OLYMPIC MISERY FOR ORDINARY LONDONERS WHILE VIPS SPEED PAST IN CARS WE PAID FOR

London motorists will be hit with a £200 fine if they ignore Olympic restrictions and stray into Games Lanes between 6am and midnight on 30 miles of Central London roads during the games next year.

Additionally, pedestrian crossings along the route will be removed to make way for the VIP lanes and right turns across the lanes will be banned, to ensure Olympic dignitaries are not held up.

£12million of public money has been spent fitting underground sensors along the route of the ‘dignitaries’. These will detect congestion surrounding VIP cars and then change nearby traffic signals to green so that they will not be delayed.

And 240 VIPs will be given use of luxury BMW saloons, with drivers, while another 2,800 officials will use have a pool of cars provided at taxpayers’ expense.

Yes, this is at OUR expense; government cash has had to be made available for modifications to roads, and to provide transport and accommodation for what is termed the “Olympic Family”. The Olympic family, by the way, is vast... some 80,000 people are involved. The accommodation is luxurious and has to be subsidised.

The result of all this pampering of course will be that hundreds of thousands of Londoners going about their work, and ordinary punters from all over the world who have somehow managed to get their hands on the tickets (the few that were not put aside for the corporate sponsors), will sit for hours in traffic while the chosen ones speed past. It is not impossible, nor even improbable that ticket holders will be held up for so long that they will miss the events for which they have tickets.

What chaos; what expense (the sensors to ensure VIPs are not held up cost £12 million of our money); what a farce that there will be any legacy for the UK which is paying for this.

And of course it’s ordinary people who pay the price and the VIPs (what a disgusting term) who enjoy the luxury. And all to make Cameron and his crew look good in front of the world.

What a sickening pile of pants the UK is. Let us out.

Note: The information in this article is taken largely from the Daily Mail. It comes, therefore with the customary warning that it may be a pile of tripe.

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!