What's Eating Me Today?

According to the Red Rag, "Boris Johnson arrived in Beijing today looking tired and dishevelled". When does he ever look anything other than this?

 

Seemingly BJ was denied an upgrade by BA on his flight to see the closing ceremony of the Olympics (which apparently are taking place at the moment).

 

Congrats to Boris for slumming it with the proles and for having the chutzpah to ask for an upgrade. If you don't ask, you don't get. I would rather he flew economy and tried to blag a bigger seat for free, than paying vast sums of my tax for a flat bed and a glass of fizz, as Golden Gordon has doubtless done with his family. And don’t get me started on the alleged £20k “freebie” extended to Livingstone for his trip to China…
 

On Tuesday, the weather “experts” at the Met Office were predicting a washout for the forthcoming Bank Holiday weekend in the UK. Today (Wednesday), the same “experts” are broadcasting a forecast of warm sunshine for the same period.

How has the forecast changed so much in 24 hours? What is the point in using a £50million super computer to assist in weather forecasting if it changes its mind every day?

It’s about time this government institution is broken up and the millions in wasted I.T., salaries and pensions are invested in something useful, like a strip of seaweed for every household.
 

A quote from the Red Rag this morning: "Motorists would pay around £5 a time to queue-jump jams using American-style pay lanes".

Even though its summer and our hard-worked, underpaid MPs are supposed to be taking eco-friendly holidays in Suffolk or Cornwall, some of them just can’t resist announcing unpopular policies whilst sunning themselves under a knotted hankie.

Seemingly the Department of Transport is going to start trialling the technology and systems that will eventually pave the way for all car journeys to be tracked and charged. Ignoring the obvious intrusion into our mobility – every journey monitored, including speed (automatic fines, anybody?) – the intention is that by charging drivers for using roads, journey times will be cut as the cost of using a popular road at a busy time will deter all but the most necessary travel. Doubtless the government think that people commute to work at 8am and home again at 6pm because we enjoy it, rather than because our jobs demand it.

It’s not as if paying will make the slightest dent in the clogging of the road network. We will pay £5 to sit in the same jam, as this daft scheme will do nothing to cut congestion. I was in the US this summer and the reason this works there is that they have built extra lanes, rather than open the hard shoulder on a temporary basis, which is what our brain surgeon of a transport minister, Ruth Kelly, is proposing.

Instead of charging us to drive on motorways we have already paid for, why not invest a fraction of the £50bn annually taken from motorists to build a new network of toll-only motorways? That I would pay for, assuming it was as efficient and empty as the M6 Toll Road. However, this is as unlikely, since it would be greenwashed if it ever got past the idea stage.