Pothole crisis will only get worse as research suggests 85% of councils to cut road maintenance projects

Same here.There's always lots of road works where I live but the roads never seem to be finished.

I watched a bbc2 program once, short series of short programmes on pest control, a council bloke explained it as when he did it he made sure the rats wouldn't come back. Closing up holes, getting rid of food supplies and then putting down poison. He didn't want to have to come back. When the out sourced contractors do it, they put down poison, are paid for it, and then paid again for putting down more poison when the rats inevitably comes back.

Same as repairing potholes on the roads.

My libraries have stopped fining people for late book returns, they did it during the pandemic, after they started to open up, but never bought back the fines as there is more compliance without them.

Exactly!  It's the more efficient privatised contracted-out capitalist way!

I've lost count of how many times a local pothole has been filled, but when someone gets paid to fill it in and no-one checks the quality of the work, they'll fill it in every three months until they get bored, and finally do it properly.

This is yet another case where contracting out isn't better.  It costs more and has a poor record, but the pothole filling corporations make millions, so that's all right.

To misquote Douglas Adams - the interface between the public sector (eg. local authorities) and the private sector is not just warped but fundamentally bent.

I'm not certain who the Vogons are in this analogy though.

chrisonatrike wrote:

I'm not certain who the Vogons are in this analogy though.

Presenting on GB news last time I saw it.

PBS shows a lot of old BBC documentaries, a fair few presented by Neil Oliver, he says "stone" quite a lot, in that wonderful way he did. Makes a fair bit of sense, perfectly acceptable and fairly covential thinking about prehistory.

What on earth happened? Lawrence Fox, don't care about him, though I enjoyed him in Lewis, no chance of a Hathaway spin off I suppose, but Neil?

Because of the BBC's curtailed football coverage this afternoon BBC2 chose to insert a filler programme into their schedule, they decided to air an episode of Coast, and who was there at the end but the weird and outspoken conspiracy theorist Dr Neil Oliver, about the history of Belfast (nothing of any controversy there, then). They do seem to be having a difficult weekend, don't they?

i was lost there - what conspiracy?  Was it something controversial about how the Vikings travelled around the Shetlands - or maybe he is a supporter of the de jure independence of the Principality of Sealand?

So I had a look.  It seems he may be on GB news because of his strong unionist (e.g. UK) opinions.  That's entirely mainstream.

Then we got to apparent references to documents citing the Rothschilds about a plan to take over the world.  Apparently he has also form with the covid and guilt by association with some other antisemitic types.  Well, I don't propose to go hear it from the man himself but it seems he is indeed far out.

As a complete aside in the Gruandia article on this Neil's picture reminded me of a hairier Ashley Neal - just me?  I'm certain they're not related!  (And no intent to suggest AN has any truck with this kind of stuff).

He's big on fifteen minute cities too:  "They advertise a world of electric cars but what we’ll end up buying is lives lived on foot within fifteen minutes of our homes.”

Well he should know a bit about low-impact local living - historically that is. Must be pining for the days of the birlinn...

I guess lots of travel has been a feature of his life. His presenting career would have looked different on a smaller fossil fuel resource budget.

eburtthebike wrote:

It costs more and has a poor record, but the pothole filling corporations make millions, so that's all right.

Do you have good sources for this? I'm not aware that road maintenance is a monopoly, so if councils are paying over the odds for poor work, that sounds like their failure. 
Sure, the private sector is motivated by maximising profit: one of the best ways to do that in a competitive market is to deliver a good service, hang onto your contracts and win more on the basis of a reputation for quality.

ktache wrote:

When the out sourced contractors do it, they put down poison, are paid for it, and then paid again for putting down more poison when the rats inevitably comes back.

Same as repairing potholes on the roads.

Sounds like a poorly written and monitored contract.Why not do spot checks and pay by outcome, rather than activity? Why not change supplier if the current one underperforms?

Boofus wrote:

I don't know what it's like for others, but around me the maintenance is poor even when finally done. You ride down a dodgy road, think 'oh great its been fixed!', then it's back to normal within two weeks because the fix was so poor one patch of rain washes it away 

Yep... the roads round here noticeably deteriorated last week after a small amount of snow. And they are going to get worse after every shower now they have opened up.