Space

More Ops meeting this morning, followed by a tour of some of the external parts of the site that have particular issues we need to consider.

We eventually get away from Cheltenham around 2.30pm and Stuart (what a hero!) drives us back north.

Following on from Friday's journey down, I'm struck by the proliferation of motorway side advertising. I feel this has to be a bad thing. One of the few compensations for pounding down mile after mile of tarmac motorway, is that you at least tend to have stretches with green planted embankments or views across fields (not such a good thing I appreciate if you're looking from the field across a motorway!).

Increasingly our eyes are bombarded with logos and advertising from all directions. The panel on your shopping trolley, the side of the taxi, the pump nozzle at the petrol station, the local roundabout - if there's a space, well "your advert could be here".

The fact that this degredation of public visual space is now spreading to the motorway network, is surely much to be resisted.

I'm guessing that planning restrictions are the means for control, but I presume the prevalence of signs sited on trailers or decrepid lorries, dumped in the fields, is a means of dodging those regulations.

Sigh...