The cavalry to the rescue: 17 of the most formidable scholars you could wish to see as signatories to a letter to The Times opposing the #StonehengeTunnel have saddled up & come galloping over the horizon.
They are not happy.
"An area within the WHS the size of 20 football pitches will be destroyed because the tunnel is simply too short... Half a million artefacts are destined for oblivion: they will be destroyed without trace by mechanical excavators... This destructive strategy is unacceptable."
"Grant Shapps, transport secretary, overruled a recommendation from planning officials to allow the scheme to proceed."
He's also overruled UNESCO & the leading academic experts.
“The decision is being taken not by an environment or heritage minister but by a transport secretary to ease traffic, against the advice of the planning inspectorate.”
The tragedy is that @nationaltrust under its current leadership - as this from Devizes MP @danny__kruger makes clear - have played a key role in providing the Government with the fig leaf they needed to proceed with the #StonehengeTunnel in the face of @PINSgov’s opposition.
"The Planning Inspectorate had recommended Transport Secretary Grant Shapps withhold consent, warning it would cause "permanent, irreversible harm" to the World Heritage site."
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
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.