Stonehenge!, UK governement at war Options

[lepetitmartien]

If like me you like dearly big stones standing in moors, this site and the governement proposed highway through the site are likely to upset you a bit.

No highway through Stonehenge!

http://www.savestonehenge.org.uk/

[lepetitmartien]

I received the newsletter a few days ago here it is, good and not so good news, well you'll see :

In this issue:
1. Stonehenge saved? Not quite.
2. What happens next?
3. Would you like to support our campaign?

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1. Stonehenge saved? Not quite.

Much has happened since we last wrote to you back in September.

As you'll recall, we wrote to ask your help in stopping a four-lane highway from being bulldozed through the Stonehenge World Heritage Site. The plan was to create a brand new and very wide road using a method called cut-and-cover: gouge a deep trench, add a roof on top... and ask questions later. We also alerted you to the position of Britain's National Trust, a charity that owns most of the Stonehenge World Heritage Site, which had initially supported the road scheme.

Thanks in part to the many emails and letters you sent, some remarkable
things have happened in the last few weeks.

After looking carefully at all the evidence, the National Trust made a very courageous decision to change its position and firmly opposed the cut-and-cover road it had once supported. Opposition also came from ICOMOS-UK, the committee of archaeologists charged with safeguarding the World Heritage Site on behalf of UNESCO. Other groups, notably the Stonehenge Alliance of environmental, archaeological, and transport organizations chaired by Lord Kennet, continued to make a powerfully persuasive case against cut-and-cover.

Well miracles do happen.

On Wednesday of this week, the British's government's Transport and Culture ministries announced that they had changed their minds about the road: it would now be bored underneath the central part of the Stonehenge World Heritage Site instead of arrogantly bulldozed right throught it. Good news indeed for Stonehenge. (You can read more about the announcement in Maev Kennedy's article from the UK newspaper, The Guardian, here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,...,857552,00.html

But there is a snag.

The new tunnel will be just 1.3 miles (2.1 km) long. That means, outside the tunnel section, huge cuttings will still have to be bulldozed through part of the Stonehenge World Heritage Site. Many people -- including Save Stonehenge -- refuse to stomach the idea of bulldozers trashing the World Heritage Site and we simply do not accept that a short, bored tunnel is the best we can do. ICOMOS-UK does not support the short bored tunnel. The National Trust has said it wants to know why the government won't build a longer tunnel (as the owner of the land, it still has the power to veto the road altogether).

Now we don't want to appear ungrateful to the British government: they have, after all, agreed to find an extra 30 million pounds (45 million dollars) on this highway. Thank you British government. But let's be clear about this: The British government is pretending that its main concern is to do Stonehenge a favour. It isn't. The aim of this scheme is to build a new four-lane highway. Stonehenge is, unfortunately, in the way. So the British government is doing the cheapest thing it possibly can to make it politically acceptable to build a new highway through a World Heritage Site.

It's pretending to go out of its way to protect Stonehenge, which has been there for 5000 years, by spending an extra ?30 million pounds. But it has ?5.5 billion to spend on transport. And it spent ?800 million pounds on London's Millennium Dome, an ill-fated, much-hated plastic tent that was only used for a year.

We believe Stonehenge deserves the best possible solution, not the cheapest one. And we will continue to fight to ensure it gets it. Other, longer tunnels need to be considered; new routes have been proposed that take the highway right outside the World Heritage Site; and there are public transportation options too. All these things must be looked at first before we take drastic, irreversible steps.

After all, Stonehenge is 5000 years old; the motor car is about 100 years old. Will we still be driving automobiles in 100, 500, or 1000 years time? Will future generations curse our short-term, blinkered thinking in bulldozing a new road through Stonehenge?

So our campaign to secure the future Stonehenge really deserves will go on.
You wouldn't expect any less of us, would you?

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2. What happens next?

In the Spring of 2003, the British government will publish the official legal documents (known as Draft Orders) that will allow it to proceed with the scheme. Save Stonehenge and a number of other groups will formally oppose these orders. And there will then be a public inquiry -- a cross between a public meeting and a court case where supporters and pponents of the road can argue their cases. We will keep you posted.
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3. Please support our campaign

Do you buy things from Amazon.com? If you follow a direct link from our website, we make 5-15% commission on whatever you spend -- and it won't cost you any extra:
http://www.savestonehenge.org.uk/stonebooks.html

Many people have written asking to make donations to our campaign. We're delighted to announce that we've finally set up a secure online donation system on our website, using the PayPal system:
http://www.savestonehenge.org.uk/donate.html

It works in the UK, the US, and hopefully in most other countries too.

Every penny/cent we raise goes straight into the campaign. We have 0% admin and bureacracy costs!

Thanks, as always, for your support and Season's Greetings,

Save Stonehenge!