those in attendance at said meeting included : Culture Minister Ed Vaizey, Wiltshire Council, and English Heritage and they met to discuss "traffic problems around Stonehenge" or to get to the nitty gritty....wait for it.....how to close Byway 12 specifically between the A303 and the now (defunct?) A344.
It doesn't take any local rocket scientist many more milliseconds to deduce that the prime purpose of this undemocratic meeting, was to exert as much leverage into STOPPING any traffic from either using, or parking on Byway 12 - very clearly, because www.english-heritage.org.uk EH (and we do exclude Kate Davies/General Manager at Stonehenge Visitor's Centre) do not and have never, since their inception as a QUANGO in 1984, wanted to allow FREE ACCESS to the Stone Circle at Stonehenge.
Arthur Uther Pendragon has campaigned on this issue for many a long year, culminating in a protest on Byway 12 in 2008 to allow free access to the Nation's property that is Stonehenge.
STAG in principle, would support this view...i.e. to deny a RIGHT - underwritten by Sir Cecil Chubb in the early 20th Century, that Stonehenge BELONGS to the Nation and that any citizen should have access (effectively free, or otherwise) basically in perpetuity.
What we are seeing now, is the latest in a long line of cynical, quasi-legal, and very forceful attempts to close non-metalled roads in the vicinity of Stonehenge to ALL forms of traffic, and this currently, has nothing whatsoever to do with any supposedly legitimate aspects of safety. It has all to do with English Heritage's - MISSION/QUEST/OBSESSION! (I would not give it the title "crusade" as this would give the attempt, an erroneous form of legitimacy).
Consider this: A303 gets an overdue and appropriate dualling past Stonehenge, by whatever means. Would this then mean that EH's supposed concerns over "safety" in respect of Byway 12/A303 be met, or overtaken by events?.....Certainly not! They would then claim that they had "succeeded" in addressing the "safety issues" and there could be no reason to then return that section of Byway 12 to its previous status. They would then dig in heels, and demand that because, for a given period of time, there had been no continuity of route on said Byway in either a Northerly or Southerly direction, that this would be sufficient reason to close the whole of the route by Statutory Instrument or S I, dig it up, and therefore, the same tenets would also be applied to the remaining Byways in the locus of Stonehenge of which there are 5 others, some of which are both, not visible from Stonehenge and vice versa. Also, as described in the report to Wiltshire Council of 16th November 2011 see: http://www.wiltshire.gov.uk/stonehenge-inquiry-recommendation-report.pdf file ref: DPI/T3915/11/20 as "clearly little used, with grassy sward over most of its length....very quiet and the landscape is more intimate" If you have no time to read the whole 83 pages of this report, the important section is on page 5 para 2.8.
E H attempted in 2011 to, not only obliterate the A344, but all other Byways they considered within the Stonehenge WHS by the instrument of Stopping Up Orders (SUOs) and a tranche of Traffic Regulation Orders (TROs). However, they failed to achieve their objectives as a result of well presented objections by a very large number of parties who were well briefed and in the greater majority, presented arguments that EH thought they could "brush aside".
They didn't succeed in part of their plan then, and some of us who are in STAG now realise that, figuratively speaking, they would lick their wounds, and then be back to try again.
It appears.....THAT TIME HAS COME!
Labels:A303,Accidents,Bypass,Deaths,Ed Vaizey,English Heritage,Highways Agency,Stonehenge,Stonehenge Traffic Action Group,Wiltshire Police,WiSBAng
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