Protecting a bunch of rocks and ignoring local problems
WHILE Wiltshire seems hell- bent on hiding Stonehenge from road users, Lancashire has been installing sculptures on prominent hills, which are points.
A "panopticon", it seems, is defined as a space or device providing a comprehensive or panoramic view. I feel Stonehenge falls into this category as well.
Once the mostly dual carriageway of the A303 reaches Amesbury, the road to the west becomes a bottleneck because of this wretched national monument, which sees people killed in crashes on a regular basis.
In reality, different Government bodies ignore local problems such as the Amesbury junction and the Winterbourne Stoke village in favour of protecting an inert bunch of rocks.
Surely the living take priority over the long dead and their memorials, be they barrows or henges.
Even our forefathers had the wits to use Old Sarum Castle as a quarry for their new cathedral around which the city has grown up.
Perhaps someone such as Prince Charles could wield the axe to slice through this Gordian knot and break the impasse.
Colin H Duller Salisbury Wiltshire
Comments
by Dorothee, West Sussex
Friday, August 29 2008, 8:07PM
“Hhmmm, so what do you suggest to do with this 'wretched national monument'?
Which just also happens to be a World Heritage Site?
Use even more of the stones as building blocks - as has happened before?
Thereby destroying something that gives just a bit of revenue to the government - which you are part of? Or of whose opposition you are part of?
If the government had not wasted 37 million pounds in about 11 years something could have been done already.
If the people who rule this country - as our elected representatives - were bound by their word then all this would have long since been sorted.
so, as King Arthur says: Honour Thy Spoken Word.”