Transport Minister Keith Brown says average-speed cameras should be in place on the A9 between Dunblane and Inverness by next summer.
That's not good enough. "Average" speed cameras? We deserve better than this. "Average" speed cameras just won't do. Who does he think we are?
We want state-of-the-art cameras. We want lenses and tripods, f-stops and shutter speeds. Maybe even spotlights and assistants holding up those giant reflector screens. We don't want just some knackered point-and-shoot cheapo ones up there. We've paid all that money for the car (well, not that much in your case – and have you thought of Hoovering it ever?) – we want Nikons and Canons, top-of-the-range Lumix, sophisticated jobs that can link to our social media immediately. Damn it – we have a reputation out there.
We want cameras that can post our blurred coolness to Facebook instantly. We want cameras that provide Pinterest clips, Google circle updates, Tmblr notifications, whatever any of these things are. We want our own You Tube channel, unless it's the Archbishop of Canterbury driving past in which case he's happy with Usury Tube. In short, we want the whole nine yards (actually, Dunblane to Inverness is about 98 miles).
That's the trouble with so much of our motorway network. It's so laughably "average". Good God, man, we're hosting the Commonwealth Games and we've only got the one carriageway. What if this spread to the stadium? Are we going to say to Usain and the rest of the guys: "Gentlemen, just a couple of 'housekeeping' points before we get the race underway. You'll notice we have just the one lane. Um- there is a £3bn upgrade due, but we're not expecting completion until 2025. So you'll just have to go carefully. Use the hard shoulder if you have to."
Which isn't to say that parts of the A9 aren't pleasant enough. Conon Bridge is fine as far it goes, but let's not pretend it's Yosemite. Yes, there's a Spar there – and a pretty damn fine one too – but even photographed in high definition black-and-white it's never going to live up to Adams's classic Clearing Winter Storm, whose heavenly swirling clouds and eternally flowing waterfall are reproduced on calendars and stationery every year. Mind you, try buying a box of Cheerios in Yosemite – hopeless.
So by all means, go ahead, install your cameras. Let's just make sure they meet the standards we require.
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