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Source: Daily Skeptic
How to Deal With Potholes, Covid-Style
A reader drew our attention to a highly amusing comment left by one Andrew Horsman on an UnHerd article about potholes. Andrew has a plan for dealing with potholes that takes its inspiration from SAGE’s successful handling of the Covid crisis.
Here’s a plan for the PM to consider. Declare a national ‘novel pothole’ crisis. Tell the country that potholes are a mortal danger to us all and that no-one is safe until everyone is safe and the last pothole in the land is filled. Point out that potholes pose an especial threat to the poorly, elderly, disabled and other vulnerable groups. Put pressure on coroners to ascribe every road death to potholes. Make sure ‘pothole’ is on the death certificate of anyone who died within 48 hours driving over, past or around a pothole. Close any roads on which any pothole is found, immediately. Also close any nearby adjoining roads, just to be safe and as a precaution. If you live within 500 metres of a pothole you must stay at home to keep everyone safe. Require councils to put signs up everyone reminding everyone of the pothole danger and plaster the message across all forms of media – “one in three potholes are invisible”, that kind of thing. Create a hugely expensive national pothole tracking service. Give daily press conferences at which the numbers of reported potholes and pothole-related deaths are intoned by solemn-looking officials who project future increases in pothole deaths unless stricter measures are taken. Make the public’s life such a misery that they are desperate for a ‘way out’ of the pothole crisis. Demonise any pothole-deniers who think it’s all gone a bit too far, and don’t let them go shopping.
Then… find a mate, let’s call him Tony, who runs a tarmacking business. Or any business. Your local pub landlord, maybe. Give Tony multiple billions of pounds of public money and tell the public that only Tony can solve the awful pothole crisis. A moonshot! Give him three weeks to flatten the roads. Watch him fill some potholes with something that looks a bit like sand, but which he assures you has been proven to be totally safe and effective. Don’t ask any awkward questions or probe too deeply about what’s actually in his concoction, and watch Tony swan off to Switzerland with your cash, boasting at international conferences how he worked at the speed of road-surfacing to solve the crisis. Quietly ignore anyone who points out that most potholes appear not to have been filled, and those that were filled reappear within two or three months. Question the sanity and integrity of anyone who dares to point out that there appear to be more potholes, and road deaths and injuries, than ever before. Declare the pothole crisis over. We’ve just got to learn to live with potholes. Sign up to an international pothole treaty so that if another pothole crisis occurs we can get Tony and his mates in to do the business much quicker next time – and this time no roads will be open until he’s filled them up with the latest version of his specially patented filler.
Hope to high heaven that no-one will hold you to account, and live the rest of your life in utter fear and trepidation that a day will soon dawn when all of your moral cowardice, corruption and callous indifference to human suffering will come back to haunt you.
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