Why did the Planning Inspectorate recommend tthe Government should turn down the #StonehengeTunnel?
Because it threatens "substantial harm" to the Stonehenge landscape, which is - as the Planning Inspectorate reminds the Government - a World Heritage Site
Grantt Schapps' response? “He accepts there will be harm as a result of the Development in relation to cultural heritage & the historic environment & that this should carry great weight… This harm along with the other harms identified, are outweighed by the benefits.”
The benefits to who?
- Tory MPs in the s-west
- the haulage industry
- developers, who will make fat profit from bulldozing our most precious prehistoric landscape
- English Heritage & the Natural Trust, who will be able to charge people for a view that will no longer be free
All of which means that a supposedly Conservative government, given the perfect excuse to cancel this monstrous development by the Planning Inspectorate, have decided instead to spaff £2bn on a white elephant that - as Highways England admit - will barely speed up travel times
The 4.8 seconds saved on an avge car journey have to be measured against reaches of time so profound that they shade into the sacred. A landscape that has endured for millennia without a massive injection of concrete & tarmac is now going to get one. Our legacy to its future.
If anyone would like an official quote from me in my role as President of @SaveStonehenge, please find it attached. #StonehengeTunnel
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"The Planning Inspectorate had recommended Transport Secretary Grant Shapps withhold consent, warning it would cause "permanent, irreversible harm" to the World Heritage site."
Looking forward to it hugely, as I ever do my brother’s books...
General Alexander, I learn from @James1940, was the only Allied commander in the 2nd World War to have led German troops in battle. (In 1919, against the Soviets in Latvia.) #Sicily43
Alexander had also commanded men in battle at every single officer rank, spoke German, French, Italian, Russian & Urdu fluently, & was the last British soldier to be evacuated from Dunkirk. Classy.
Even if it doesn’t, I trust that @JoeBiden will be loyal to the memory of his Chichester-born great-great-great grandfather, & throw his full weight behind @sussex_society’s 175th anniversary appeal
America! What better way to celebrate the ancestry of your new president than by supporting @sussex_society - Britain's oldest county archaeological society? It desperately needs all the help you can give! Thank you! sussexpast.co.uk/please-donate-…
Well, it's not a statue OF Mary Wollstonecraft. Also, FWIW, there is a statue of her son-in-law at University College, Oxford, that is absolutely stark bollock naked.