Grombles

I'm still fuming about our local council deciding to close a gap a couple of years ago in the central reservation of the A3 (a dual carriageway) which linked my village Thursley to Milford. This handy cut across the opposing direction of the main road enabled the residents of my village of Thursley (and beyond) to reach our local shops, schools, doctors surgeries and train station without having to travel several miles further North on the A3 as can be seen on the map below, and then doubling back - negotiating several busy roundabouts and traffic light junctions in the process. Google Maps has not been updated around here for nearly 10 years, so this image usefully shows the filter lane and the gap in the central reservation as it used to be (remember we Brits drive on the left, so the top carriageway is travelling from bottom left to top right). Today the slip lane and gap in the central reservation has gone. The filter lane is now part of a widened and continuous central res...

No wonder we're all in the shit. How I hate bloody form filling, especially when there's clearly no point in the activity whatsoever. Wastes my time, wastes paper (assuming it's not yet interneted), and even more off-pissingly, keeps some civil service twat in a job, paid me, that could be done by a waste paper bin or NEEDN'T BE DONE AT ALL. This morning I received a letter from the Specialist Personal Tax Employee Shares & Securities Unit. My company takes advantage of an HMRC employee share option scheme that basically encourages business owners to share any gains in the value of their companies with their management. Excellent idea which has enabled me to share in the good fortunes of previous companies with several of the people who helped me build them. What works for them, works for me. So far, so good. I originally filled out the necessary forms to advise HMRC about the scheme I had set up for a company I own. I told them who was registered on the scheme,...

and the latest news is that the police have just released some of the details about the fatality that stimulated all this wasted expense. The accident apparently happened at night, in high winds and in a snow storm! It could have bloody well have happened anywhere. So the council effectively lied to us by claiming this massive inconvenience to all residents of Thursley was necessary in the interests of safety. The journey we all now have to take to reach our nearest doctor surgeries, schools and shops is 4 miles longer, includes several roundabouts (including a busy and dangerous leap into the flow of traffic heading from the A281 North onto the A3), a few traffic lights and all that extra traffic - all because the council needed to spend their full road works budget before year end.

I live in a small village off the A3 in Surrey UK which is a dual carriageway that runs from London to the South coast. About 300 yards North of the slip-road from our village is a lane in the wide central reservation (what Americans call a ramp) enabling you to slow down and wait for a gap to turn right across the opposite carriageways into a side road. That side road leads to our neighbour village and local train station. The only other way to reach that village (together with a couple of local schools, 3 doctors surgeries, post office, pubs, shops etc) is by heading several miles further North past the village, then take a slip road off the A3 up to a very busy roundabout (which cars join very fast from the right, meaning you take your chances leaping onto it), over a bridge crossing the A3 to another roundabout, down to 2 traffic lights (slow ones at that) and then back to where you would have been at least 10 minutes earlier if you'd taken the shortcut. Some total twat on th...