RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Driving house for Christmas? Road to hell…

Basket Case Britain’s Christmas getaway is shaping as much as be a remake of Planes, Trains And Automobiles, the wonderful 1987 film that options John Candy and Steve Martin being thwarted of their each try to get house for Thanksgiving.

Their flight from New York to Chicago is cancelled, then diverted to Wichita, Kansas. They purchase practice tickets, however the locomotive breaks down, stranding them in a subject in the midst of nowhere.

They hop on a crowded bus to St Louis, the place the airport is closed because of the extreme climate. They handle to rent a automobile, which catches hearth after they’re almost killed driving the unsuitable manner down an Illinois freeway.

Eventually, they hitch a experience at the back of a refrigerated lorry. Sounds not in contrast to attempting to get round Britain as of late.

A number of days in the past, hundreds of rail commuters had been caught for as much as 4 hours in overcrowded carriages after an electrical cable struck a practice exterior London‘s Paddington station.

As effectively as singer James Blunt and Countdown’s Rachel Riley, half of Fleet Street’s best gave the impression to be on board and had been understandably anxious to vent their anger within the weekend’s newspapers. They’d all left early to beat yet one more strike by engine drivers that night, which explains why the carriages had been packed to the gunwales.

Passengers had been marooned, not allowed to get off, then ultimately dumped at distant stations miles from their locations, the place they needed to fork out a small fortune on shared taxis to make it house. Some black cabs sounded as in the event that they resembled the final aircraft out of Kabul.

An unlucky one-off, absolutely? Not as such. On Sunday, a whole bunch of individuals travelling on the East Coast Mainline had been stranded after one other overhead cable snapped and knocked out 4 rail traces on a 35-mile part between Grantham and Peterborough. The scenes at Grantham had been described as utter ‘pandemonium’.

The incident halted all providers between London and Scotland, forcing passengers on to buses. It was the fourth time in every week a collapsed energy line had hit Britain’s rail community, following related issues in Nottinghamshire and at Manchester Piccadilly.

And the chaos goes to get even worse over the festive season.

In London, King’s Cross will likely be closed on Christmas Eve. So will Fenchurch Street and Paddington, which is able to keep shut till the next Wednesday — which means no mainline rail hyperlink to Heathrow. If Miss Marple was planning to get the 4.50 From Paddington on Boxing Day, she will be able to overlook it.

Faced with a horror present on the railways, tens of millions will take to the roads. The AA has warned of prolonged jams on no less than seven motorways on Friday 22 and Saturday 23. So no change there then. Worst hit would be the M25, the M6, the M1, the M60 and M65. Just like each different day of the week, due to abandoned roadworks, momentary visitors lights, lane restrictions and the introduction of ‘good’ expertise. The A40 does not sound a lot better, both.

In his Sun column on Saturday, Jeremy Clarkson fumed that he had taken 4 and a half hours to drive 70 miles from his house in Oxfordshire to a gathering in West London. Later, it took him an hour in a black cab to journey to a different assembly — simply three miles away.

If you are planning to get away by air, good luck with that. Two days in the past, Gatwick went into meltdown, not for the primary time, after an air visitors management failure pressured the cancellation of dozens of flights. Oh, and the M23 — the gateway to Gatwick, was additionally closed for hours. These days, police deal with each accident as a ‘crime scene’ and really feel no duty to maintain visitors flowing. 

None of this surprises me. Britain’s whole transport community is damaged — as a lot by design as accidentally. I can solely converse for my neck of the woods, the place Genghis Khan’s Transport for London has determined its job is to cease anybody going wherever, ever.

I’ve been to a few occasions on the town over the previous ten days and been late for each one, regardless of permitting loads of further time to get there due to TfL’s 20mph limits, empty cycle lanes, low visitors neighbourhoods, highway closures and visitors lights each few hundred yards, which solely change lengthy sufficient to let via two or three automobiles earlier than turning purple once more.

And for this they’ve the gall to cost something as much as £27.50 a day in congestion and ULEZ costs. This is not simply my gripe. Virtually everybody else at these occasions has an identical story to inform. Khan’s Net Zero, anti-car, pushbike fanatics are killing London.

It’s not solely car-users, both. Long-serving licensed taxi drivers are abandoning their cabs in droves, having determined the sport is now not definitely worth the candle. London bus drivers are stated to be contemplating strike motion, as a result of the intentionally engineered congestion is making their job not possible.

One complained that on his route in South London, it now takes an hour to journey 4 stops, due to a lately put in cycle lane utilized by virtually no one. In Brentford, West London, a 16-year-old lady was run over by a bus which swerved to keep away from roadworks creating yet one more cycle lane.

I do know out of your emails and letters that issues aren’t a lot better in different cities and cities, together with Glasgow, Birmingham and Manchester.

In Leeds, the council has killed a bustling High Street by putting in planters along with the highway, proscribing visitors, banning parking and deterring customers on the busiest time of the 12 months.

Compared to the chaos created by the clowns who run Basket Case Britain’s transport community, John Candy and Steve Martin obtained off calmly. Over right here Planes, Trains And Automobiles meets On The Buses. So you possibly can overlook Driving Home For Christmas.

This is The Road To Hell.

Councils are at all times pleading poverty on the subject of mending the roads and pavements, however they appear to have loads of money for LTNs, cycle lanes (see elsewhere) and, particularly, pace humps.

Waltham Forest Council, in East London, has spent a small fortune on putting in ‘vibrating’ humps on a mile-length stretch of foremost highway in Chingford to implement a brand new 20mph restrict.

Local residents declare that each time a heavy automobile passes over them, their properties ‘rattle and shake’, inflicting cracks in partitions and ceilings and furnishings to wobble.

One man stated he’s discovering it troublesome to sleep. Another stated the ‘fixed jerking’ made his spouse, who suffers from arthritis, cry in agony.

Bus drivers, too, complain that they’re struggling again and neck ache due to the juddering impact of navigating the humps.

Suburban roads in all places now resemble loopy golf programs. Although I do not know why they trouble forking out on humps and different costly, engineered ‘traffic-calming’ measures. Thanks to the a number of, unfilled potholes each few yards, it is already too harmful to drive at greater than 20mph in most locations with out wrecking your suspension or bursting a tyre.

Some Tories determined to do away with Rishi are fantasising a few ‘dream ticket’ of Boris and Nigel Farage to rescue the occasion.

Now why did not I consider that? Actually, I did. I first urged it in May 2019 on the time of the EU elections, which Farage’s Brexit Party received convincingly.

That column featured an excellent Gary cartoon of Nige and Bojo as Morecambe and Wise, underneath the headline ‘Bring Me Sunshine’.

Of course, we should not even have been collaborating in EU elections, three years after voting Leave, however the Tory occasion blew it and anointed Remainer Mother Theresa as PM.

If a Boris/Farage axis had been put in place instantly after the referendum, when Call Me Dave ran away, they may have received a snap election and we’d have been spared the debilitating Stop Brexit shenanigans of Bercow/Starmer et al.

Which is why I urged it once more that November when Boris had changed May and known as a Get Brexit Done election.

Farage generously agreed to face down his candidates to present the Tories a free run, significantly in Red Wall seats. Boris owed him massive time.

But the peerage Nige deserved was not forthcoming and though Brexit obtained achieved, after a style, Farage and his Leave ultras really feel they’ve subsequently been betrayed by the Tories. Assurances made on the time haven’t been honoured.

So why ought to he experience to the rescue, regardless of teasing yesterday that he by no means says by no means? And does Boris want the aggro proper now? He can at all times attempt to bounce again after the occasion implodes, if he feels so inclined.

But the Farage/Boris ‘dream ticket’ dreamers can dream on.

It’s an thought whose time got here and went 4 years in the past. It ain’t gonna occur.