Just been sent an appeal from the Woodland Trust. This Gov. want to tear up ancient woodland AGAIN - for their stupid new train set!
After what the monstrous Heseltine presided over in the 1990s, Twyford
Down and the Newbury ring road, the chances of greedy Tories building any kind
of tunnel, for their stupid new train set, in order to save nature and
endangered habitat is virtually non-existant. Twyford Down was a site of
special scientific interest, and the terrain was chalk, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD! If
they couldn't be bothered to pay engineeers to drill through soft chalk, what
chance does any woodland or natural habitat have now- under this vandalous lot? Look at
the Somerset Levels, Cameron could NOT CARE LESS and has turned away expert
help from the Dutch - he could not give a damn about the countyside, his swine
of a wife is a property developer and is having acres of trees felled around
Scunthorpe to create her lucrative concrete monstrosities. Filthy lucre, that's
all they care about! The Tories won't be happy until all the trees are cut down
and all wildlife in the UK is dead! See this:-
http://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/campaigning/campaigns/protect-ancient-woodland/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=wt_newsletter_feb2014Tory Michael Heseltine's barbaric legacy :-
"Construction
of the Newbury bypass will forever be recalled as the scheme that changed the
way engineers think about the environment.
What
ignited the treetop and tunnel protests was a road scheme with the goal of
improving traffic flow on the A34, the main route between the Midlands and the
south coast ports of Portsmouth and Southampton.
And
it did - with the opening of the bypass in November 1998 - the entire route,
from the M40 to the M3, became dual carriageway.
But
controversy dogged the road both before and after its opening. Environmental
campaigners set up 29 camps and built treehouses and tunnels in an effort to
halt the felling of over 49ha of mature woodland along the route.
The
protest made a celebrity out of eco-warrior Swampy and added millions to the
project’s costs.
It
became the UK’s largest anti-road protest in which more than 1,000 people were
arrested. Campaigners were pulled out of trees and starved out of tunnels.
Policing and security costs meant the bypass overran its budget by 50% and took
34 months to complete. The 12.8km long bypass cost of £100M.
Swampy
emerged as something of a national hero, even appearing on the BBC’s Have I Got
News for You. Not everyone was enamoured, however. A magistrate in Reading told
Swampy to stop “living off the back of society”.
Former
transport minister John Watts said he would like to see him buried in concrete
and T-shirts appeared with the slogan “Sod off, Swampy”.
But the change in attitudes to road
building since is clear. Anti-road campaigners have changed the way in which
they themselves operate." Remembering Twyford Down (M3) road protest
http://www.urban75.org/blog/remembering-twyford-down-m3-road-protest/
State-sponsored vandalism under the Tories in the early 1990s. Twyford Down, was a "site of special scientific interest", covered in rare plants and the habitat of even more rare butterflies and other insects! All now dead and gone forever! SO WHAT! It was trashed by John Major's government! Michael Heseltine was Minister For The Environment - sick joke or what?! It was his job to RUIN IT! And boy did he .....today this montrously ugly legacy is still a thoroughly sickening perverted sight, and a bloody disgrace to Hampshire and the total bunch of fluoride drinking, brain dead twats who live there and let this happen! SHAME ON YOU! The opening up of south Hampshire to Londoners and Northerners has facilitated acre upon acre upon acre UPON ACRE of the ugliest urban sprawl. Miles of endless ugly "Barratt Homes" across what were once the strawberry fields, paddocks, grazing areas and ancient woodland all around the New Forest, Southampton, Portsmouth, Bournemouth, Winchester etc. I hope the Chilterns area knows what it is in for once this train link is built through it! "Barratt Homes AND BARBARITY- all the way!
".....Surely, they said, the law will not permit the beast to chew a path 400 foot wide and 100 foot deep through all this, blocking up rivers, uprooting oaks and chestnuts, smearing tarmac over the camomile and poppies. They were wrong.
They fought with tactics which the beast has seen a hundred times. They signed petitions, wrote letters, showed slides, wrote pamphlets, held rallies, wrote appeals, hired lawyers, wrote cheques. They raised £100,000 and took on the Department of Transport fact by fact, point by point. The department said local people wanted the road; they paid for a Harris opinion poll, which proved the opposite. The department said that 27 species of butterflies and 9 varieties of wild orchid could be transplanted from Twyford Down to another location; they went to English Nature (formerly the Nature Conservancy Council) who said this was nonsense. The department said that their alternative route, through a tunnel, could not be built; they proved it could be.
Radicals warned them it was pointless, but they decided to co-operate with the public inquiry, in 1985. As witnesses, they felt they were treated like criminals, but they persisted. The inspector closed the inquiry without hearing from crucial groups, the Countryside Commission and English Heritage, but they forced him to re-open the hearing in 1987. They believed they fought and won on every point – traffic flows, economic forecasts, geological surveys, cost benefit analysis – but when the report was finally published in 1990, they had lost all the same. They appealed to the European Commissioner, who was appalled to discover that the department had conducted no Environmental Impact Assessment, and last autumn he ordered a halt to the plan. The Department of Transport ignored the order. The protestors went to the High Court and begged for help, but Mr Justice McCullough took the department’s side....."
http://www.nickdavies.net/1992/07/01/the-battle-for-twyford-down/
The battle for Twyford Down, Published July 1992
