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| Simon Goebbels |
By Simon Goebbels
Local Demagoguery Reporter
Our army of right-wing trolls
have been a little bit quieter than usual of late. The usual click-bait
articles about farmers, the ULEZ or Weatherforks boozers have failed to get
them angrily pounding away at their keyboards, throwing insults and invective
at anyone or anything.
Perhaps they are beginning to
realise that no matter how much they blame Labo*r and Keir St*rmer for everything,
the bottom line is that it is their precious Tories who have wrecked the
country, possibly beyond salvation.
But never mind the UK’s
collapsing NHS, its broken water and sewage disposal systems, its precarious energy
and food supplies, the deteriorating international situation, our crime-ridden
streets, our crumbling schools or a Brexit-ravaged economy. There is one topic of
paramount importance that will always get the trolls fired up…
Potholes…
The recent cold snap has led to
an upsurge in the number of potholes afflicting Midway’s already crumbling
roads.
Local demagoguery reporter Simon
Goebbels finds the true cost of compensating the borough's stricken drivers and
asks if devolution will herald change...
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| One of Midway's potholes, embellished by a local artist... |
The irony was lost on no one.
Councillor Herbert Voletrouser, who chairs the scrutiny committee for highways
and transport at Midway Borough Council (KCC), missed the start of the January
14 Midway Roads and Transport committee meeting after his BMW ran into a
sharp-edged, four-inch deep pothole and punctured his tyre.
Anyone who has listened to Cllr Voletrouser,
Conservative member for Poshmansions South East, will know he is not short of
opinions about the state of the county's roads.
He also has the rare distinction
of attracting complete cross-party ridicule as a result of his
somewhat radical ideas to address the state of Midway’s roads.
But the councillor's story will
be a familiar one to anyone whose car has been damaged by Midway’s crumbling
roads.
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| Tory Cllr. Herbert Voletrouser |
Cllr Voletrouser had been making
his way along Hairpin Bend, near Buxley, at around 90mph and was forced into a
long, wide and deep pothole when a van came along in the opposite direction.
He said: “I had no way to avoid
a deep pothole, all because some working class oik was in his bloody white van
driving on the other side of the road.”
“If that van hadn’t had the
audacity be on the road at the same time as I was using it, I could easily
avoided the pothole.”
Cllr Voletrouser has asked for
the pothole to be fixed to prevent another similar accident and he genuinely
fears for the safety of other motorists like himself
"No one has missed the
irony of my being the chairman of the very committee which asks the tough
questions of the highways department ending up in a pothole," he added.
"My real worry is that
potholed roads are a lurking disaster for luxury car users like myself."
Cllr Voletrouser recognises
there are growing pressures on the county's roads, not least house building
adding to the volume of traffic and the estimated 11,000 lorries which trundle
along them each day.
But Cllr Voletrouser has a
simple solution that will eliminate wear and tear on the region’s raods, and
also solve all of the highway congestion.
“It’s simple,” he says. “Only
cars costing more than £80,000 when brand new and less than five years old
should be allowed on the roads. Why should poor people be allowed to get in the
way of luxury cars drivers such as me?”
“I pay £600 a year road tax,
damn it! Why should I fund plebs who pay only a fraction of that, just because
they drive cheap, old nasty pauper’s cars?”
“We German high-performance car
drivers drive a lot faster than the peasantry, and so our journeys take a lot
less time. That means we cause far less wear and tear on the roads than the
plebs who clutter up our roads with their cheap cars by driving at the speed
limit,” Cllr Volestrouser reasons.
“Lorries should also be
restricted to a weight of 10 tonnes, and only be allowed to travel at night,”
he adds.
“And the same goes for Transit
vans and things like that which are driven by the working classes. They should
only be allowed on the roads during the hours of darkness as well.”
Cllr Voletrouser is dismissive
about the impact of such drastic measures upon the UK’s infrastructure and logistics
systems.
“We managed in the good old days
before supermarkets and Amazon deliveries. And if peasants want to get around,
then they should catch buses or trains, or even walk. I had to when I was a
child and it didn’t do me any harm. In fact, it made me the man I am today!”
“I just want peasants to stop
ruining the roads my exorbitant car tax pays for, and to get out of my bloody
way!”
Just before Christmas, Prime
Minister Sir Ke*r St*rmer said: “Broken roads can risk lives and cost families
hundreds if not thousands of pounds on repairs. That’s a cost that can easily
be avoided by investing properly in our roads.”
“That’s why we’re giving
councils funding to repair our roads and get Britain moving again – with a clear
expectation that they get on with the job.”
Midway Council welcomed the government's
recent £1.6 billion funding allocation for filling potholes and fixing roads,
of which £322m will go to London
and the south east.
Some Midway locals don’t think
this is anywhere near enough, however.
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| Bessie Nartsie: "Bloody K*ir St*rmer..." |
“The state of our roads is all
clearly the fault of Ke*r St*rmer and his woke, leftist, socialist Labo*r
party,” says Bessie Nartsie, REFORM UK PLC
™©® candidate for the Chattingham North ward in the local Midway council elections due in May.
“Why are we spending UK tax payer’s
money on giving illegal immigrants free holidays in luxury hotels?” she asks.
“Why don’t we just put picks and
shovels in their hands the second they get out of their small boats instead? We
can chain them together and put them to work filling in all the potholes made
by 80 tonne foreign lorries. And if they do a bad job, then we can deport them
to Rwanda,
where they belong!!”
“Make ‘em work for their asylum
applications, that what I say!!”
The Automobile Association (AA)
released figures recently which showed the UK bill for vehicles damaged by
road potholes in 2024 was £579 million - up £105m on the previous year.
Jim Spanner, manager at the Midway
Exhaust and Tyre Centre, says it has seen an increase in pothole-related
business in recent years.
“The damage caused by potholes
can be tyre bulges, blow outs and even suspension or exhaust systems being
affected.”
“Any component that moves takes
an impact when it goes down a pothole.”
“As a result, we’re making loads
of money out of Midway’s fourth-world cart-tracks that the council still calls
‘roads’,” said Mr. Spanner. “In fact, we’ve been nipping out at night and
digging a few more potholes right outside our garage.”
“The council doesn't seem
particularly quick to act on them, so it’s a licence to print money for us. Ker-ching,
kerching…!”
Bizarre as it seems, Britain now has
a National Pothole Day (January 15 this year) and a lobbying organisation
called the Pothole Partnership, such is the widespread concern about the issue.
The partnership comprises the
AA, National Motorcyclists' Council, British Cycling, IAM RoadSmart, the
British Motorcyclists' Federation and pothole fixing machine makers, JCB.
National Pothole Day is an event
borne out of increasing concerns and supported by many bodies, including the
Chartered Institution of Highways and Transportation (CIHT) charity.
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| Midway Council Leader Vic Marbles... |
“National Pothole Day is one of
celebration in the Midway Towns,” say the leader of Midway’s Labo*r Council,
Vic Marbles. “It’s a day when we invite the people of Midway to go out
and decorate the borough’s potholes, creatively turning them into
works of art
rather than just dangerous nuisances.”
“We know we’re never going to
get the money or the manpower to ever fix the state of Midway’s roads that are
a legacy of 20 years of Tory neglect,” says Marbles, “so we might as well have
a laugh about it.”
Fixing potholes on the borough’s
1,000 miles of road is a constant struggle, although MBC does appear to be
making progress.
Motoring organisation RAC
figures estimate there are on average sixty potholes for every mile of road in Midway,
while 96% of AA members believe that fixing them is a priority of drivers.
“However, despite the headlines
and sound-bites, I must note that the government’s promised funding falls short
of that needed to maintain our roads and other highways assets to the level we
want, let alone tackling the maintenance backlog,” adds council leader Marbles
“As we move towards devolution
and local government reform in Midway, albeit at a timescale currently unclear,
I do hope part of this involves whoever is looking after our highways being in
a position to plan over a long-term period, with genuinely adequate funds, to
ensure we keep our the people in Midway moving about their lives safely and in
a way they deserve and expect.”
In the real world, the
trolls are indeed unusually quiet. Fortunately this article predictably got a
few of the regulars out, but perhaps a new year ‘troll cull’ has seen some of
the more rabid ones banned? I hope not. Where would this blog be without them?
Comments:
Please note that we do not
moderate comments. However, we may edit or delete them, or manipulate the
voting on them in order to reflect our editorial policy.
Jobbi wrote:
St*rmer said he was going to fix the pot holes when he got into power and once
in power he would hit the road running, it looks like St*rmer has hit the road
face down!
St*rmer said he would not raise taxes but he failed that at the first hurdle in
his first budget!
St*rmer said he would reduce the boat crossing, yet we hit a new high recently
in winter!
St*rmer said he would reduce waiting lists on the NHS and invest in care homes
and carers, he has ordered a review (which had been done previously) which
won't be complete until 2028, another delaying tactic.
St*rmer is useless, you could not make it up, the rest of Europe
must be laughing at the way we run our country and I’m glad we left the EU, and
what a difference has it made!
👍+467
Tornado Watcher replied:
This article is about roads, yet
all you right-wing trolls can do is bang on about immigrants, taxes and the NHS. Anyone
would think that you have all finally realised that 15 years of Tory austerity and
their stupid Brexit has completely destroyed this country beyond any
government’s ability to fix.
👎👎👎👎-675
Yu Rong replied:
Ooooh get you and your tantrums. Labo*r is in government, so anything that goes
wrong must be their fault. Why do you stupid leftists continue to deny this
obvious truth?
👍+213
Neil Barse replied:
At last, Tornado Watcher confesses the truth about himself before slinking away
to stew in his own UK-hating demented leftist bile. A bitter lonely insidious
individual who's mental instability is getting worse by the day, due to the
fact they fail to annoy anyone with their constant sea-lioning and self-contradictory
posting. Completely expected every time Tornado Watcher posts on here.
👍👍👍👍+1024
Chad Grindr wrote:
Don't worry Ke*r and his chums have pledged to fix the potholes, just like they
are going to stop the people smuggling gangs, fix the NHS and not raise taxes
;-)
👍👍+531
Grey Mondeo Man replied:
Yeah right, so we can pay for repairs to all of the damage done by 15 years of
the Tories by not raising taxes. Get real.
👎👎👎-392
Yu Rong replied:
Ooooh get you and your tantrums.
👍+34
Kent’s Greatest Prick Ever replied:
I do not see why rich people like me should pay taxes that are then just
squandered on things we rich never use, like the NHS or social services. As for
roads, Cllr Voletrouser has it right. We luxury car drivers pay far more road
tax than the common peasantry does, so the poor should simply be kept off of
our roads and out of our way. That would eliminate traffic congestion and the
associated road damage at a stroke.
👍+63
Neil Barse replied:
A typically stupid reply from the typically stupid remoaning socialist
La**or-supporting woke snowflake that is GreyMondeoMan. Like all lazy parasitic
leftist scum, he is a blight on society and as such is unable to hold any sort
of discussion without resorting to vile, frothing insults. Crawl away and die,
you tofu-eating, Guardian-reading pillock.
👍👍👍👍+1024
Boring Welsh Tory
wrote:
Potholes form when water seeps into fissures in the road surface and is
repeatedly frozen and thawed, causing the structure to crumble. This process is
made far worse by electric SUVs, each of which weighs over 10 tonnes due to the
extremely heavy batteries they use and which tear up the roads and cause
potholes wherever they go. And as everybody knows, electric cars also frequently
explode without warning, destroying hundreds of square miles in a blazing
inferno of molten alkali metal and covering the land in a fall-out of
radioactive lithium. I know all this because I read it on the Internet. EVs are
all just part of the massive climax change hoax, which mercifully is being
rolled back by those champions of true democratic freedom, Donald Trump and
Elon Musk.
👍+1
Gonads replied:
Isn’t Tesla, one of the world’s
largest makers of EVs, owned by Elon Musk?
👍+38
Boring Welsh Tory replied:
If you did your Google searches
as thoroughly as I do, you would realise that such claims are just
misinformation, put out by the alien lizard people who are in control of the EU
and K*ir St*rmer’s government in a bid to undermine democracy and prevent
Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping from stopping the alien iguanas
taking over Planet Earth with their climate change hoaxes and plagues of killer
hornets which are really just tiny robots designed to spy on everything we do and
sting us if we do not obey the lizard voices in our heads. Unlike you, I am
careful to avoid my brain being taken over by the lizard people, by hiding in
my Mum’s attic in Wales and keeping my head wrapped in tinfoil at all times.
👍+1
Chad Grindr
wrote:
This terrible Lab*ur government has left Britain completely broken. Public
infrastructure is in the hands of overseas venture capitalists who have spent
nothing on maintenance and bled the country dry. The nation’s coffers are empty
and there is no room for manoeuvre in economic growth.
From 1997 to 2010, Labo*r’s T*ny Bla*r and Gord*n Br*wn run this country into
the ground. Now, in 2024, K*ir St*rmer is looking to bury it completely.
All of you who voted for these leftist loons should hang your heads in shame.
👍👍👍👍+1324
Grey Mondeo Man replied:
You seem to have missed out the
intervening 14 years of Tory government, which gave us “austerity”, Brexit and
Liz Truss, all of which damaged the UK’s economy far more than Bl*ir or
Br*wn ever did.
👎👎👎👎-908
Yo Rong replied:
Oooh get you and your tantrums
👍+76
Chad Grindr replied:
WHY DO YOU LEFTIST LOONS NEED TO SHOUT ALL OF THE TIME? SHOUTY SHOUTY SHOUT
SHOUT SHOUT that’s all you stupid bed-wetting lefties ever do.
👍+145
Grey Mondeo Man replied:
I’m not shouting at anyone…
👎-143
Chad Grindr replied:
MORE SHOUTY LIES FROM THE MORON’S PREMIER FAR-LEFT IDIOT! WHY DON’T YOU JUST
STOP SHOUTING! NO-ONE WANTS TO HEAR YOUR BED-WETTING WOKISH DRIVEL ANYWAY!
👍+98
SuperSmallDick
wrote:
Has anyone made a comment about illegal immigrants yet?
👍+48
Gonads replied:
Yes, Jobbi did right at the
start. But we’ve all been waiting for your usual brilliant, original and
completely irrelevant take on the matter.
👍+8
SuperSmallDick
wrote:
My local Tory councillor told me that all potholes are caused by illegal
immigrants dragging their small boats over the roads on their way to the luxury
hotels provided for them free of charge by the UK tax-payer. Meanwhile, millions
of English pensioners are freezing to death thanks to the removal of the WFP
and thousands of farmers are living on the streets because they have been made
homeless by Labour’s IHT changes. Four more years of Starmer’s communist
dictatorship, then I can vote REFORM.
👍+25
Pseudocreem 2 wrote:
Comrades Labo*r used lies and disinformation to trick their way into power and
have been attacking UK population ever since by doing things they had promised
not to I cannot think of any other government in world which has passed
legislation which they know will kill most vulnerable people in society like pensioners
who will die if they withdrew the Winter Fuel Allowance now they are attacking poor
millionaire farmers and billionaire rentier landowners like my wealthy friends
from beloved Russia. Who will be next? The rest of the world is looking on with
horror as political opponents and journalists in UK are thrown in jail for
social media posts and journalists are threatened by St*rmer and bully boys of
his regime what UK needs is fairness and freedom of true democracy as offered
in homeland by dear Mr. Putin and his patriotic rich oligarch friends rather
than gangster regime of Ke*r St*rmer. UK is becoming known for totalitarian
gangster politics and it is not a good look so vote REFORM at next elections
for true democratic freedom.
👍+18
