Pothole problem has now turned into a national joke

ONE of the reasons why I still very occasionally venture into the murky world of social media is uncovering the myriad of ways that people find to moan about their problems, but in a way that amuses the rest of us.

If nobody has coined the term, then it could be called something like ‘moan-tertainment’ (copyright me).

Among the examples would be a photo I recently clapped eyes on, of a man lying down in a pothole. The point, I think, was that the local authority had tried to deny that the pothole in question was big enough in either girth or depth to be worthy of repair. So a man in a boiler suit decided it was his civic duty to lay in it and have his photo taken.

In fact, there are many examples where defects in our highways and byways are the subject of our best and brightest moantertainers.

Earlier this year, a teenager in Malmesbury tried fishing in one water-filled pothole, wearing a mask of his local MP and highlighting his ire on a placard beside his stool.

The mind behind his excellent piece of moantertainment (no, I’m not going to stop) is Ben Thornton, a 19-year-old who clearly has a beef about potholes in Wiltshire.

In another well-executed stunt, Ben turned pothole-riddled roads in his hometown into a mini golf course, which he labelled High Street Crazy Potholes Golf. Some 20 people actually came to play the ‘course’, highlighting the problem.

I remember my own colleagues introducing Pothole Pete into the newsroom (when we had one).

Pete was a two-foot-high Playmobil figure who from then on was carried around by our then photographers and used to highlight the size of potholes around the Plymouth area.

Elsewhere, the laughable efforts of politicians provide the rich material for satire by more seasoned moantertainers. Such as a photo of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak bending over and looking into a pothole while on a visit to the North East last year, which he likely regrets ever being persuaded to take part in.

This one cringeworthy image immediately led to all kinds of clever headlines, such as ‘Potholes? Rishi Sunak is looking into them’.

Of course, the use of gallows humour, and ridiculing the state of the country while at least having a chuckle in the meantime, masks the point that potholes are now so ubiquitous that the only way we can bear to raise the topic without a Falling Down-style meltdown is to laugh.

Most of Britain’s roads were not meant to last this long, and are now carrying far greater volumes of traffic.

Defects are inevitable.

My own road has had more holes than St Andrew’s golf course, many of which have been patched by a team of workers, but only after most of the contents of the road had been spewed out and ended up in the drains, causing more serious issues.

But the fact that the road is patched instead of resurfaced means that, as soon as it rains, water filters down the sides and more potholes open up.

The Government announced this month that some £8.3 billion which has been diverted away from the HS2 rail scheme is to be spent on fixing potholes and resurfacing roads, and that money has been handed to local authorities.

Until a wholesale programme of resurfacing on ordinary streets occurs, it will be a neverending cycle, though.

Until councils are instructed in no uncertain terms to resurfacing our breaking roads instead of patching them up temporarily, we will have to satisfy ourselves with images of men going fishing in potholes, playing golf in them, or lying down in them.

You have to laugh.