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highwaysmaintenance.com
NEWSLETTER
March 2002
TOPICS

New Pages

 Motto of the Month
 Introduction

Spring is on its way fast in the U.K., the snowdrops are out and the daffodils soon will be and everybody is working like mad to spend the budget before the end of March, as the accountants still rule.
For thirty years as  I know to "people" have been saying we need some different sort of accounting system so that we do not get the "Mad March Rush", so that if money was left in the kitty, or some kindly government official suddenly found they had a lot of money left in some account that had to be spent immediately, we had the time to spend it to best effect.
You would think with all the brains we are supposed to have at the top somebody would
have sorted it by now, because, believe it or not it is not easy to spend a lot of money quickly and well. 
Even the industry has to decline some of the work on offer because they do not have the capacity to accommodate the sudden rush of spending. 
And of course, the law of supply and demand comes in to force to push prices upwards for the same products and processes.
Ah well, perhaps it is fortunate I am just a materials technician, and not a "suit", I do not have these weighty problems to contend with, but I thought I would mention it all the same.
Personally, I believe we cannot afford any situation where money already allocated to highways maintenance is lost, or poorly spent, as we do not have sufficient for the purpose in the first place.

New Pages

I have created a number of pages that consist almost entirely of photographs in highly compressed "jpeg" format. This is so that I may be better able to illustrate information relating to the different bituminous surfacing materials and their appearance.
I have also included photographs on other topics and individual items, anyway, take a look and see if you find them useful.
However, it should be said that you ought to be getting out on site and seeing the bituminous mixtures you are purchasing for "real", they may be quite different from the materials my pictures illustrate, yet still be parading under the same title. 
To re-phrase a well known saying, because you call something a rose does not mean it will smell like a rose.
You will access these new photographs from the Fast Photographs Menu.

Motto of the Month

"One ought not to desire the impossible"

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