep hill on British roads displayed the gradient in a simple, easy-to-understand form. If the hill went up, say, one yard for every three yards forward it said '1 in 3'. Then some bureaucrat came along and decided that it would be a good idea to state the slope as a percentage. So now the sign for (say) a 1 in 10 slope says 10% (I think). That 'I think' is because the percentage-based slope is so unnatural. There are two ways we conventionally measure slopes. Either on X/Y coordiates (as in 1 in 4) or using degrees - say at a 15° angle. We don't measure them in percentages. It's easy to visualize a 1 in 3 slope, or a 30 degree angle. Much less obvious what a 33.333 recurring percent slope is. And what's a 100% slope