The Bastard

Sniggering at the irony in being accused of sock puppetry by Kevlar's account, with its magnificent history of 16 total posts I post as myself, not as any other account. I'm argumentative, but I'm usually right. There's usually so many potholes in the arguments on here that you could drive a bus through them.

The street isn't "falling to bits" though. It's got some potholes, it's not disappearing into the harbour. They've patched the potholes. When money is available, and there are less pressing problems in high-traffic areas, maybe they'll consider resurfacing it. Paranoid nonsense. I have no other accounts and have never posted on behalf of anyone or any organisation. If I'm winding people up, it's because I have a different opinion that doesn't align with the miserable glass-half-empty-and-it's-on-fire-and-broken depressive attitude. It's a few potholes filled with Tarmac. It doesn't need to be done to a Rolls-Royce standard , and as I said, to do a huge job on it will probably involve road closures which needs time and planning. In the meantime, a bit of Tarmac in the holes isn't a bad thing, is it ? Roads always need fixing. They're built to a budget, break down over time and get fixed on a budget. VED money isn't distributed according to who pays the rates, it all goes into a central pot with all other taxes. The money paid in VAT and VED in PSM doesn't just stay in PSM - thankfully so, since it would never cover a major project, which would need to be subsidised by the rest of the island. In these constrained times, budgets are low, so it doesn't surprise me that road repairs are down the list.

There is traffic, but it's still not that busy when you compare with Douglas for example. if you're going to spend major money to fix roads, it's logical to start where there is most traffic and most people affected. A fishing village isn't that.

That's the hysteria that I was referring to. Temporarily patching some potholes with Tarmac doesn't need Rolls-Royce workmanship. It literally needs the hole clearing out, some sealant adding and some Tarmac adding in. Job done, temporary patch in place. If you want to close the road for a couple of weeks and dig it all out down to base layer and fill it, then that needs project planning and engagement with transport, businesses and the public who'll be affected. No doubt that'll be on the cards at some point.

We can quibble about facts. One bus an hour meets the definition of "occasional" in the sense of "infrequent". If it was one bus every couple of minutes, like on Lord Street, then it'd be a different animal. Regardless, talking PSM up into a metropolis worthy of major infrastructure investment isn't going to happen.

double post.

Quibbling. It's a village of less than 2,000 people, doesn't exactly have buses queuing to unload massed hordes of businesspeople and wide-eyed tourists. The bus service isn't there because of the massive demand to go to PSM, it's an adjunct to a wider service to the South. Let's be honest, because of the small number of passengers and small size of PSM, buses could easily stop at the crossroads with no major loss of service.

That's too simplistic. When you pay VED in Port St. Mary, it doesn't mean that your money goes into the local Port St. Mary Tarmac fund for local people. It goes into the same budget as all other sources of Tax, part of which is allocated for the roads. If you pay VAT on a pint of milk, some of that is allocated to the roads, even if you've never owned a car. The road budget is limited, and it gets allocated according to priority. For a small village with a low volume of traffic, there isn't a justification for a major scheme every few years. It would be unsurprising that potholes get temporarily filled at minimum cost on quiet routes - but extending that to all the jobs completed by DOI over the past few years is a big stretch.

It's not been discounted. The fact remains it's not a major road, it may have occasional buses on it, but it's a quiet road to a quiet village. There are other priorities. other potholed roads that get far more traffic on main routes, and should obviously be higher up the list where major repairs that are going to cost hundreds of thousands are involved. People might not be happy with the repairs, but they're not giving a professional opinion and they have no idea what's planned, so it's largely just noise.

Moan moan. There's no obligation for a Rolls Royce job, just needs some Tarmac in the holes to sort the problem for the moment. Presumably they're planning something for it.

I'm not. But the potholes got filled with Tarmac, that's all that was required from the start. Might only be a temporary fix, but it solves the problem until a bigger fix, which is the important thing. All this hysteria solves nothing.

I think we can be reasonably confident that a full resurface of Port St. Banjo would be far more than £6,500 though. That's peanuts in comparison.

True, might be a bit crap, but it's quick and cheap. Money for the road budget is far better spent elsewhere than on giving a Rolls Royce resurface for a one-horse town. People whinged endlessly about the Sloc (they're still moaning about it here after all these years) but a full resurface for banjo village when there are far more important candidates would be ridiculous.

It's on a bus route through a small, quiet fishing village. There are better candidates for a limited road patching budget.

It's only PSM. There's not a huge volume of traffic, and it's pretty slow, so it shouldn't be a priority. There are better candidates - Lake Road in Douglas is badly potholed, and with the thousands of daily visitors to Tesco, that's a far better candidate for spending limited repair funds than a small fishing village with a vocal MHK.