The World according to Rich - Road Works

Roadworks. A necessity? Yes, probably. A pain in the ass? Most definitely. I have scarcely cast my cynical eye upon a thing more infuriating that a row of two hundred million road cones and signs diverting you to Hades and back.

Lets start with the obvious, shall we? I think we all can count on the fingers of one hand how many times we've driven past a set of roadworks, and observed even 50% of the workforce (if the workforce was even present) actually doing something. Most of the time they're sat chatting to each other, stood with their hands on their hips admiring the butchery they had comitted to the road surface, or scooting around in shitty LDV vans with blinking orange lights, pretending they're policemen or someshit.

It is for this precise reason that jobs that SHOULD take 1 or 2 weeks, end up taking up 16. How the hell long does it take to dig a hole, put a pipe in it, and fill it back in? You'd have more efficiency if you had asked a chimp to do it.

Case in point, APEC are doing some works on the main road through Ystalyfera, where I live. They've dug up much of the off-street parking, and installed traffic lights. 'Okay' I thought, probably just laying some pipes. But no. I leave for a week, and come back to find that not only havent they finished the section they had already dug up, someone had pulled a brainwave out of their ass that it'd be a good idea to dig further up the road too! God FORBID people might actually be inconvenienced; lets just dig more of the road up, install traffic lights that change so slowly I drive past them about 25 years older than when I stopped, and just piss off home at half past 2 every day. And to think these people love nothing more than to strike for more pay.


For that matter, why is it, when there are roadworks for a specific area, it's always coned off one or two miles in each direction? What's the point?! Surely having all lanes of traffic open would ease congestion, rather than have cones to tell you that there are cones to tell you there are cones to tell you there are cones to tell you there are men doing nothing. It boggles the mind, readers.

You'll often see these people worki- well, standing around, on Saturdays too. That's not because they want to see the project finished, it's because they get double their hourly wage. So its not really in their interest to see the stuff finished anyway, is it?

So, do everyone a favour when you next drive past some fatass lazy cock in a high-visibility jacket; honk. Honk alot, make them clench tighter than a crash test dummy at Euro NCAP. Infact, bugger it, just veer into the cones and run them over. I hear blood makes tarmac stick rather well.