ImagesBrighton pictures of the week 10-4-2006

IMAGESBRIGHTON photography by david gray
	R O A D W O R K S
	P I C T U R E S O F T H E W E E K 1 0 - 4 - 2 0 0 6

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This week's picture subject is roadworks. Easter is approaching and that means the digging season is well under way on Britain's creaking and overcrowded transport network. Longer hours of daylight seem to make the traffic cones sprout forth like spring bulbs. If only they were greeted with similar delight. But, apart from the contractors, everyone else is maddened by the mania for digging, cabling and "improvements". Equally, no one can see why the same stretch of street is so often dug up and filled in over and over again. The reason, of course, is privatisation. Private utilities and contractors are necessarily focussed on their own interests at the expense of the wider, and now much derided, concept of social utility. More digging means more money. At Coulsdon in Surrey there's a section of the London-Brighton road that has been the subject of continuous excavation for at least a decade. Over the same period, the Chinese economy must have almost tripled in size.

A Brighton street closed for works in May 2003 (image 2331-12)

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