Public holiday saint? I'll take that one.

St Patrick v St George

A couple of people have pointed out that we, the English, are happy to find Guinness, recipes for colcannon, Irish stew, and wander around in huge, garish green foam hats on St Paddies, while St George's passes us by.

I think it's the same with the Jocks. Burns night and we're reaching for the haggis, tatties and neeps and a dram. We don't celebrate Shakespeare day / night / evening, do we? North of the border they also get an additional new years bank holiday. Sensible.

I don't know (or care) who the patron saint of Poland is, or even if we have one (we probably do). If I had to adopt one, it wouldn't be St George (get to work and tug those forelocks, bow, curtsey, and throw yourselves to the ground in front of your royals and aristocracy, you plebs). It'd be St Pat (take a day off, bejesus, and enjoy the crac).

I wasn't on the phone officer...

...I was looking something up on the Internet.

A Surrey Police press release records some great excuses from drivers nabbed on their phones.

One said: “it's the ex-wife. She's having a right rant. Would you mind talking to her?”

Apparently there was a “I wasn't on the phone, I was reading a text” and a “I was answering an email.”

There were over zealous bosses checking whereabouts and all sorts of things to blame.

I hope someone cited roadworks, congestion, and rubbish, slow-moving traffic. Doing the speed limit, there's no temptation to use the phone. It sits there, unwanted and ignored. When I join the M25 (speed limit 70 mph) from the A-road I use to get to the M25 (speed limit 70 mph, average speed typically 70 mph) and slow down to between 5 mph and 10 mph for a few miles (pre roadworks) and now between 0 mph and 3 mph (roadworks), well, come here phone, lets make some calls, and see who's emailed chasing for what.

The guy using the Internet was probably looking for an alternative route that would allow him to make decent, reasonable progress. Expecting drivers to abide by the law is a very one-sided bargain when the roads don't come up to scratch and meet their obligations. Last Monday, apparently (I know there was snow, if you can't drive in snow don't drive in it, don't block the road, and why don't the council have bulldozers to clear the stuck vehicles away so the roads remain passable?), it was taking the poor people who had to go that way almost two hours to progress the distance of less than a mile along the High Street. Many of them would've been there, at between nine and ten o'clock, because they'd had a long, slow, arduous drive back home, stuck in jams caused by the lack of preparation and will to keep things moving (lack of will: see “miles of tailbacks due to ongoing accident investigation”), and then had 'almost home' become 'stuck still for hours' at the final stretch.

We enter into a contract for the roads, in good faith. There's offer: “buy a car, pay road and excessive fuel tax, and you can use it”. There's acceptance: buy car, pay taxes, and there's consideration (contractually) when the money changes hands. Then there's a contract frustrated out of existence by the other parties lack of performance of their obligations. One third of drivers have had to have their cars fixed due to pothole damage. One third.

Do your bit, first, then expect better behaviour. Maybe.