Quote of the Day - Roger Hargreaves, where art thou?

Some time ago, we discussed the (many) shortcomings of Junction 10 of the M40, an intersection which is clearly the brainchild of someone who hates motorists with a passion and must take great pleasure in the daily queues that build up there.

A few miles further on lies Junction 11 on the north side of Banbury, where a planned retail park, industrial development and a vast quantity of new housing are set to cause traffic chaos in a few years' time.

Thinking ahead, a group of concerned residents have started - inevitably - a facebook and twitter group calling for a new junction to be built between 10 and 11.

There is, however, a slight problem, possibly related to the spontaneous late-night genesis of the 'Banbury needs 11A' campaign, as its charmingly aptly-named founder explains:

Mr Muddle added that the group, which was set up in a hurry, is technically calling for junction 10A but, once he realised the mistake, it had too many likes and followers to change the name.

As a bonus, this is, I think you'll agree, an excellent example of the media tail wagging the dog in true 21st-century style.

Snarling at the Junction

Still very busy, so, in honour of today's Grand Prix, a reprise of a post from the archives...

For those fortunate enough never to have passed through the abomination that is Junction 10 of the M40, and all who have ever sped by and wondered about the seemingly endless queues, there is a full explanation here, which can easily be simplified - essentially everyone gets in everyone else's way. A lot.

"Slip road" - the term was devised to suggest a seamless transition onto the new-fangled motorway (where a smiling AA man will salute when he sees your radiator badge - happy motoring!). How different from the daily situation at Junction 10, where  anyone going anywhere has to negotiate a sinuous maze of roundabouts and sharply-curving bends, impeded by virtually everyone travelling in the opposite direction.

And this, let’s not forget, is one of the main access routes to Silverstone, Britain’s flagship Grand Prix circuit. While the important racegoers are flown into Kidlington and taken by helicopter to the circuit, the rank and file coming up from the South sit in increasing tailbacks on the M40 and wonder why they bothered.

Between them and the A43 are three roundabouts which, even in normal traffic, can generate queues of several hundred yards given the slightest delay. 

The first roundabout, where virtually all northbound traffic must turn right, has a camber so extreme that HGVs topple over on a regular basis - assuming, of course, that they have managed to graduate beyond the customary crawl. This spews you out towards the second, where you are stuck in a mass of jammed traffic and have to rely on clairvoyance to select the correct lane to approach the third. 

Here, in defiance of all logic or common sense, the streams of north- and southbound traffic cross at a single point. Oh, and that point is at the bottom of a slope with a slip road temptingly close at hand, so there is a very real possibility of heavy lorries ploughing straight ahead regardless of oncoming traffic.

One can only conclude that the whole arrangement was designed by a civil engineer who cycles to work (doubtless in sweaty lycra and a filthy temper) and has a serious grudge against motorists in general and motorsport fans in particular.

Panel-beating, Bicester style

Tales of random violence and anti-social behaviour are, alas, all too common, but something about this story caught my eye:

A 19-year-old man was 
assaulted during a road traffic incident in Bicester on Bank Holiday Monday, May 27.

It may be significant that it took place just round the corner from the temple of conspicuous consumption that is Bicester Village designer shopping outlet, scene of some truly epic traffic chaos on high days and holidays, with predictably frayed tempers all round.

At about 5pm, the victim was driving his peach VW Beetle on Rodney House roundabout.  

You don't see many of those about! The driver of this conspicuous vehicle was obliged to stop when a Vauxhall pulled over in front of him.

A man got out of the Zafira and punched the victim in the face, while a woman, who also got out of the car, punched the Beetle several times.

The unfortunate victim had to go to hospital for stitches; it's not recorded whether the car was also damaged in the apparently unprovoked attack. Luckily, police have a description of the assailants:

The man was white, in his early 30s, 6ft to 6ft 3ins, of muscle build [sic] with short dark hair shaved at the sides.

He was wearing a dark vest top and shorts and had tribal tattoos down both arms.

The woman was white, 30 to 32, of medium build, 5ft 5ins, with shoulder-length blonde hair with dark roots.

She was wearing a white t-shirt and was pregnant.

So police are looking for a large, shaven-headed, tattooed thug with a violent, pregnant girlfriend.

Sadly, I'm not entirely sure than narrows it down, these days.

"When this storm is over, we'll be in a new ice age."

My nearest town - a worthy modern-day successor to the Newgate described by Dickens in the heading of this blog - offers a variety of supermarkets.

As a rule, I avoid the biggest one; serving two notoriously rough estates, it has an unenviable reputation for violence and shoplifting - and in any case, the Spouse's habit of referring to it as 'the Ugly Bug Ball' means I can't get the tune out of my head for days after a trip there.

So, anyway, to yesterday morning, and a routine trip to one of of its quieter rivals in a nicer part of town; it became obvious as I neared the place, however, that normal rules were not going to apply. The queue to get into the car park stretched out past the traffic lights on the main road, at which point a significant proportion of motorists had decided to make it up as they went along.

Once in the line, there was no backing out - literally. Having fought my way through the melee to a parking space  (a task requiring the eyes of a hawk and nerves of steel), secured one of the few available trolleys and managed to lay hold of the groceries I needed, I made my way home and sat down with a restorative cup of coffee to catch up on the news before work.

Thus it was that, in due course, I found myself looking at the Mail's lead story, and all suddenly became clear: "Don't travel tomorrow" shrieked the headline, "Motorists warned to stay off the road as Britain faces six inches of snow"

The scrum at the supermarket probably included a fair few stampeding Mail readers, all intent on buying the wherewithal to see them through, judging by their trolleys, most of the next ice age. Meanwhile, A K Haart, who had a similar experience in his local Sainsburys, describes frenzied shoppers seizing vast quantities of potatoes and cake, presumably in fear of some kind of appalling carbohydrate crisis.

And, just to compound the problem, recent news of unexpected ingredients in cheap, own-brand burgers seems to have badly frightened the very shoppers most likely to be swayed by the Mail's frenzied predictions and sent them upmarket, making Sainsbury's this week's panic-buying venue of choice.

By yesterday evening, the lead story had changed; the new headline vaunted the results of the Mail's self-fulfilling prophecy in a rather long-winded headline accompanied by appropriate pictures:

Panic buyers strip shelves after Met Office issues blizzard alert for Wales as Britain braces for blanket of up to 12in of snow tomorrow

It's the Holy Grail of sensational journalism; cause the panic, then report in depth on its consequences. Just as Robert Peston's gleeful coverage of queues outside a single branch of Northern Rock sparked the national scramble that catapulted him to reporting stardom, the news story creates the news.

And the Mail is in its element, sending its readers out in their thousands to empty the shelves of the supermarkets rather than their own store cupboards - how many of us really don't have enough food in the house to see us through until the roads are cleared?

Even the more sedate Telegraph is getting in on the act, with live coverage of the '40-hour snowstorm' and an interesting insight into the mind (if you can call it that) of the panic-buyer. In the words of one shop assistant in the impenetrable wilderness of the Home Counties:

"One woman told me that all the TV forecasters and newspapers are predicting the country will be under a foot of snow and all the roads will be blocked by tomorrow.  

She said she decided to rush in and do a massive shop because all her friends were doing it, and if she put it off, there would be nothing left and she wouldn't be able to get here anyway through all the snow."

The rest of Europe must be laughing themselves sick; why do we make such a fuss about a few centimetres of snow? Does it really matter that we might run out of bread or potatoes for a day or so and have to eat rice or pasta from the store cupboard instead? Surely, once upon a time, we would have taken it in our stride; now it's a disaster of epic proportions, requiring suitably dramatic presentation.


Update: latest Mail headline - which nominally applies only to Wales, but when did reason ever stop the impressionable taking fright?

...public warned to stay inside and avoid all travel

Traffic jam of the vanities

The paper's description of 'a ticking timebomb' might be putting it a bit strongly, but it's true that things got badly out of hand at Bicester Village on Boxing Day.

More than 30,000 people visited the shopping centre on December 26, causing some drivers to abandon their cars on the A41.

Tailbacks stretched back to Junction 9 of the M40 while the inconsiderate parking forced police to shut one side of the road between the Oxford Road and London Road roundabouts.

Pause a moment to consider that figure; over thirty thousand people dragged themselves from the bosom of their family on a December day to join the queue for parking spaces and cram themselves into a grossly overcrowded feeble pastiche of a New England shopping street.

And then consider that Bicester Village is a shopping outlet for last season's collections and the lines that didn't sell - it seems to have escaped the notice of the teeming hordes that the stuff in the stores is permanently marked down; this was an entirely irrational feeding frenzy.

It's a measure of how the name on the label has eclipsed the product that, in these supposedly cash-strapped times, so many ordinary people considered this a worthwhile enterprise - and ordinary people they must have been; the affluent foreigners who form Bicester Village's target clientele arrive by train from London, no traffic jams for them.

Incidentally, I'm intrigued by the Oxford Mail's choice of language; these shoppers were 'caused' to leave their cars at the roadside, as if, on finding the 1800-odd spaces full, they were in some way obliged - or entitled - to abandon their vehicles and continue on foot into the temple of Mammon.

It reminds me of the woman who set up a facebook page to draw attention to the fact that residents of her town were ‘fed up having to travel to Northampton or Milton Keynes to view films in a modern big cinema’ - this despite the fact that her town already has a two-screen cinema in the centre.

Of all the bizarre January (ha!) sales stories, this mass migration and the stranding of vehicles along the A41 is surely one of the most peculiar and inexplicable, given current economic circumstances - though there could be a certain hip-pocket or (dare we say it?) demographic factor at work.

With the possible exception of Clarks shoe shop (a leftover from the Village's 1990s infancy) Bicester Village sells virtually nothing that could be considered essential to normal life - unless, that is, your continued survival depends on designer labels and overpriced luxury goods.

Perhaps there are now people who genuinely believe it does.

Not-so-magic roundabouts

Following the previous story of traffic chaos, here's one from just down the road - Junction 10 of the M40, to be precise.

For those fortunate enough never to have passed through this abomination, and all who have sped by and wondered about the seemingly endless queues, there is a full explanation here, which can easily be simplified - essentially everyone gets in everyone else's way. A lot.

"Slip road" - the term was devised to suggest a seamless transition onto the new-fangled motorway (where a smiling AA man will salute when he sees your radiator badge - happy motoring!). How different from the daily situation at Junction 10, where almost anyone going almost anywhere has to cross a seemingly unbroken stream of traffic.

And this, let’s not forget, is one of the main access routes to Silverstone, Britain’s flagship Grand Prix circuit. While the important racegoers are flown into Kidlington and taken by helicopter to the track, the rank and file coming up from the South sit in increasing tailbacks on the M40 and wonder why they bothered.

Between them and the A43 are three roundabouts which, even in normal traffic, generate queues of several hundred yards. The first, where virtually all northbound traffic must turn hard right, has a camber so extreme that HGVs topple over on a regular basis.

At the second, which also leads off to the local services, you are stuck in a mass of jammed traffic and have to rely on clairvoyance to select the correct lane to the third, where, in defiance of all logic or common sense, the streams of north- and southbound A43 traffic cross at a single point. Oh, and that point is at the bottom of a steep slope, so there is a very real possibility of lorries failing to stop when they reach it, regardless of oncoming traffic.

One can only conclude that the whole arrangement was designed by a planner who cycles to work (doubtless in sweaty lycra and a filthy temper) and has a serious grudge against motorists in general and motorsport fans in particular.

The Highways people have just announced a major expansion at Junction 9 - close but no cigar. Until they work out what to do about the monstrosity that is Junction 10, my advice is to do what the locals do and avoid it at all costs.

Here endeth today's rant - thank you for your patience!

Morning Traffic

In honour of the Artful Dodger’s last day at school and the fortieth anniversary this year of The Who's 'Tommy', here’s a little something that brightens my mornings:



(with venom; and apologies to Pete Townshend and Elton John)

Every weekday morning, between half eight and nine,
From London to the Midlands, from the Mersey to the Tyne
They’re out there in their thousands, all forming little lines
It’s the school run mothers,
Gotta get there on time!

In your rear view mirror see her far too close behind,
She’ll try and overtake you on a corner though it’s blind,
Or pull out right in front of you; who needs a Give Way sign
When you’re a school run mother?
Gotta get there on time!

Bull bars and a hairdo,
Gotta get there by the bell,
The school run mothers
Are the flying squad of Hell.