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Will local councils have roadworks towing the line next year?
Any of you frustrated by roadworks should sigh with relief if you don't have to drive down Copenhagen Road in Islington, North London. Apparently it has been dug up 375 times over the past five years, with most of the work carried out by the bewildering array of utility companies that have the right to carve up the roads whenever they wish. Local councils will get powers to exert more control over impromptu open-highway surgery from next year, but whether that will lead to more joined-up thinking is anyone's guess. Some of us get bogged down in technical terms and mechanistic language, missing the beauty and images dancing just below the surface. But not so Dick Denby. This silver-tongued advocate of longer, heavier trucks recently explained his take on axle and plated weights to us thus: 'Think of the truck as Marilyn Monroe. What would you think of first, her weight or her dimensions? It's the dimensions that count every time."
Guess we know where Dick stands in the size-zero debate, then. And his description of his EcoLink with its tight little turning circle is simply poetic: "She's a motorway matron with the agility of a ballerina.'' The title of industry laureate is calling, Dick...