h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Many Earth people, especially those in a small insignificant landmass know as "England" thought this ultimate bypass for wheeled vehicles was a complete disaster. Others thought that, at the time, it was a great idea as it allowed those inside its circumferance to avoid meeting those outside, as those outside couldn't get in due to traffic jams caused by accidents, 'Police operations' and the like.

There were a third set of people who thought that the M25 was the gravy train they had all been waiting for as they could bid for construction of parts of it. Once awarded a contract, they could then discover that they would have overruns caused by having to remove houses in the way, discover large lumps of rock that would have to be moved and encourage environmentalists to distrupt their schedule by claiming that someone had sighted a very rare worm in front of a bulldozer. Thus increasing the 'cost', and deffinently the price of completing the 2 miles they were contracted to do.

Once complete, the whole thing would require constant maintenance and the production of several million small red and white cones.

In fact The whole M25 'thing' had been tried very successfully some years before, where a town's ring road had been so well miss-managed that the final piece could not be completed as the two joining ends were mis-aligned by some 50ft, vertically.

However, none of the above is in fact true. The M25 is actually the greatest success of the little know species of Road Planners who, having no transportation requirements on their home planets (a series of 3 orbs in the less trendy suburb of the Northern end of the Western spiral of Andromida, each a differnt colour, Red, Amber and Green); conduct experiments on all life forms that attempt to get from one point to another by putting increasing challenging obstacles in their way. They actually invented the round about before the wheel.

They are responsible for Spegetti Junction (M5-M6), road approaches to all airports, One-Way systems and the Magic Round About in Hemel Hempstead.

The M25 is the finest example of their 'Art' and also acts as a pretty good target for Vogon distruction fleets, who, incidently, financed the whole thing anyway.