I really don't know if those who grit our roads are more or less efficient than those who grit the roads in Stockholm or Munich and I don't want to even start that argument. Nor for that matter do I want to have a go at our planners or our politicians.
What I do think needs to be pointed out - over and over again - is that we have chosen to organise ourselves in this country in a certain way.
We have chosen to have a preponderance of semi-detached housing estates in the suburbs, with relatively low population density in our city centres.
Within those housing estates, we have decided that an "organic" (no -don't ask me how it looks organic; truly I don't know) street layout, so that there are curves and cul-de sacs all over and a relative dearth of main\spine distributor roads on which public transport services ( and gritting services) can be easily concentrated.
We have chosen to allow people build on their land in rural areas, leading to a very dispersed settlement pattern. I should say that I do not necessarily oppose this policy: I merely make the observation that having chosen this way of organising our lives, we must accept the consequences.
Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that our public sector workers are in fact at least as good and efficient as those of Stockholm or Munich; the reality is that we are asking them to work in a physical environment where they simply cannot deliver the same level of service to the citizenry. This is not the fault of politicians: we have exactly the sort of dispersed country that we wanted; if there is a serious change of public opinion on the wisdom of past planning policy, this may change ( over the course of perhaps two generations). But we weren't codded into our present situation. As a people, this is exactly what we asked for.
What I do think needs to be pointed out - over and over again - is that we have chosen to organise ourselves in this country in a certain way.
We have chosen to have a preponderance of semi-detached housing estates in the suburbs, with relatively low population density in our city centres.
Within those housing estates, we have decided that an "organic" (no -don't ask me how it looks organic; truly I don't know) street layout, so that there are curves and cul-de sacs all over and a relative dearth of main\spine distributor roads on which public transport services ( and gritting services) can be easily concentrated.
We have chosen to allow people build on their land in rural areas, leading to a very dispersed settlement pattern. I should say that I do not necessarily oppose this policy: I merely make the observation that having chosen this way of organising our lives, we must accept the consequences.
Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that our public sector workers are in fact at least as good and efficient as those of Stockholm or Munich; the reality is that we are asking them to work in a physical environment where they simply cannot deliver the same level of service to the citizenry. This is not the fault of politicians: we have exactly the sort of dispersed country that we wanted; if there is a serious change of public opinion on the wisdom of past planning policy, this may change ( over the course of perhaps two generations). But we weren't codded into our present situation. As a people, this is exactly what we asked for.