Tag Archives: potholes

Potholes, protests and a country wakened to political power

By Simon Ferrigno | Tue 27th June 2017 - 3:41 pm

I’m writing this in Burkina Faso, where I’m working with an African colleague evaluating a programme on food security and local economic development. One of the big topics as we run up and down the country looking at cattle markets, check dams, irrigation and water systems, and so on is transport infrastructure, and mainly, potholes.

Burkina Faso is a landlocked country, but a major crossing route across the growing regional single market and customs union (with a single currency already for the Francophone countries, and a bigger one mooted when the Francophone Union (UEMOA) and the wider Anglohone-Francophone Union (ECOWAS) …

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Opinion: Can anyone explain the Lib Dem obsession with potholes?

By Ruwan Uduwerage-Perera | Sun 4th August 2013 - 4:00 pm

I read August’s AdLib today with much dismay. I wonder how many of us have found ourselves squatting beside a hole in the road, posing for a photograph, and subsequently pondered on why we weren’t voted in?

I completely understand the rationale of acknowledging local priorities and the important safety considerations of potholed roads, but are we getting our priorities right when we establish major campaigns over such mind-numbing issues?

Surely the focus on these little concerns, at the expense of far more important and life-altering policies, only diminishes LibDems in the perceptions of potential voters?

Do we really want to be viewed as pettifogging obsessives about the depth of tarmac when essential services such as schools, health, housing and social care are under threat?

Although I am repeatedly advised by the pundits and pollsters “This is what the focus groups are talking about” I do not find that this is the first concern on the electorate’s lips when we talk on the doorstep. Voters want to know about drops in local education standards, the lack of public transport to enable rural employment and, increasingly, the loathed bedroom tax.