Tag: vroom

Having once lived, for four years, in a house facing a six lane dual carriageway trunk road, and for most of my childhood having lived very close to a main railway line, I’ve always been of the opinion that, if you chose to live by a main traffic route, you should accept that it’s going to be noisy. Not so the parishioners of Stratton St Margaret who, after six years of campaigning by their local MP (like most of the parish councillors, a red nestling), have had £160,000-worth of ‘acoustic barrier’ (tall wooden fence to you) constructed alongside the A419 Stratton Bypass, with another £240,000-worth to come. A resident quoted in the newspaper sums up my views.

Student Scott Jefferies, who lives behind the new fence in Winton Road said: “I don’t really think the fence has made much difference. You can still hear the road from outside but you can’t really hear it indoors at all. And to be honest you just get used to it. I have lived with it so long I hardly notice it anymore.”

If the picture of the MP grinning in front of the fence is typical, that’s hardly surprising: a dense growth of trees is clearly visible behind.

If Honda’s spokesman is to be believed, dumping the pound and adopting the euro would make areas of land expand. A couple of days’ ago, Honda’s president was quoted as saying they would only expand their plant in Swindon if Britain joined the euro.

Our intention is to bring operations to full capacity and have no plans to expand, though we may change our minds if Britain were to join the euro.

He even went as far as to describe the original investment in the Swindon factory as a ‘mistake’. Today this was translated into something rather different by Honda’s spokesman Paul Ormond

There is a limit to growth in Swindon, so we are growing into Eastern Europe. The total area is something like 67 acres. We couldn’t physically build any more on there. What Mr Fukui was saying is going forwards we couldn’t do a great deal more in Swindon because of the limitations on the site.

Clearly, joining the euro would make a few extra acres appear on Honda’s factory site.

If the politicians explained this magical land-expanding ability of the euro to the public, maybe people wouldn’t be so sceptical about it.

Anyone considering joining csma (formerly the Civil Service Motoring Association) might like to know that a sales person of theirs, who was trying to sell their car insurance, was quite happy to read out new members’ address and credit card details in a mobile phone call to his office, while sat at his stand in a staff canteen. I’ve no idea who Neil Brown is, but I do now know (okay, I’ve already forgotten, but I and several others heard it very clearly) exactly where he lives, when he was born, his partner’s name and date of birth and, if I had a pen and paper, would also know his car registration number, his maestro card number and expiry date.