Everyone is complaining about it... the miserable summer.
Can it be that the sun is going to come out to shine on cue for the London Olympics 2012?
I sincerely hope that the whole affair is a success. I never for a moment considered trying to book a ticket. Far too much hassle, not to mention the expense!
However, I think I will go down to take a look at the Olympic Park once the games are over, since I gather the place is quite a triumph of urban regeneration.
It will probably look much better in 2014, when the plants have a chance to mature, than it does right now.
In fact, I was down in London (should that be "up in London?) earlier this week for an overnight stay on business.
There was a definite extra layer of excitement - an air of expectation about the place.
I expect that it will be a bonanza for some many hotels and other tourist businesses, with so many visitors descending on the place.
However, I got a rather different view from a cabbie. These guys tend to know of what they speak!
And he reckons parts of London are going to be a virtual ghost town for the duration. So many warnings have been issued about the place being in lock-down that the Londoners have opted to take their holidays and desert the capital for the duration,.
According to the oracle at the wheel, half the cabbies in London have decided to take their holidays during the 2012 Olympics, convinced that trade will be so slack.
I mentioned that I had noticed on the Marylebone Road, and other major trunk routes, that the outside lane has been designated "Olympics Lane".
They come into operation on 25th July apparently, and from that date only olympics officials and sponsors will be allowed to use them.
Since the inside of three lanes is reserved for buses and taxis, it means that the road is down to ONE lane for ordinary motorists.
No wonder the cabbies think it will not be worth plying their trade!
It sounds like the usual mistake made by a committee - probably a decision taken 5 years ago in the planning process.
"How are we going to be sure to get the VIPs around the city?" someone will have asked. The answer was "We will crate special lanes just for them!"
It probably sounded like the only way... on paper. But I gather there are probably only about 1000 people who are going to qualify to use, what have been called "Zil Lanes" (The Zil was the limo used by the soviet communist martinets of the Polit Bureau in Moscow).
What a PR disaster! Another example of a completely wrong-headed "bureacrazy".
For me it crystalises one of the most annoying facets of modern motoring.
Faced with a perceived (false?) problem of "too many cars", he car-hating bureucrazies decide to put down road humps all over the place, or reserve lanes for buses and taxis.
To my mind there is no evidence, that these lanes reduced car usage. They may speed some journeys by cab or bus (except when those vehicles themselves get caught in a jam actually caused by the very lane restrictions that choke general traffic!)
But what I really fundamentally object to, is the arbitrary ban that is placed on the long-suffering motorist, to keep him off a part of the road that he/she has paid for in road tax.
It just does not seem fair that we are excluded from part of the road that we are paying to build and maintain through Road Excise Duty.
These Zil Lanes for the Olympic knobs are just the most outrageous example of the Animal Farm mentality in the government and town halls.
Four wheels bad... eight wheels good... chauffeur-driven limo better!
The fact is that the people who MAKE these decisions are all in the Zil lane brigade, with free travel - including limos hire - paid from the public purse.
Utter hypocrisy!
