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The Guardian - UK

Politics

Sam Wollaston

Broken roads and broken necks: life in pothole Britain

Pothole Britain Rod Stewart Tony Travers Blackburn RAC United Kingdom

A rain-filled pothole in the shape of the UK

On 17 January 1967, the Daily Mail ran a news brief about the sorry state of the roads in a town in north-west England. Not the biggest story of the day, it would have been forgotten quickly if one Mail reader, a certain John Lennon, hadn’t seen it, put it in a famous song and asphalted it into the consciousness of a generation or two:

I read the news today, oh boy
4,000 holes in Blackburn, Lancashire

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