Potholes and Potheads

Ohhh what a day today, potholes and potheads.  My first point today is potholes, I know I have talked about this before so don’t go crazy on me but today on the news, oh I love the news, it was reported by a guy who is high up in the RAC so must be very trustworthy, that 400 cyclists last year were either killed or seriously injured due to potholes.  SERIOUSLY INJURED OR KILLED.  How the hell can we see those figures and not have some sort of accountability on the people who are paid to administer the roads.  If in my job I was doing something that would kill or injure one person I would, quite rightly, be jailed.  However as a project manager I do inflict pain of a different kind but at least no one is injured.  But back to my serious point, if we say there are 4.5 people per family and I make that figure from the fact that there are 2.5 kids per family and two adults then that is nearly two thousand people who are affected by the powers that are responsible for the roads.  At what point do we do something, perhaps when a celebrity or MP gets killed by a pothole related accident.  I know that this is trivial stuff compared to wars and hate that is being waged around the world but when we have pointless deaths,  I suppose like wars, then we should be tackling this.

Onto the potheads and that was just to create a sort of symmetry in my opening bit.  I was looking at getting a train and of course we go on line these days not much chance of visiting an old fashioned booking office as only major train stations have these now a days.  So I went on line and it is quite simple, you put your station and your destination before hyperventilating over the price.  Then you start to put in intermediate stops to find out if it is cheaper to book from  home to some random destination and then from there to my original destination.  Then you try other stops along the route.  Finally you look at the time of the train and you see that if you go twenty minutes later you get it half price, then you stat to look for the colour of the train.  Yes I know that bit was silly but you get my point. I need to go from my home town to Nottingham and so the fun begins.  My cheapest price is £9.10 each way so making that £18.20.  The dearest price from £37.70, and the prices in between are £19.50, £18.20, £37.60.  Just for fun I did go to an old fashioned booking office and got the price of £37.60 as long as I go after a certain time, via Sheffield and I can travel back anytime, as long as it is not on a virgin train unless it’s a brown Virgin train (Cross Country) and they seem fine dependant on the guard you get checking the ticket..  I understand why we have different ticket prices based on times cause that way we can take advantage of people having to go to work and then let people who can choose have the cheaper trains.  But why do we have so many prices for the same route.  I know I am getting old but this is really confusing.

Oh and while we are at it, I don’t mind having phone tickets as it seems convenient and much less resources used and wasted but please train the train staff on accepting them.  I have seen so many people showing them and the guard not sure where to look to see if it is valid despite the person having a receipt showing they have purchased it.

That is all for now as my blood pressure has gone up ten points just writing this but this is a great release, more people should try it. 

Here all week, try the veal.