Gridlock Day 7
Once again Tweenaway Cross roadworks played havoc with traffic flow this morning, Queues of traffic every where all going somewhere but very slowly. The photo was taken on the Totnes road about half a mile before the roadworks. Resurfacing is going ahead but there is still 22 days, provided it all goes according to schedule(sic), of work before we find out if it has all been worth it. In fact there are a lot more than 22 days to go because even though the work will stop on July 8 it will start again once this summer has passed into history. For me, more road works in October doesn't really matter, my job is only for the summer but for thousands of people in the Bay it must be a bit of a nightmare. After I had got thought the traffic in the picture I headed for Windy Corner which is the first major junction on the road coming out of Brixham. At 10:30 in the morning this section of road is usually more or less empty but today it was full of more or less stationary cars all heading for Paignton and Torquay. I turned on to the ring road and that was also full of slow moving traffic. Any visitors in the Bay from big cities must be wondering why they bothered coming. Not a good advert for Torbay.
And now a complete change of subject. "Welcome to the real world." That's a message to all those poor public sector workers who have just been told that a) they will have to contribute more to their pension, and b) it wont be quite as generous as they expected and c) they wont get it until they are 66. Now I worked as a teacher for 15 years and do in fact get a public sector pension. When I left teaching I received a letter stating that I could get my teachers pension at 60 provided I wasn't working. So when I got to 60 and was driving a bus (ie working) I didn't bother about my teachers pension. Then I got a letter from the people who run the pension scheme saying I should be getting my pension as I wasn't working 'as a teacher', fill in this form and we will send you money every month which they have been doing ever since. Very nice of them, thank you very much. Please keep sending it. It is more than my Stagecoach pension and I do remember that 6% of my teachers salary went to fund this pension which was considerably less than I paid into the Stagecoach fund but pays quite a bit more. Now public sector workers, well about 20% of them have voted to take industrial action to try and get the government to change their minds and let them retire at 60 and draw a generous pension for the next 30 or 40 years. If they do then they will receive more money as a pensioner then they drew as salary while they were working.
The question I would like to ask them is this; Where exactly is all this money going to come from? I know, we'll borrow it from Greece.
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