In light of the government's uphill challenge to fix Britain’s heavily cratered roads, the Secretary of State for Transport has decided that potholes are not at all a reflection of the country's decaying transport infrastructure, but in fact are 'traffic calming measures.'
The Minister responsible, Patrick McLoughlin, confirmed that the potholes will now be intentionally unfilled and their new purpose as ‘inverted speed bumps’ (ISBs) will mean that ‘the more the roads degrade, the safer they will become’.
‘At no expense to the taxpayer, we have saved over £1 billion in road maintenance costs whilst also immediately implementing a proven method for slowing dangerous drivers. We will track the impact of the ISBs and if necessary we will dig holes in some of the newly tarmacked stretches of road in order to make them safer too.’
Drivers are being told not to swerve around the ISBs, but instead hit them at approximately 20mph - a speed found to be 'slow enough not to damage the car in the short term.'
The Minister was also keen for people to know that it is a criminal offense to tamper with the ISBs, ‘we cannot tolerate people trying to fill in the holes - residents must refrain from using any filling materials including gravel, bark chippings or even repositioned roadkill'.
One angry Blackburn resident who lives on a road described as ‘one of the safest in Britain’ with ISBs of one foot in depth, commented ‘It’s alright for the minister to be sat in his office making up new words like ‘inverted’ but if he ever comes to our town I’ll be sure to fill his pothole with my inverted foot.’
Unfortunately, since it's announcement, the policy has been met with tragedy after several Aylesbury residents misguidedly staged a twenty four hour ‘pothole sit in’ on the very busy and poorly lit A413.
Hat-tip to Squudge for the image
