Once again wakefield District Council's department of Planning, this time in conjuction with the highways department, have demonstrated that the only qualification you need to be a planning officer are obiously the ability to collect one fag packet and a pencil!

The recent changes to the road layout at ings road are nothing short of disasterous. At a time when the environmental impact of everything we do is under growing scrutiny and provides our local council with more money making excuses than they could have ever dared to dream for (Imagine the debating chamber - 'hey, lets charge everyone for the volume of household waste they produce' 'Don't we already do that through the council taxes' 'Yeah, but if we go on an environmmental impact agenda we can charge more by weighing everything, obviously we'd still keep the council tax in place for other stuff!!) I digress....

Anyone who has had the misfortune to negotiate the current road works can have only one thought in mind, the reality is that once the cones are removed the chaos will continue. The reason being that we now have lanes of traffic crossing lanes of traffic in whichj ever direction you dare to move. Driving out of thornes lane you no longer have the reassuring comfort of only having to watch traffic from the right. We have traffic lights, an unecessary no right turn prohibition and for anyone wanting to turn right a mile plus long detour down ings road, round sainsburys roundabout, back up ings road, across the traffic heading from the city centre down ings road, under the bridge. back past the end of Thornes lane that you drove out of half an hour previously before finally negotiating a thrid set of traffic lights that take you onto Chantry Bridge.

It's no wonder that morning after morning, endless cars are ignoring the unnecessary no right turn sign and every qualified planner by turning right, knowing that anyone taking the 'proper detour' will be adding immeasurably to our rapidly depleteing ozone layer.

Additionally for those heading straight into Wakefield via Kirkgate there are a whole new set of frustrations, having crossed the Ings Road slip road there are a second set of lights to negotiate (I've been caught at these and prohibited from joining the empty Chantry bridge road only to be released to be confronted by the nose to tail traffic sent forward from the new lights on Chantry Bridge. almost it would seem in a dleiberate attempt by wakefields bumbling planners to add yet more misery and frustration to anyone who dares to venture out in their car.)

Another disgracefully inept consequence of this forward thinking example of planning wisdomn is that there is now congestion on Thornes Lane every morning the like of which we haven't seen in 15 years!

It seems to me that a simpler and more obvious solution would have been to have create one free flowing giratory around the whole Halfords site, a system which even the most intellectually challenged drivers would have quickly understood and grown to use with some degree of aptitude. Instead we are left with an environmentally unfriendly badly thought layout littered with the ver present nightmare of potential points of conflict, raised tempers and short fuses. The damage to the ozone layer will pale into insignificance once it all erupts!!

Why is it the staff in Doncaster Charity shops feel the need to stack shelves and faff about when we the customer is trying to browse?

It happened twice today and then they insist in tutting when you ask them to move.