Surrey affairs

This prompted by an email from Surrey County Council covering their latest newsletter.

Reorganisation

It seems that reorganisation of local authorities is in the air again and Surrey County is pitching to be a unitary authority, taking over the fairly modest functions presently left to districts - with the most visible perhaps being planning. It so happens that Surrey is a conservative county and it is to be expected that unification will be opposed by Epsom and Ewell council which, unusually, is run by the Residents' Association. Which I count as closet conservatives, but they will still want their independence and their jobs. While Labour doesn't get much of a look in, with just two out of the 80 odd county councillors. The same as the greens.

Surrey would also like to be a strategic authority with an elected mayor - with all bar one of these presently being Labour. Mostly big conurbations like London, Manchester and the West Midlands. But it seems that Surrey is considered at 1.2 million people to be a bit on the small side and so needs to team up with some neighbours.

The present map of Surrey looks fairly messy, taking account as it does of all kinds of history and facts on the ground. Like the GLC grabbing Chessington, that is to say the white finger sticking into Surrey to the west of yellow Epsom and Ewell in the course of some previous reorganisation. The nice neat boundaries you get in a lot of the US are not going to fly here.

I have always favoured unitary authorities, but the last time this was all chewed over, quite a lot of places, including Surrey, opted to maintain the status quo of a two tier system. Which leaves lots of lesser mayors taking it in turns to take a year in post: the chaps who wear heavy chains, open fêtes and attend worthy causes. Making any kind of change all looks terribly complicated and I dare say we will end up with some messy compromise.

And that is without taking a look at the areas used to organise our health systems, also subject to regular reorganisations. I have lost track of whether or how well health authorities align with local authorities. Police, I think, we have got sorted out, with nearly all police authorities being either counties or groups of counties.

M25/A3 interchange

This was another item which caught my eye.

A lot of money is being poured into the M25/A3 interchange, which I presently understand to be both a bottleneck and an accident black spot. Furthermore, I have been irritated in the past by Wisley moaning about having to take a bit of a hit here, without appearing to recognise that there were other parties taking hits too. Time to have another dig. Which fairly quickly got me to reference 3, all 500 and odd pages of it. Nature lovers will be pleased to learn that both bats and newts get a look in, although I did not come across either  bat tunnels or newt tunnels.

The bottom line seems to be that the government has decided that we need a decent road network to support a decent rate of growth and to that end this junction needs to be upgraded. Much the same as the argument for ramping up Heathrow, albeit on a much smaller scale. We can only get other kinds of new infrastructure like hospitals and prisons without (tax) pain by getting (this elusive) growth to pay for it.

I did not find any simple statement of what it would all cost, but what we seem to be getting is a new improved roundabout and new improved slip roads to replace those that we have now. Plus a bit of widening of the A3 on either side of the junction, this no doubt being the bit which takes a slice off the Wisley gardens.

So, the difference in outcome between the DS (do something) option and the DM (do minimum) option looked small while the difference in cost looked large. The planning process looked hopelessly elaborate, there was lots of planning jargon and I dare say lots of planners are doing very well out of the whole business. To the extent that we all like charging around in our cars we all get to benefit - but it is not the same as hospitals and prisons. Maybe it is just another example of what the columnist Simon Jenkins once described as big-project-itis. It is the big projects with big sales budgets which get sold to governments: little projects like mending Longmead Road or the pot-hole on West Hill don't make the cut.

We do get a diagram of the project, but it is rather small and the legend is even smaller. No doubt a larger version can be found somewhere in the attached forest, but I did not trouble to search for it.

But I did turn up this layman's version. From which I learn that the old roundabout - the circular one - will be retained for the use of pedestrians, cyclists and the like. Badgers?

And for crane lovers there are some fine pictures to be found at reference 5, from which the snap above has been lifted. I wonder if one could have got near enough to watch the action live? Do they provide a viewing platform? Complete with vans full of fast food? Or maybe they streamed it onto our smart televisions with one of those breathless voice-overs from Gary Lineker?

Trivia

Not long ago we took some kippers from Waitrose, still a good buy at a fiver or so for three of them, which makes a good meal for the two of us. Made with real smoke from up-north, or at least that is what we are led to be believe - although least one smoke house in Craster - I think the one which was next to the main pub and which had lots of black tar oozing out of the vents at the top - went up in flames.

In course of all this, I was reminded that the tray inside our fish kettle (from John Lewis), is something of a Chinese puzzle. It sometimes takes me quite a few minutes to get the hangers back in the right position from that shown. Which makes it a bit of a mystery how they get out of position.

And last but not least, mistletoe, a subject to which I shall return in due course, with mistletoe seeming to set to migrate from being an ornamental to an invasive species. These ones from a road on the Chase Estate, not far from where we live, snapped in the course of a short, early evening stroll with my stroller.

PS: I have just learned that Aberdeen is so named for being at the mouth of the River Don. Obvious really.

References

Reference 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directly_elected_mayors_in_England.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_authorities_of_England.

Reference 3: https://nationalhighways.co.uk/our-roads/south-east/m25-junction-10/.

Reference 4: The Planning Act 2008: M25 Junction 10/A3 Wisley Interchange: Examining Authority’s Report of Findings and Conclusions and Recommendation to the Secretary of State for Transport - The Planning Inspectorate - 2020. 

Reference 5: https://nationalhighways.co.uk/our-roads/m25-junction-10-project-profile/.