Fresh from this vital decision over our bins, David Cameron might usefully be asked a few interesting questions about a long discussed plan to build a new road in Witney which would devastate a local flood plain and park and which would brilliantly divert traffic from one bottleneck to another within the town, shifting a problem down the road rather than resolving it.
I had a rare day off work on Friday and I drove into Witney. The good weather had caused a bit of a glut of cars as everyone bought stuff for the weekend. On this particular day - at 12pm on a Friday - the roundabout onto which the new 'Cogges Link Road' would deposit hundreds of cars every hour was absolutely solid with traffic, as were most of the roads around the town. Despite the unseasonably good weather, this was a fairly average occurrence and, not surprisingly, around rush hours this road is even more congested.
David Cameron has previously declared his full support for the proposed new bottleneck - it made the front page of the local paper, the Witney Gazette. If his government is going to be 'the greenest ever' and if he is serious about both addressing pollution and the interests of his local residents, perhaps this is the time for a sharp turn about while there is still time. If the diggers are sent in to concrete over the Windrush and surrounding land our Prime Minister might find more local difficulties to range against the financial storm developing across the world.
Someone might remind the Prime Minister of the old truth that all politics is local.
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