Get wid de kidz!

14 July 2004

Labour MP Tom Watson wants to get down with the hip and cool. The next generation of voters needs to be caught quickly. So let's talk to them in language they'll understand. Hence, Tom's toe-curling attempt at da yoof speak, ya dig? Let's make politics cool, innit!

The BBC politics for kids/teens site is, like, totally wacked! Ditto for the Parliament education site, which even has a section for younger yoof. Fanta-stick! [Tom Watson]

Having spotted this I realise that I'm not quite as hip as I thought. The Register reported this website over a year ago. I'm so far behind the times it's not true!

M6 hell, chaos, shock, crisis etc

5 July 2004

If you live in or work in Birmingham, UK you'll already know the sheer damn misery of trying to use your car or public transport around the city. It's always been a busy place with just enough road infrastructure to cope. When things go wrong, like even a minor accident on a feeder road, the knock-on effects come quickly and suddenly miles of road and thousands of vehicles are caught-up with nothing to do but sit it out till the obstruction is cleared. The famous Aston Expressway, known to locals as the Distressway, is notorious for its daily hold ups. The Expressway is a conduit between the city and the M6 motoway and has a tidal flow system across 7 or 8 lanes which works most of the time. It's an aging bit of urban motorway and it's wearing out so the Highways Agency have decided to close most of it for 9 weeks and also close the slip roads leading on and off the M6. And they've decided to resurface the M6 nearby as well. And they're also doing a bit of the M6 further north. This work will last until Christmas. And they're still mucking around with the M42 motorway about 10 miles south of the city. Today was the first day when all this work merged. With so many roads effected and thousands of people trying to get in and out of the city the inevitable happened. Everything stopped. The Highways Agency say it's cheaper and quicker to do all this work in one go but local businesses are saying it's costing them £9m a day in delays and they would have preferred the work to be staggered over a longer period.

Meanwhile, for those that want it there is an alternative; assuming you can get to it through the traffic there seems to be no shortage of space.

Dovetailing rather neatly is the next Big Idea to have lanes for car-sharers. I can't help feeling this idea just won't work when our motorways have only 3 lanes. Lane 1 for the car-sharers, lane 2 for the lorries and vans, lane 3 for everybody else. Lane 1 will be under-used, lane 2 will be nose-to-tail with HGVs and lane 3 will have all the poor suckers who couldn't find anyone to share with in a queue 5 miles long. The arguing has just begun.

Tony Bosworth, of Friends of the Earth, said: "We support initiatives that encourage people to use their cars less or car share. But these latest Government plans must not be used as an excuse to justify new road-widening schemes." And the Association of British Drivers criticised the move. Mark McArthur-Christie, the organisation's national spokesman, said: "Road space in the UK is exceptionally scarce because of decades of government underfunding and we need to use it in the most efficient way possible. [Independent]