pumpkinstrokemarrow

One informant explained that the county budget for hole mending is very severely stretched and that it was going to take a good while before they got around to mending our holes properly, although some of them have now been mended improperly, that is to say by just banging in some of the black stuff but without bothering to cut the hole out properly. Rather like doing a filling by just banging some amalgam on top of the rotting hole, rather than cutting out all the rot and making a nice hole for the amalgam to key into.

In the meanwhile, various people have driven their cars too fast over unmended holes thereby doing the bottom of their cars some damage. They have sued Surrey, who have settled by drawing money out of the hole mending budget for next year. The money has to come from somewhere. But not a sustainable solution, particularly since global warming means that the wrong sort of rain is going to be more common and spending cuts mean that the budget is going to be more small.

My initial take on all this was that if, collectively, we choose not to give the council enough money to mend the roads with, is it really fair if we then complain, to the extent of suing them, when the holes do not get mended?

But the car has been damaged and maybe does need to be mended. First port of call is me as I should not have driven my car over a hole, in a road which I should of known was riddled with holes, so fast. Second port of call is my insurance company. Not sure what they would do about this sort of damage. Does fully comprehensive include damage caused by careless driving? Would they just cough up to avoid bother until and unless there got to be a lot of claims of this sort? Third port of call is the government. That well known insurer of last resort. If something terrible happens which none of us bothered to take out insurance for, poor old government has to cough up. But it can only cough up if we have previously coughed up the necessaries. Paid our insurance premiums in another way if you like. Otherwise poor old government has to borrow off the Chinese who might get a bit fed up with it after a while and start a run on our bond market.

Of course, all else failing, we might get legal, which is where we started. Hire some expensive lawyer to demonstrate that Surrey had a contract with me to make my roads safe and sound and that they were in breach. Damages, punitive and otherwise indicated. Lawyer plus £250,00; me plus £50,000; Surrey minus £300,000. They broke the law, they have to pay. I don't care that it makes no sense in the grand scheme of things or that the lawyer does better out of it than I do. I just want revenge and retribution.

So more generally, what duty does Surrey have to honour its duties and obligations? If it enters into a contract with a geriatric care provider and defaults, I guess the provider is entitled to sue. But does it enter into a contract with me in the same way? It would seem sensible for any such contract to include weasel words to the effect 'best endeavours, funding permitting'. In the current climate I would have thought it foolish and wrong for a council to enter into any binding undertaking to do anything. It is just going to do the best it can. And if we don't like it we can chuck them out at the next election and let some other lot have a go. But we don't sue them. That's not sporting.