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/

[Levon River]

No highway through Stonehenge!

It's absolutely disgusting. What next: a tunnel through the Vatican?

[lepetitmartien]

Exactly what I posted on the site!

and the goal is to bring visiting poeple from 100 000 to 1 000 000.

It almost destroyed the sites at Carnac in France. STOP!

[Synthetik]

noe here in Minneapolis we went crazy when the state buit a highway through a native american ceremonail site. Now no one out side of Minneapolis knows about this, about people chaining themselfs to trees and stuff, but stonehenge. That has been a place I have always wanted to visit and I want to see it as it was found. I have hear about the history of it and a higway going through oit would dispose of alto of the artifacts that I want to see. If the Goverment goes through with this, they will only end up being like the US goverment. "full of shit".

[Presto]

I'm disappointed that so many of us tend to insult shit.

I remember parking on the empty road that went past Stonehenge, and wandering alone around. I even lay on the altar stone.

I'm an expat and sometimes get nostalgic, but if Stonehenge has to make way for a bigger road, then I suggest the Houses of Parlament also make way for a motorway down the Thames banks. Actually, I don't think they would mind

[Teiwaz]

It would appear there are some incredibly dumb & greedy people in power.

They just don't get it, do they?

They ruin the planet, hold mother nature to ransom, and bulldoze their arrogant way through ancient sites, building roads. Next they'll build a f**king McDonald's next to the stones...aaaaaarrrrrgh!!!

[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.
---
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!

[lepetitmartien]

Update and bad news

------------------------------------------------------------------------
In this issue:
1. Urgent: Stonehenge needs YOU to stop massively destructive highway!
2. How you can help
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1. Urgent: Stonehenge needs YOU to stop massively destructive highway!

It's mid-June 2003 and the Summer Solstice will soon be here. That's
normally a time for great celebration at Stonehenge. But this year things
will be a little different. The British government has just  published the
full details of how it plans to bulldoze a new four-lane highway through
the world-famous heritage site. British environmental groups, under the
banner of the Stonehenge Alliance, have roundly condemned the scheme as
"massively destructive". Save Stonehene! urgently needs your help, once
again, for the next stage of our campaign. Please read on!

Last time we wrote to you, back in December, the British government had
announced it was softening its original plan to bulldoze the road straight
through the Stonehenge World Heritage Site. The original plan would have
sunk the middle part of the road into a so-called "cut-and-cover" tunnel (a
very deep bulldozed trench with a roof added on top and grassed over
afterwards). Thanks to huge public opposition from people such as you, the
cut-and-cover plan is no more.

But what we have now is not very much better.

The shocking details of the new scheme were released on June 3. The British
government and its roadbuilding wing, the Highways Agency, is still
promoting its plan as an "improvement" for Stonehenge, with glossy artist's
impressions of wide open green fields and empty local roads. The mockup of
the new tunnel entrance, for example, shows a road with only two
carriageways instead of four and absolutely no traffic on the new road
whatsoever! It's all highly misleading and very far from the truth. The
British government talks about its plan to remove "20th century clutter
from Stonehenge"; what it doesn't mention is its determination to replace
it with "21st century clutter" that in our view will be even more
destructive and intrusive.

The facts are these: The new highway would be 7.7 miles (12.4 km) long. A
small part of this new road (1.3 miles or 2.1 km -- about one sixth of it)
would be sunk into a tunnel bored (drilled) under the part of the World
Heritage Site nearest to the stone circle. But that still leaves over six
miles of massively destructive new road being bulldozed at ground level, or
in cuttings (deep trenches) through the priceless landscape around
Stonehenge. Let's make this totally clear: THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT STILL
INTENDS TO BULLDOZE OVER TWO MILES OF BRAND NEW, 4-LANE HIGHWAY AT GROUND
LEVEL THROUGH THE INTERNATIONALLY IMPORTANT STONEHENGE WORLD HERITAGE SITE.
The new road would also involve massive destructive at Longbarrow
Crossroads, the archaeologically sensitive area on the western edge of the
World Heritage Site.

Let's not pretend that this new highway is anything to do with protecting
Stonehenge. It is being built because the British government wants to
create a massive new highway from London to the West Country and
Stonehenge, unfortunately, is in the way. Don't be fooled by the glossy new
photos of grass and trees. The bottom line is this: The new Stonehenge plan
is a Trojan horse that will bulldoze four lanes of massive new road into
the Stonehenge World Heritage Site.

Stonehenge needs YOU!

The British government has released its official plan in draft form (the
so-called "Draft Orders") for "public consultation". We urgently need
hundreds of people to object to this plan BEFORE 4TH SEPTEMBER 2003 so that
the government will hold a public inquiry (a bit like a court case at which
the merits of the plan can be discussed in detail). What we need you to do
is very simple. Please fill in and send off the standard letter of
objection attached below to the Stonehenge Project Team, Highways Agency,
Zone 2-05/K, Temple Quay House, 2 The Square, Temple Quay, BRISTOL BS1 6HA,
UK. Or you can send it by fax to (from UK) 0117 372 8238; (from overseas)
Your international dialling code + 44 117 372 8238. Please DO NOT send
emails; they will ignore them. By all means write your own letter or modify
ours however you wish, but be sure to make clear that you object to the
plan.

You can download the standard objection letter in various wordprocessed
formats (plain text TXT, rich-text format RTF, Microsoft Word DOC, or HTML)
from our website at http://www.savestonehenge.org.uk/actnow.html

2. How you can help

Our website has lots of other ideas on how you can help the campaign. Small
donations of money are a huge help and our campaign would have to stop
without them. We have no overheads or office costs, no paid staff and
everyone works on the campaign for free. Even our website is hosted free.
We are extremely cost-effective: every single pound/dollar we raise goes
directly toward the campaign to Save Stonehenge! If you'd like to make a
secure online donation, please go to
http://www.savestonehenge.org.uk/donate.html

Thanks as always for your support. Please get writing those objection
letters straight away!

Happy Solstice and have a great summer!

Chris
for Save Stonehenge!
Email: info@savestonehenge.org.uk
Website: http://www.savestonehenge.org.uk

========================================================================
Stonehenge standard objection letter:

Please modify as you see fit, fill in the bits in [square brackets] and
either mail to the address below or return by fax. (Fax number: From UK
0117 372 8238; From Overseas: International code + 44 117 372 8238). The
closing date is 4th September 2003. But please do it straight away!

[Saurabh Sethi]

Whatsa this nonsense about building a highway by Stonhenge?!?! I douubt hat it will ever happen since the city of Bath is home to many extrememly wealthy people and Stonehenge is basically part of their backyard. As you listed some addresses to people who object to it, you may notice that he house (estates) have names, not numbers for addresses. Sting lives thier, and he is proably on the low end of the income range tier.. anyywho, just thought i'd share that, because those very very very wealthy people like to go joggin around thier, and a highway would kinda ruin that They have got connections, and i am sure they can get rid off the highway themselves...

[redcafe]

this would be terrible, what a weird idea..