I think that traffic lights are an inefficient way to control traffic as there is always a gap between lights changing when the road is empty.  Traffic lights also arguably add to CO2 emissions, with the electricity used in the lights, and the extra fuel used by drivers idling and then accelerating from a standing start, though I guess this is difficult to quantify. This is one reason why I find it particularly annoying still at times sitting at traffic lights where no traffic comes the other way, though I accept many lights are smarter in this respect nowadays.

Roundabouts without traffic lights are more efficient at controlling traffic as they allow full use of the road with no gaps. Thus adding traffic lights to a roundabout that is not suffering specific congestion issues (e.g. one junction tailing back at busy times), slows down traffic movements, and probably increases CO2 emissions,  as there are now gaps in traffic flow that were not there before.

I reluctantly accept that traffic lights are necessary on many junctions where there is no space for a roundabout. However I am completely opposed to traffic lights on roundabouts, except in exceptional circumstances when they should probably only be part-time where possible. In Chester I think removing traffic lights from pretty much all the roundabouts, including the ones added in the 1990s, would improve traffic flow and save the council money. This is presumably not the prevailing view in the highways departments of the UK as they seem to be popping up on roundabouts all over the place.

In times of cut-backs when road surfaces seem to getting worse, there should surely be a focus on getting the basics right, rather than increasing council costs and congestion by adding traffic lights to roundabouts where they are not required.

I don’t generally jump red lights and I would argue it was one of those borderline situations where the lights changed and I either braked fairly hard or carried on just getting through, but obviously I didn’t quite make it. I have never actually treated amber as stop, though apparently this is what the law states. This is obviously a new income stream for the police though. When I lived in London some time back the Met would say you went through a red light as an excuse the breathalise you, though I had never had a drink when they did, I just had a job that meant I was often driving home late.

It is however a bit curious why there are so many cameras in the area where I was caught. This is a 40 MPH zone with a speed camera not far before these lights, with no others for several miles. Though it is a major road, it is one mostly superseded by the M56, and traffic is generally not that heavy. According to recent BBC figures there were no accidents at all at the junction between 1999 and 2010, yet there have been accidents at other local junctions with no speed cameras that seem more obvious candiates. The camera hasn’t been there that long so I guess the police have to justify its existence as I doubt it is catching many people.

I am not a lover of traffic lights anyway, particularly on roundabouts, as I have stated elsewhere, and this is not endearing them to me. Perhaps part of the reason I continued on at these lights was that it was 8pm and there was very little traffic around, so I probably would have stopped just to watch the road not get used for a while. I could try to argue, and undoubtedly fail in court, that I was trying to improve the efficiency of the road by increasing the time the section between the lights was used.

On the other hand, I could argue that as I drive a Toyota Prius this is just a way of them getting more road tax from me. Getting done for speeding in a Prius could have some credibility, getting done for going through a red light is just annoying.

The fundamental problem to me is not the fact that I may have to go a long way round to get into Northwich, but that CWaC don’t understand the traffic flows from a substantial residential area close to the town centre, though I have told CWaC what I will outline below.

The area concerned is in Castle, an area  of several hundred houses, a primary school and some businesses, surrounded by the river Weaver and railway lines and to which there are two exits, Darwin Street and Navigation Road. At present most drivers from the area will travel into Northwich town centre via Navigation Road and turn right into Chester Way. This generally works well as cars waiting at the lights will generally let you out. Drivers heading out of Northwich generally go to the end of Darwin Street and turn left onto Chester Road. Turning right out of the end of Darwin Street is slow and generally blocks the majority of people turning left.

The one-way system will prevent people turning right out of Navigation Road, which means to go into town they either have to turn left or go to the end of Darwin Street and attempt to turn right.

Turning left at the end of Navigation Road to go into town will presumably require having two lanes of traffic let you in. However due to the limited space at the end of Navigation Road for people to turn in, I suspect this may not be too bad in one sense as drivers in the lane heading out of town will probably be blocked by drivers trying to turn into Navigation Road and so have no choice but to let them out. Depending on parked cars, in my experience there is generally only room for one or two cars at the end of Navigation road to turn in and all bar one or two cars coming the other way would need to be let out for the cars coming in to proceed. This is likely to cause tailbacks along Chester Way.

Turning right at end of Darwin Street isn’t much better. There is probably normally room for 3-4 cars to pull in before waiting to proceed single file, with a similar number in the queue turning out before those coming in can move on, though it is more likely here that people further up Darwin Street will hold back to let those coming in come through. Chester Road is a major route into Northwich, but is fairly narrow and though there is a right hand turn lane it can only hold a few cars before blocking the traffic coming into Northwich along Chester Road. If a large lorry or bus comes up Chester Road from town, they generally have to wait until the traffic turns into Darwin Street due to legally parked cars on Chester Road, and illegally parked cars sometimes make this worse. Even turning left out of Darwin Street, you are reliant on drivers letting you out at busy times. There is little point trying to let out anybody turning right out of Darwin Street at the moment as drivers turning right in are genererally followed by traffic from traffic lights a short way back, which then ‘under-take’ on the left. In the new regime it may be more advantageous to have a very ‘wide’ car to prevent other cars passing to allow as many cars as possible to get out of Darwin Street to increase the chances of getting in. Otherwise the junction is likely to grind to a complete halt if there are a lot more drivers trying to turn right and those trying to turn in from the right are blocking them and cannot get in themselves.

In summary, I think that the new one-way system will increase congestion around the ends of Darwin Street and Navigation Road, and generally slow down traffic trying to get in or out of Northwich along Chester Road, never mind local residents trying to get out. CWaC, you have wasted enough money on unnecessary changes to roundabouts in Chester. Don’t waste anymore, just leave Northwich alone. It’s fine as it is.

Yes we used to have an empire, perhaps we did rule the waves once, but not any more. Here is my view modern Britain for those who think somehow leaving Europe is a good idea.

1. Manufacturing in the UK is about 12% of GDP, but much of this is foreign owned, such as car plants by Toyota, Honda and Nissan, and much of the output is exported. Due to the poor lending record of UK banks to manufacturing for decades, UK companies also may have to go abroad for capital, which then may make them more likely to end up foreign owned.
2. Many of the previously nationalised industries are now foreign owned. For example, Welsh and some English trains are run by Germans (Deutsche Bahn). In Electricity and Gas, the Germans own NPower, Eon and Powergen, the French EDF Energy and the Russians Centrica. Cadbury is also now foreign owned by Kraft (USA), and the trend for foreign ownership is increasing rather than decreasing.
3. Much of whatever it is the City of London does is international, some in Europe, and accounts for 30% of GDP.
4. Around half of our Exports go to Europe (October 2011 figures)
5. Tourism is important the British Economy, with the bulk of visitors coming from Europe.
6. We import more than we export (October 2011 figures)

I don’t understand the ins and outs of all the above, but what is clear to me is that though Britain is an island geographically, it is not economically. Anything that damages our terms of trade or relationships internationally, particularly with Europe, doesn’t just impact the City of London, but potentially everyone in the UK. I hope David Cameron has at least some understanding of this.

Though traffic lights are necessary in some instances to keep flow moving (northbound at Harlow junction on the M11 comes to mind), in most cases I think they are not needed. Traffic lights are by design less efficient than roundabouts as there are periods when the lights change when the roads are empty. Adding traffic lights to these roundabouts has thus slowed traffic down for no benefit as far as I can see, unless you see drivers as unable to handle stopping at roundabouts themselves without some help.

I tend, by default, to favour routes with the least traffic lights, so I will now be avoiding these roundabouts wherever possible, as I think many others will, so traffic will just be displaced elsewhere.

There has been talk of voter ‘apathy’ in the past in terms of falling election turnout. I prefer to think of it as abstention, in that people do not vote as there is nothing they see worth voting for. Turnout in my council ward this week was 33% (actually up from 25% last time), so those who abstained were by far the majority, which makes the whole thing a bit of a joke really. The majority also abstained from the AV Referendum, which got 42%, I think. This is not currently the case in General Elections where in 2010 overall turnout was 65%, though this was down from around 85% in 1950, and actually up from 60% in 2001.

I will continue to vote in other elections, particularly European ones that have the fairer Proportional Representation (PR) system, and I would vote for either the Welsh, Scottish or London Assemblies, which I think also use PR, though where I live none of these are relevant.

I suspect this will not make the slightest bit of difference, but strangely it makes me feel a lot better.

I have wanted change in our voting system probably for around 20 years, simply I think it is wrong that a ‘landslide’ majority can be won in parliament with a minority of the vote. AV would have addressed this somewhat, though probably not much. The depressing thing is that it is probably all that we will be offered in my lifetime, so I have effectively now lost all hope of any meaningful change in the UK.

I am British by birth, but have never waved a Union Jack and sung Rule Britannia, and probably never will. I don’t particularly want to hark back to the times when Britain ‘ruled the waves’, if we ever did, as I think we did a lot of things with our empire that I don’t think we can be proud of. I never watched the royal wedding, I wish them well, and I think the Royals are good for the tourists, but otherwise I am not interested.

What I would like is to live in a country that is democratic, and I don’t think our current system is particularly democratic when our governments are not normally based on anywhere near the majority of the votes. The political parties are quite happy with this of course, which is why Labour never did anything to change the voting system when they promised to in 1997, and this was only done now due the Lib-Dems insisting on it for the coalition.

I see Britain often as in a time-warp, pretending that we still have an empire and are more important in the world than we really are. I don’t see much future for the UK, we have little industry left and beyond private companies raking profits in off government contracts, and the continued extraction from the banks, there seems little prospect for future growth, especially with the public sector being cut so violently. Perhaps I should leave the UK and move somewhere else I would be happier with, but unfortunately I am not in a position to do so.

Will I ever vote again? Possibly, but I think we have lost a chance to bring Britain into the 20th century in one way, even if there was never a chance of entering the 21st.

Why, because I can’t watch it on TV anymore. It used to be on Dave in the UK, a free to air channel, now it is on ESPN, a pay channel. It is not worth me paying for one reason, I don’t like football and thus probably the majority of the channels output. I would also have to get new equipment.

I tweeted at the start of the season that another sport bites the dust, though I underestimated how soon I would lose interest.

At the start of the 1980s, the UK did have more in public hands than most countries with water, telecoms, gas, electricity all nationalised, but now these are long since in private hands, the Conservatives are looking to sell off whatever is left. much of which is really about public service provision, such as the NHS.

So is “Public Sector Bad, Private Sector Good”. I say no for the following reasons

• Private sector companies exist to maximise their profits, which public sector entities may not need to make a profit at all. Profit from a public sector entity can be also offset against subsidies. The argument for this would be that having to make a profit makes the company more efficient, but if a service goes from not having to make a profit to making a profit, the service has to cut costs to make any profit at all from the same money.
• There is not generally some magic way that private sector companies can save money that public sector entities cannot, so it is down to general cost cutting strategies
• One key way to cut costs is to cut wages either in pay rates or the number of staff employed. Ask any cleaner who has been ‘contracted out’ and they will tell you the first thing that happens is their pay goes down.
• Another way to cut costs is to cut back on investment in infrastructure and other capital costs. Railtrack was rightly castigated for cutting back on maintenance which cause the Hatfield and other crashes, but arguably they were just looking to save some money to increase their profits.
• Private companies are also likely to pay their senior staff more than public sector companies, making cuts further down the organisation more severe.
• So the net effect of putting public services in the private sector is that less is spent on the service and the rest is taken as profit.  If that is so, keeping it in the public sector seems a better idea to me.

I am not against private companies, I work for one. However, in the realm of public services, particularly where public subsidies are involved, I think that in many cases keeping them in public hands provides a better value service, simply because they do not have to make a profit. Even if the public sector was less efficient than the public sector, they could still save public money in delivering public services, simply because they do not have to make a profit.

I currently drive a second generation Toyota Prius, so I am sold on the idea of Hybrids, but the more I think about it, I find the new Volvo V60 plug-in Hybrid a bit strange for several reasons:

1. It has two separate drive-trains, one for the diesel engine (front wheels) and one for the electric motors (rear wheels). My Prius drives through the front wheels whether powered by the battery or Petrol and I would think switching between driving wheels would be strange in itself.

2. It has a button to switch between ‘Pure’ (electric), ‘Hybrid’ (electric and diesel) and ‘Power’ (diesel), which means you can just drive it as a diesel car. I have an ‘EV’ button in the Prius to force it to use electric only, but there is no equivalent ‘Power’ button. What this means for the Volvo though is that you could buy one of these, be exempt from the London congestion charge (which my Prius no longer is, though I do not drive in London anyway), and yet just drive it as a diesel if you wish.

3. The carbon dioxide and MPG figures don’t make any sense, which is probably a general issue for plug-in hybrids. The V60 Hybrid will allegedly do 150 MPG with 49 g/km of carbon dioxide. This is with a 2.3 litre diesel engine, which if you are running in ‘Power’ mode may give you less than 50 MPG, rather than 150. The plug-in Prius is stated as having 108.6 MPG with 59 g/km of carbon dioxide, which presumably reflects the shorter electric range of the Prius (15 miles vs 30 miles for the Volvo).

This perhaps just reflects a loophole in the way that particularly the carbon dioxide figures are worked out for plug-in hybrids. Taking this to the extreme,  could it be possible to have something like a Range Rover with an enormous engine, but with some electric motor range, with carbon dioxide figures that could allow it to be exempt from road tax and the congestion charge? That would be clearly nonsense. It seems to me that a 2.3 litre diesel engine with 30 miles electric range (Volvo) stated as less carbon dioxide than a 1.8 litre petrol engine with 15 miles electric range (Plug-In Prius) may also be nonsense.