Nigel Farage, who was so late to a Ukip pre-conference event in Port Talbot that it ended before he arrived, says his tardiness is nothing to do with his professionalism, but is in fact because of immigrants.
“What it does have to do with is a country in which the population is going through the roof, chiefly because of open-door immigration, and the fact the M4 is not as navigable as it used to be,” he said.
Seems legit. Who among us hasn’t arrived belatedly to a party, having been held up by hard-working Polish plumbers driving 10mph in a 60 zone, flicking a V to the rear-view mirror?
We’ve all, surely, been tailgated by cackling non-EU students, pushed off the road and forced to take an alternative route.
But despite this, it’s actually not immigrants who are the number one cause of traffic chaos. We’re pretty sure that our gridlocked roads are down to the following four reasons:
Breastfeeding women
Now that ostentatious breastfeeding has been disallowed by the not-at-all ostentatious Claridge’s hotel (where the Heaven suite is £1,220 a night) and Farage (who boasted about his £2m expenses), women up and down the country have been forced to feed their children at any opportunity they get that isn’t in a public place.
Women at traffic lights and stuck in jams have to make swift calculations as to whether they have time or not to feed their bairns before the cars ahead start rolling or the light switches to green, causing chaos when those judgments prove wrong.
Which they often are. We all know how bad women are at driving.
Serial fans
Sarah Koenig’s real-life murder mystery podcast, Serial, a spin-off from This American Life, has pulled in millions of listeners around the globe. Did Adnan do it? Did Jay do it? Did the woman who mispronounces Mail Chimp in the sponsor’s advert do it? (Definitely, yes.)
Road traffic accidents have peaked on Thursday evenings with the release of new episodes, as fans lose concentration at the wheel. Or because they are racing to try to recreate Adnan’s route to the murder scene in the timeframe laid out by the police.
Santa runs
Ah, Christmas traditions. There is something so comforting about these longstanding festival customs which go back centuries: the John Lewis ad, the Coca-Cola “holidays are coming” truck, someone getting beaten up and/or caught in a house fire in EastEnders.
The familiarity of the nativity play is another. Like Joseph, who hasn’t been turned away from at least three inns on Christmas Eve and ended up sleeping on the ground somewhere?
Now, add the Santa run. Santa runs, or dashes, consist of people dressed up as Father Christmas and, well, running. The races are popular the world over, and while often held in parks, others take place on roads, such as the Liverpool Santa dash. A recipe for travel chaos.
Everyone returning their Black Friday goods
Hey, so guess what, it turns out you didn’t need that 70-inch plasma TV after all. The Delonghi coffee machine you purchased for a mere £229, after giving up caffeine more than a year ago? Whaddya know – it’s never going to be used!
So now we’re dealing with miles of roads around every supermarket being chock-a-block with sheepish, over-zealous consumers parking up to return the goods that were never needed, like someone making themselves sick on the morning of a hangover.
If anything, the queues snaking around the stores to return things are greater than those of people who were looking to buy things.
