A drain on our resources . .
Page 67
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ALMOST everyone except piggy-bankers has called for substantial spending on crumbling roads and sewers and other vital works, The Government, its cloth ears securely buttoned up, has replied with a miserly increase of £28 million on national road schemes in the next financial year. At the present rate, some roads will literally go down the drain before they are repaired.
This is not special pleading on behalf of the construction industry. The CBI, which has pressed for a £3 billion 10-year road investment programme, represents all British industry. Its case is backed by the Police Studies Institute, among others, which estimates that an extra £3,500 million a year is needed to stop the rot in social amenities. R. D. Yeomans, managing director of the Wincanton Group, goes so far as to attribute the recession partially to Government neglect of roods. He points out that after 12 years in the EEC, Britain still lacks direct dual carriageways from the Industrial areas to the South and East-coast ports, which have grown so remarkably.
Apart from all that, we shall soon be unable to buy even the proverbial haiporth of tar to patch the roads.