Apologies In Advance

[arfur45]

Hi all

I should probably apologise in advance for getting on my usual soap box yet again.

Just got back from a very pleasant weeks break in Holland.

We travel there several times a year as my good lady is dutch and we pick up a hire car at the airport so we can potter about at our leisure

This time we were furnished with a new little citroen.

Unremarkable in itself you will say and I would agree

The reason for the soap box is the quality of dutch roads compared to our own in good old blighty

By about the third day after travelling around on motorways and "B" roads I was forced to comment that the smoothness of the ride compared at least favourably with our lexus and quite often was noticeably better

In a baby citroen! !!!

I can only imagine what the ride would be like in my beloved lexus on these smooth and pot hole free surfaces

I'm almost tempted to go by boat next time just to check this out.

I know I have said it before but our roads are a national disgrace and it's a source of some shame when they are compared to our near neighbours on the continent

Soap box safely stowed again- for the moment

[harrylime]

Quite right. More traffic, more tax, but less spent on roads. It's a quality of life issue and does not factor into politicians' priorities. Their obsessions includes financial growth (which benefits fat cats and not the working classes), savage spending cuts, looking after the bankers and big business interests and destruction of the public sector on ideological grounds. Quality of life for average people is not even an issue. hence the closure of sports facilities, the selling off of school fields, insufficient spending on flood defences, the relaxation of planning laws resulting in the loss of swathes of green belt, which are being lost forever. As this lot have increased the national debt by £800 Billion since they came into power, do not expect it get any better. In fact, as interest rates have been kept unnaturally low for years (how can borrowing money possibly cost .5 of one per cent? it is ridiculous), almost certainly by the government, who can't afford to service their debt, expect it to get worse. In my humble opinion, the recovery is an illusion, the increase in employment is also an illusion, being made up of crappy jobs with zero hour contracts. Everything is aimed at creating an illusion for the next general election. I believe that, within a few years we are likely to see a crash and a squeeze on people's wealth like nothing we have seen to date, perhaps on a par with Greece. The depressing thing is that the "Labour" party have lost any semblance of socialism, which appears to be a dirty word now, and are just as bad.

So in five years we will all be looking for cars with suspension that is softer than a Lexus, a Citroen C6 perhaps ? - if we can still afford a car.

By, I feel better for that rant.

[harrylime]

I forgot to add, if you want a smooth ride, take any road on which the Tour de France is running. We appear to have many millions to make these roads like billiard tables, so priorities have shifted from roads which are full of potholes and potentially dangerous to those on which a sporting event is being held.

[lordturns]

Quite right. More traffic, more tax, but less spent on roads. It's a quality of life issue and does not factor into politicians' priorities. Their obsessions includes financial growth (which benefits fat cats and not the working classes), savage spending cuts, looking after the bankers and big business interests and destruction of the public sector on ideological grounds. Quality of life for average people is not even an issue. hence the closure of sports facilities, the selling off of school fields, insufficient spending on flood defences, the relaxation of planning laws resulting in the loss of swathes of green belt, which are being lost forever. As this lot have increased the national debt by £800 Billion since they came into power, do not expect it get any better. In fact, as interest rates have been kept unnaturally low for years (how can borrowing money possibly cost .5 of one per cent? it is ridiculous), almost certainly by the government, who can't afford to service their debt, expect it to get worse. In my humble opinion, the recovery is an illusion, the increase in employment is also an illusion, being made up of crappy jobs with zero hour contracts. Everything is aimed at creating an illusion for the next general election. I believe that, within a few years we are likely to see a crash and a squeeze on people's wealth like nothing we have seen to date, perhaps on a par with Greece. The depressing thing is that the "Labour" party have lost any semblance of socialism, which appears to be a dirty word now, and are just as bad.

So in five years we will all be looking for cars with suspension that is softer than a Lexus, a Citroen C6 perhaps ? - if we can still afford a car.

By, I feel better for that rant.

Couldn't agree more, all you need to do is watch a video by Bill Still called the 'Money Masters' it tells you everything you need to know about the banking system. It's not conspiracy, it is historic fact and politicians are just puppets for the bankers and I would be surprised if half of them don't really know what is going on.

[Ruud]

Thing also is though, that the road tax in Holland for our Ls400 would roughly be £220 per 3 months .......

Nice to hear the missus is Dutch - So am I :)

[Cotswold Pete]

When I used to work a lot in Holland and Belgium, I was amazed at quality of road surface, though was aware that road tax was higher than in UK.

One thing I did learn was the level of engineering that goes into the roads.

Dutch motorways are designed to let water seep through, so it means after heavy rain next to no standing water, but what this also means is that with cold weather water is not on the surface or in the cracks waiting to expand and break up the surface.

It may have been a Brit (well Scot) who invented Tarmacadam, but it always seems to take a foreign nation to really make a technology work for today.

Where I live they resurfaced the local roundabout with a plastic-type tar mix, and after 5 years still as good as the day it was done, but two miles down the road they used the good old fashioned crap method and after two years it is breaking up good and proper.

And to finish, years ago one of my clients was a Highway Authority, and it amazed me at the lack of technical thinking going on in the so-called experts heads, and the total lack of business thinking. It seemed like a lot of get it done cheap and quick, and forget about the long term reduced spend by doing a blinking excellent job in the first place.

Now driving in USA makes our roads look like heaven, so maybe a capitalist approach is the road to ruin in the long (and short) term, but try telling that to a government so mesmerized by the City.

[harrylime]

I remember touring California, Nevada etc and being impressed with the quality of the roads. It was a good few years ago but the USA is as broke as the UK now, as they spend it all on the military. Those drones don't pay for themselves and everyone is desperate to wear a uniform of one sort or another. Still, although thousands of American lives were lost in Iraq, at least the Iraqis have total stability now .

I know almost nothing about road surfacing, but the roundabout that had been surfaced with a different material may may have been surfaced with a high grip surface, which is used at high risk locations, sharp bends, accident black spots etc.. It is very expensive apparently.

[Cotswold Pete]

I remember touring California, Nevada etc and being impressed with the quality of the roads. It was a good few years ago but the USA is as broke as the UK now, as they spend it all on the military. Those drones don't pay for themselves and everyone is desperate to wear a uniform of one sort or another. Still, although thousands of American lives were lost in Iraq, at least the Iraqis have total stability now .

I know almost nothing about road surfacing, but the roundabout that had been surfaced with a different material may may have been surfaced with a high grip surface, which is used at high risk locations, sharp bends, accident black spots etc.. It is very expensive apparently.

I was told it is expensive, and only used in high use areas where lots of braking likely to occur.

Noticed on the way into work today that have used same surface on a major roundabout and it lasts a lot longer than the orange grip grit they surface with (which wears away after a few years).

I guess at least with a LS we soak up the bumps and lumps a bit better then your average Euro-box.