Traffic Lights on the road to Milton Park

Is it just me, or does this article heading sound like the title of a 1970s concept album? I can see the artwork and triple gatefold sleeve now.

This is one that annoys me every morning. I drive from Didcot to Milton Park (mainly bacause I'm too fat and lazy to cycle) to go to work. There is a long straight piece of road which runs parallel to the railway track. It has one junction in the middle of it, a right turn into Didcot Power Station. In theory, cars coming from this entrance can only turn left onto the main road, as there are "no right turn" signs. I would add in a drawing but that would require more computer literacy that I possess - hopefully the above is clear.

This junction has traffic lights on it, whcih I admit is sensible. However, the seqencing and timing of the lights has no logic to it. The lights allow traffic across the junction from each of the three directions in turn. This means that if you are driving along the main road, you have to stop and wait for cars to come towards you on the opposite side of the road, when there is no possible way for them to cross your path. I don't have a problem with stopping to allow cars out from the side road, and indeed this is on a sensor so it only stops all the traffic on the main road if there is someone wanting to come out of the Power Station. However, a lot of cars coming from the Power Station turn right (against the signage). If they didn't do this and followed the correct instructions then there would never be a need to stop any traffic going towards Milton Park. Alternatively, as the traffic is all stopped anyway, then there is no reason for this to be a"left turn only" route. This leads to several problems:

• lots of cars run through the red lights, especially away from the busy times when the road can be completely empty: you can see the whole length of the road;
• cars break the "left turn only" rule routinely, making a mockery of the law itself;
• those law abiding citizens who stop at the lights get frustrated, as they are held up, seemingly for no good reason.

I have never seen any monitoring (police, cameras) on the junction, which leads to more and more abuses of the lights.

Obviously, a decision on how to set up the junction has been made somewhere within the local councils, I would guess at the Highways division of either Vale of the White Horse DC or Oxfordshire CC. I also know that in theory these councils are accountable to the electorate as they vote on the make up of the councils themselves. However, in actual fact you don't vote for the real decision makers as these are the people in permanent jobs (public sector/ civil service, etc.). They are tasked with making the decisions that actually affect the way that our lives are run. They will be accountable to the local council but are not themselves elected. I realise that stopping at one traffic light is not an enormous problem for me, but it illustrates the point nicely, and brings me on to the nature (and illusion) of the UK's brand of democracy which I might get onto in a different rant.

Having just got back from a few days in Athens I feel competely able to talk about democracy in all its historical forms. Of course, I only mean in my own usual uninformed way!