GUESS WHAT...THE ROAD TAX IS UP AGAIN; JUST AS WELL WE HAVE THE BEST ROADS IN... ER, EM...YEAH...

I had the car MOT’d today. Now, I don’t drive that much. I rarely go long distances by road and furthermore I’m a reasonably careful driver, at least inasmuch as I try to miss the massive potholes that have opened up on Scotland’s roads. In fact one of these days I’m expecting the police to pull me over and breathalyse me because I wind my way around the worst of them.

Despite this dodgem driving, I had to have two new front springs fitted to the car earlier this year, and when I got to the garage this afternoon, I found that yet again a spring had gone, this time on the rear.

Co-incidentally I got my notification for renewal of road tax which I note has jumped another tenner this year, just like it did last year.

I can understand that the City Council has a big job on, particularly in light of the terrible winter of snow that has just passed, and that additionally they are not getting as much money from Edinburgh as they need to repair roads... and I understand that that is because the Westminster government hasn’t given the Scottish government as much money as it needs to run the country effectively.

But what hacks me off is that, as the roads worsen, Westminster is coining another tenner from millions of motorists and not spending it on the roads.

Britain’s roads are a laughing stock. They are totally inadequate for the needs of the country, and getting worse, and of course because the train network is lamentable, the roads are used even more by the haulage industry, rendering them even more laughable.

In the meantime Westminster keeps the money rolling in from increased taxes on motorists.

(Increases which, it seems, they keep quiet about.)

I wonder what they do with the extra money...

...Oh yeah, silly me, there are MPs’ expenses to be paid, and 80% of the lords are on the fiddle too, according to one of their number, then there’s Chunky and Goofie York to be kept safe and secure when they fall out of nightclubs drunk or on Caribbean beaches. OK. As long as I know what they do with it.

Best brace ourselves for another rise next year too then.

Pictured: The Ugly Sisters. A beached whale and a drunk slapper... but expensive ones!

"AUTHORITY" EXISTS NOW FOR ITS OWN BENEFIT

I was looking through the blogs this morning and noticed that “Calling England” has a roundup of what’s in the Sunday papers. I’d only got a few lines down and was attracted to an article in the Mail (yes, the Mail on Sunday!!!), by Richard North.

It’s a long time since I felt such empathy, and for that empathy to come from an article in the hateful Mail on Sunday is, for me, quite eye opening.

Although his article is based on England, the story is the same in Scotland. He points out, that politicians, local authority “executives”, MPs, big business, indeed almost everyone and thing that crosses your path, no longer seems to have any interest in actually serving you. Their one motto in common seems to be “Let’s make money”.

We will all have stories of how we tried to deal with a big company, or with the local council, or with government, and found ourselves knocked back and stymied at every turn because no one cares. Everything seems to be done for the benefit of the management; nothing for the customer. And the more that we are described as customers (hospitals, where we used to be patients; jobcentres, where we used to be clients; councils where we used to be taxpayers), the less we are treated as such.

Once upon a time you could walk into a BT office and sort out service problems. Now it all has to be done by phone, which is, as I found out a few years ago when my phone line and internet service went down, rather difficult when you HAVE NO PHONE.

Eventually, of course, I contacted them on someone else’s phone, and when I pointed out the problems to the call centre person with, to me, an indecipherable northern English accent, she listened till I’d finished, ignored all I had said, and told me that I had to check some things myself. If they sent someone out there would be a £60 charge...

And if I cancelled my contract, there would also be a charge.

I understood that privatization was designed to provide us with competition which would lead to cheaper and better service. Wrong. It leads to people making more money and was designed to do such.

It’s the same with councils. Don’t try to get them to do anything for you. I’ve failed miserably. My emails are replied to with platitudes and no action. But people in management in the local council are scared of no one. It is difficult to sack anyone in the local authority, and once they are at management level almost nothing will budge them, and probably even then they will leave within with a hefty compensation package. They are compensated for being crap.

Try to get Dundee’s Director of Planning to do something about the fact that double parking in your street makes it impassable to fire engines and sometimes to ambulances. It’s his responsibility but does he give a damn? Does he hell? He’s got his OBE so he’s sorted.

They work on the basis that you aren’t “allowed” to see or talk to them face to face, and that after a while most people get fed up with sending emails or letters to no avail. As for Councillors...are they afraid of them? No. Councillors can’t do anything to them.

And these are but a few of the issues that we are having with "them". The postal office that introduced a new computer system in November (yes November), the bus company, based in Birmingham which cuts a complete service in the evening on one route and runs empty buses within minutes of each other on another, and tells you that you can easily take two buses to replace the one that they have cancelled.

It’s high time we made it clear to “authority” that it is US who are in authority and not them.

And if that means upturning a few egos and crushing them, so be it.

Do you have any stories like this? ... I bet you do.