Well this news caught my eye this morning, as I rose at 5.30am to beat the traffic going west on the M25 as there are the lovely roadworks to contend with on the way to Heathrow and now the schools are back in session.
It seems all those ponderous Think Tanks, academic studies and research projects are a complete waste of money after all. The best way to beat congestion is not to build new roads, renovate old ones, put in Toll Roads, have Congestion Charge systems - in fact, perish all of those daft and expensive ideas.
The simplest way is to create more unemployment - and at last, the Government has found its 'Sweet Spot'.
Now, as a fairly regular M25 user and who walks over it while walking my dogs virtually every day, I may contend the findings of the research. But I suppose you cannot argue with facts. No lessor authorities than the AA and Trafficmaster have found that over the last two years, congestion has dropped by a whacking one third (33.33%? Surely not). Even more, they assert that this drop is due to unemployment.
It may have cost the odd Bank Bail Out and Credit Crunch to achieve but those were unavoidable 'Global Phenomena', according to our glorious leader - the rest of the world caused us to spend so much bailing the situation out - and we can prove we are better off for it. Now, Brown and Darling, can forget about making up whether they were lying to us about trading international mass murderers for oil deals and point to their valid achievement. They have solved the congestion issue and it has not cost us a penny increase in tax.
Look, you cynics. When Mr. Brown said Britain would not go into recession, he did not mean a global recession caused by sub-prime which no one could have foreseen. But what he did was to use the current economic conditions to cleverly manipulate the congestion figures to help make all of our lives easier and we should give credit where it is due, as not a bean of tax has been directly raised to do so.
The rise in fuel duty on 1 September had nothing to do with lowering congestion at all - as Jack Straw would put it, 'This was academic'. It was going to happen anyway and every penny of that rise will go to saving several molecules CO2 from hitting our atmosphere. In fact, the Government plans to support the new emission trading schemes and in time, Britain will need to buy in plenty of such emission rights in order to cope with the excess hot air coming from politicians generally as there has been a corresponding sharp increase in such emissions in the last two years.
The news that congestion has decreased may shock all commuters whether in cars or public transport. Clearly, none of the researchers either sat in or counted the daily queues on the M25 roadworks or from Leatherhead to Heathrow or around the Dartford Crossings or for that matter, the M1 roadworks for last year. They either call that 'Seasonal Adjustments' or 'Accountants Smoothing' - either way, it doesn't count.
So rejoice everyone, the congestion you may be sitting in this morning is in fact 33% less than two years ago no matter what you may be thinking - it's a fact. And thank all those people who are languishing at home, having a great time being unemployed for their selfless contribution. And don't forget to offer thanks to the people who made this possible - step forward the Government, the financial world, international recession terrorists, sub prime mortgagees and, of course, our dear friend and international cowboy, John Prescott of the Two Jags.
It was his vision 12 years ago that gave us the platform to achieve this. Of course, he didn't know how to, but judge him by his results everyone. Judge him by his results.
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